Israel’s Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz on Sunday called for UN special rapporteur for the Palestinians Francesca Albanese’s ouster after she justified the Hamas October 7th massacre.

Albanese has a long history of engaging in antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric, including her record-making comments in 2014 when she described the United States as “subjugated by the Jewish lobby” and Europe by a “sense of guilt about the Holocaust.”

She made her most recent outrageous statement in response to a post on social by the center-left French news site Le Monde about the French ceremony last week in tribute to victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack

At the ceremony, French President Emmanuel Macron called the attack “the biggest antisemitic massacre of our century.” In response, Albanese wrote: “The ‘greatest anti-Semitic massacre of our century’? No, Mr. Emmanuel Macron. The victims of 7/10 were not killed because of their Judaism but in response to Israel’s oppression. France and the international community did nothing to prevent it. My respects to the victims.”

The French Foreign Ministry responded by asserting that the Hamas attack was  indeed “the largest antisemitic massacre of the 21st century” and “disputing it is a mistake.”

“Seeming to justify it, by including the name of the United Nations, is a shame,” the ministry stated. “These comments are all the more scandalous since the fight against antisemitism and all forms of racism are at the heart of the founding of the UN.”

Katz responded to Albanese’s comments by stating that “framing the October 7th massacre as a reaction to ‘Israeli oppression’ rather than an act of anti-Jewish hatred, is deeply troubling. I call on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to fire Francesca Albanese immediately. The time of Jewish silence in the face of such misrepresentations has passed. We must stand strong and vocal against such narratives.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)