Israel accused of torture, abuse of Palestinians

(TIMES OF ISRAEL) – The UN official tasked with examining Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza presented in Geneva a scathing report accusing the Jewish State of collectively imprisoning the Palestinians, sexually abusing Palestinian women and “challenging the very foundations of the international legal order”.

In her Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese called on UN member states to prosecute Israeli officials under universal jurisdiction, and urged Palestinian Authority security forces to suspend cooperation with Israel “that may lead to violating fundamental rights and freedoms under international law”.

“A 10,700-word report cannot capture the scale and extent of the arbitrary deprivation of liberty in the occupied Palestinian territory,” she wrote. “Nor can it convey the suffering of millions of Palestinians who have, directly or indirectly, been affected.”

Albanese has a history of antisemitism, which she has not explicitly apologised for, instead denouncing criticism of her rhetoric as a smear campaign.

In her report, Albanese accused Israel of torture, mistreating Palestinian corpses, coercing gay Palestinians to provide information, and “invasive strip searches, sexual abuse and threats” toward women.

She also denounced Palestinian self-rule, saying it “has added a layer of repression to Palestinian life under occupation”.

“The security coordination between the Palestinian Authority and Israel has pioneered a direct connection between Palestinian and Israeli detention apparatuses,” she wrote.

“Arbitrary arrests and detention carried out by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the de facto authorities in the Gaza Strip have contributed to stifling Palestinians’ rights and freedoms,” she continued, not naming the Hamas terror organisation throughout her report.

Albanese did not mention Palestinian terrorism in her report. The closest she came was a sentence in the conclusion: “Without condoning crimes that Palestinians have committed during decades of illegal occupation, most criminal convictions of Palestinians have been the result of a litany of violations of international law, including due process violations, that taint the legitimacy of the administration of justice by the occupying power.”

She also accused Israel of “settler-colonial apartheid” and referred to Israeli communities past the Green Line as “colonies”.

The Italian lawyer also took Israel’s Supreme Court to task for approving its policies in the West Bank and Gaza.

In 2014, Albanese said that the “Jewish lobby” controls the US, in comments first exposed by The Times of Israel.

She has also sympathised with terror organisations, dismissed Israeli security concerns, compared Israelis to Nazis, accused the Jewish State of potential war crimes, said that Israel controlled the BBC and claimed that the Jewish State started wars out of greed.