Judge Blocks Punitive US Sanctions on UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese
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In wonderful news from the District Court in Washington, D.C., Judge Richard Leon has blocked the imposition of US sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the tenacious UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, who, since Israel’s exterminatory assault on Gaza began, 31 months ago, has been fearless and indefatigable in her support of the Palestinians, and her condemnation of Israel’s almost innumerable crimes — including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide — and has also condemned the countries and companies that have been complicit. See her reports here: “Genocide as colonial erasure”, “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide”, “Gaza Genocide: a collective crime” and “Torture and genocide.”
The 26-page ruling, a preliminary injunction, will be particularly irritating for the Trump administration, because Judge Leon cannot be dismissed as a “left-wing activist judge.” An appointee of George W. Bush, he first came on my radar in 2008-09, when, as a judge dealing with the habeas corpus petitions of prisoners at Guantánamo, he became notorious for his frequent rulings against the prisoners, including one particular case which I condemned as How Cooking For The Taliban Gets You Life In Guantánamo.
The latest case before Judge Leon was brought in February by Albanese’s husband, who, like her, is an Italian citizen, and by their daughter, who is a US citizen, seeking a preliminary injunction against the decision, last July, by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to designate Albanese as a foreign national who has “directly engaged with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of those two countries.”
In his press statement, Rubio added, “The United States has repeatedly condemned and objected to the biased and malicious activities of Albanese that have long made her unfit for service as a Special Rapporteur”, claiming, hysterically, that she ”has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West.”
Israel’s New World Order: Nothing But the Threat of Endless Death
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For the last two and a half years, the State of Israel has unilaterally — and with jaw-dropping illegality — reimagined warfare as a religiously-mandated existential struggle against alleged “forces of darkness” in which there are no rules, and no sense of proportionality or restraint.
Everyone in the Gaza Strip — 2.3 million people at the start of this “conflict” — has been regarded as, in one way or another, “associated” with Hamas, the administrative government of Gaza whose military wing, along with other armed factions, broke out of the “open-air prison” of Gaza on October 7, 2023, killing hundreds of Israeli security personnel, and hundreds of civilians.
Completely supported by almost all the nations of the west, who approved the shamefully ill-defined notion that Israel had “the right to defend itself”, Israel has reinterpreted “self-defense” to mean genocide, inflicting such disproportionate destruction on Gaza that almost its entire built environment has been destroyed, and over ten percent of its population — a quarter of a million people — have been killed or wounded.
Israel, the US, the UK and Germany Have Destroyed Human Rights
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Yesterday, December 10, was Human Rights Day, marking the anniversary of the proclamation and adoption by the United Nations, on December 10, 1948, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a hugely commendable and aspirational template for a better world, in which, to quote from its Preamble, “the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” were recognized as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”
Translated into 577 languages, from Abkhaz to Zulu, the UDHR is, as the UN explains, “the most translated document in the world”, and is “generally agreed to be the foundation of international human rights law”, having “inspired a rich body of legally binding international human rights treaties.”
These include, as I discussed in an article year ago, entitled, Is Hope Still Alive on the Anniversaries of the Genocide and Torture Conventions, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (more generally known as the Torture Convention), which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1984, the 36th anniversary of the UDHR, expanding on Article 5 of the Declaration, which states, unequivocally, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Why The UN Resolution For Trump’s Colonial Takeover of Gaza Is Wrong, and Will Fail
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Over two days last week, the United Nations, formed in 1945, with its primary motive being “to maintain international peace and security”, sadly demonstrated all of the weaknesses that have prevented it from fulfilling that core aim of its Charter over the last 80 years.
On November 18, the UN General Assembly, which represents all 193 member states of the UN, overwhelmingly passed a worthy resolution affirming “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”, including “the right to their independent State of Palestine.”
The resolution was introduced by Armenia, China, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Norway, the Russian Federation and Viet Nam, with Egypt’s contribution undertaken on behalf of the 57 member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
164 countries voted in favor of the resolution, with just 7 votes against (including the US and Israel), and nine abstentions.
UN Report Condemns Unparalleled Violence, Including Torture, Rape and Murder, in Israel’s Unaccountable Prisons for Palestinians
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Three weeks ago, on October 10, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel issued a hugely significant report about Israel’s “war on hospitals” in the Gaza Strip over the last year, and its treatment of Palestinians in its accountable prison system, where torture, rape and murder are all widespread.
I wrote about the “war on hospitals” in a previous article, UN Report Confirms Israel Guilty of War Crimes and “Extermination” in Attacks on Gaza’s Hospitals, when I promised to follow up with a second article about the Commission’s findings regarding Israel’s prisons, and this article is my fulfilment of that promise.
When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, around 80% of the Palestinian population — 750,000 people — were ethnically cleansed from their homes in what is known as the Nakba (“catastrophe”), fleeing or being forcibly expelled as refugees into the West Bank (then controlled by Jordan), the Gaza Strip (then controlled by Egypt), Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. None of them — or their descendants — have ever been allowed to return.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
