Francesca Albanese: ‘my freedom is stronger than my fear’

UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese has spoken about the “rollercoaster” her life has become since standing up against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Albanese and opposition to genocide

Francesca Albanese has been personally sanctioned by the US and targeted by the Israel lobby for her refusal to back down in her condemnation and her calls for justice. Yet even in an article that flirts with accepting that Albanese’s lionisation by opponents of genocide is merited – and even uses the word genocide itself without ‘distancing-by-speech-marks’ – Guardian writer Julian Borger can’t quite resist the corporate urge to regurgitate debunked Israeli narratives.

Borger introduces the carnage in Gaza not as war crimes and genocide but as an “untreated wound of Israel-Palestine [that] has shown its capacity every generation to give the rest of the world a fever”, as if opposition to colonisation, apartheid, and slaughter is some kind of disorder.

He recycles Israel’s claim of the 2023 “Hamas attack…which killed about 1,200 people, provok[ing] a ferocious Israeli response”. Israel was known, very soon after October 2023, to have killed hundreds of its own citizens in ‘Hannibal’ attacks during the raid; the raid consisted of other groups, not just Hamas. Israel has killed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians since the raid, not the 75,000 Borger quotes – as the subject of his interview has frequently pointed out.

Yet he mentions none of that, despite its obvious aptness in his article. Not opposing genocide is the disease and its symptoms reach very far into Western and especially UK ‘mainstream’ media.

Steadfast

Borger also fails to point out the illegality of the sanctions the US has imposed on Albanese. But he does at least give some attention to their impact on the steadfast UN volunteer. And that’s where Albanese’s courage is given chance to shine through. Trump’s sanctions are massive blow to any prospect of a normal life – Albanese is unable to use a credit card, is severely limited in access to banking and relies on cash lent by family members. Yet she is without self-pity, even as she honestly describes the blow and its injustice:

It was bad. That sort of puts you together with mass murderers and drug dealers of international proportions. It was a paradox of facing one of the harshest forms of punishment without due process, because I’ve not even been afforded the possibility to defend myself. I’ve just been sanctioned without trial.

The article does address the Israel lobby’s threats against Albanese – and her 13-year-old daughter – and the cowardice of the World Bank, where her husband works. It mentions the Zionists’ threat to rape her child. But Borger expresses all of these impersonally and without attribution, like acts of God or natural disasters:

One anonymous caller said her daughter would be raped, giving the name of the school she attended in Tunis, Tunisia, where the family lives. Albanese went to the police for protection. While she doesn’t give details of the arrangements, she says: “I have what I need.”

Craven corporate media

Borger doesn’t make even a passing reference to the mass rapes of Palestinian prisoners that are common in Israeli concentration camps. He doesn’t mention Zionist death threats against other opponents of genocide, such as Hind Rajab Foundation director Dyab Abou Jahjah and his family. He doesn’t examine the UK government’s lawfare war on anti-genocide speech and activism, an obvious relative of Trump’s state terror – though Albanese refers to and condemns it, as well as the “monster” behind it, Keir Starmer.

But the cravenness of corporate media makes the courage of those who do stand up shine all the brighter – and so it is here. Albanese freely admits that the impact of the sanctions has been “brutal” enough to make her pause and consider, but she is unbowed:

That is when I started wondering: is it worth it? I have two kids. What if they harm them? I cannot take this responsibility. There is a lot that I’m putting on the line, but, at the same time, I don’t have any alternative. I still need to continue to throw water on the fire and I have a bigger bucket right now … and strong arms.

And Francesca Albanese finishes with a lesson for all of us as well as for the spineless establishment media, not to let fear stop us being free, and to stand in solidarity with those who need it:

My life has become a rollercoaster. I never imagined living without a bank card, but I do. People help me.

My freedom is stronger than my fear. You are defeated the moment you stop fighting.

Featured image via the Canary