U.S. Sanctions UN Human Rights Lawyer For Exposing Israel In Reports.

The U.S. Is Sanctioning A UN Expert For Issuing Factual Reports About Israel's War Crimes.

The United States is now imposing sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories and an expert in international law for her reports exposing Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and Western complicity in them.

Secretary of state Marco Rubio issued a statement on July 9th stating that he is “imposing sanctions on Francesca Paola Albanese, the United Nations Human Rights Council ‘Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967’” claiming she has “spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West”.

In reality Albanese’s supposed “antisemitism” and “contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West” stems from the fact that she has urged Israel and the United States to adhere to international law.

To back up his outrageous slander, Rubio cites that fact that Albanese “recommended that the ICC, without a legitimate basis, issue arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant” and the fact that “She has recently escalated this effort by writing threatening letters to dozens of entities worldwide, including major American companies across finance, technology, defense, energy, and hospitality, making extreme and unfounded accusations and recommending the ICC pursue investigations and prosecutions of these companies and their executives”.

Sanctions For War Crimes Probe.

In reality, these sanctions are retaliation for Albanese’s factual reports on Israel’s war crimes and for exposing the American military-industrial complex’s complicity in them.

As the New York Times acknowledged, “Ms. Albanese, an Italian legal scholar, has been an outspoken critic of Israeli military actions in Gaza, and the Trump administration has been on a campaign to punish people who criticize Israel’s war in Gaza”.

Rubio’s longtime ties with the Israel lobby are no doubt playing a role in his decision to sanction Albanese.

According to the campaign finance watchdog Open Secrets, Rubio’s top donor when he was a Florida Senator was the AIPAC-affiliated “Pro-Israel America PAC,” which gave him $109,800.

Rubio has also been given $77,736 from the pro-Israel “Republican Jewish Coalition” lobbying group.

The idea that the ICC arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant is “unfounded” is beyond laughable.

In February, the Trump administration issued sanctions against ICC officials for the arrest warrant.

The charge indicts Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant for the “war crime of starvation as a method of warfare,” a war crime the Israeli government has openly supported.

Early on in the Gaza genocide, Yoav Gallant openly bragged about placing a starvation blockade on Gaza, saying “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed, We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly”.

The warrant also charged Netanyahu and Gallant with “the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”.

This again is undeniable.

The Israeli paper Ynet quoted Benjamin Netanyahu explicitly giving the orders to indiscriminately target civilian housing, quoting him saying, “I don't care about targets, take down houses, bomb with everything there is."

In other words, Marco Rubio is sanctioning Francesca Albanese for supporting an ICC warrant for war crimes that the Israeli government itself has bragged about committing.

Retribution For Exposing The Military Industrial Complex.

The final trigger for the American sanctions on Albanese appears to be her most recent bombshell report exposing the corporations profiting from the genocide in Gaza.

Listed in the report were multiple American companies.

In the report, she listed Lockheed Martin for manufacturing the F-35 and F-16 fighter jets, which she said “have been integral to equipping Israel with the unprecedented aerial power to drop an estimated 85,000 tons of bombs, much of it unguided, to kill and injure more than 179,411 Palestinians and obliterate Gaza”.

She also exposed the American construction company Caterpillar Inc. for manufacturing the Israeli “Caterpillar D9 bulldozer”, a militarized bulldozer used in war crimes, including “being used to carry out mass demolitions – including of homes, mosques, and life-sustaining infrastructure – raid hospitals and burying alive wounded Palestinians”.

It also exposed big banks for underwriting Israeli war bonds and investment firms such as BlackRock and Vanguard for buying them, as well as investing in companies previously listed for profiting off the genocide in Gaza.

Most importantly, Francesca Albanese exposed America’s tech sector for profiting off the genocide in Gaza, including Microsoft, Alphabet Inc., and Amazon.com for “providing core tech infrastructure” to Israel, which “enhances data processing, decision making, and surveillance and analysis capacities”.

Likely what upset the Trump administration the most about the report was that Albanese exposed the tech firm Palantir for profiting of the genocide in Gaza, writing:

In January 2024, Palantir announced a new strategic partnership with Israel and held a board meeting in Tel Aviv “in solidarity”; in April 2025, Palantir’s Chief Executive Officer responded to accusations that Palantir had killed Palestinians in Gaza by saying, “mostly terrorists, that’s true”. Both incidents are indicative of executive-level knowledge and purpose vis-à-vis the unlawful use of force by Israel, and failure to prevent such acts or withdraw involvement.

Palantir, the data gathering tool created by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, which was initially funded by the CIA’s investment arm In-Q-Tel to privatize the surveillance state, is now deeply tied in with the Trump administration with the company gaining contracts for a wide host of government agencies.

Palantir’s founders have practically admitted to profiting off war crimes in Gaza.

The company has been openly supportive of Israel and its genocide in Gaza, tweeting “Palantir stands with Israel” on October 11th of 2023, and “We stand with Israel” on October 7th of 2024.

The company even had its first board meeting of 2024 in Tel Aviv ,where they “agreed to a strategic partnership with the Israel Ministry of Defense to ‘supply Palantir technology to help the country’s war effort’”.

The Israeli business paper “Globes” reported that “Palantir expects revenue in the tens of millions of dollars from the agreement with Israel.”

The company’s CEO, Alex Karp, has admitted that he is “exceedingly proud that after Oct. 7, within weeks, we are on the ground and we are involved in operationally crucial operations in Israel”.

Karp has also openly supported the United States cracking down on Israel’s critics saying “We kind of think these things that are happening across college campuses (pro-Palestine protests) are a side show, no, they are the show, because if we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the West ever” and accusing a Palestinian protestor of being “an unwitting product of an evil force, Hamas.”

Given Palantir’s close ties to the Trump administration, they no doubt pushed for the sanctions against Albanese as retribution for her report exposing their complicity in Israel’s war crimes.

Rouge States.

The fact that the United States is imposing sanctions on an international law expert, simply for writing factual reports about Israel’s war crimes and U.S. complicity in them means the U.S. is fully lifting the veil on any notion that they support “democracy” or a “rules based international order”.

The brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges put it best ,writing:

The attack against Albanese presages a world without rules, one where rogue states, such as the U.S. and Israel, are permitted to carry out war crimes and genocide without any accountability or restraint.

It exposes the subterfuges we use to fool ourselves and attempt to fool others. It reveals our hypocrisy, cruelty and racism.

No one, from now on, will take seriously America’s stated commitments to democracy, freedom of expression, the rule of law or human rights. And who can blame them? Americans speak exclusively in the language of force, the language of brutes, the language of mass slaughter, the language of genocide

I don’t think anything could better underscore this point than sanctioning an international law expert for exposing war crimes.

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