Francesca Albanese speaks out about genocide in the Chamber of Deputies. The Jewish community protests.
ROME – The presentation of Francesca Albanese's report, " From the Economy of Occupation to the Economy of Genocide," in the Chamber of Deputies was a coincidence. At the invitation of the inter-parliamentary group for peace between Israel and Palestine, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories presented the dossier she has been working on for over six months, in which she denounces that "the business of Palestinian genocide is quantifiable: from October 2023 to May 2025, the value of the Tel Aviv stock exchange has tripled."
But Davide Romano , director of the Jewish Brigade Museum in Milan, who yesterday reported the incident at the rest area on the Milano Laghi highway, is outraged. "It seems crazy to me," he observes, "that after what happened" with the attack on French Jewish citizens in the Milan area, "Francesca Albanese," the UN rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, will be a guest in the Chamber of Deputies today and the Senate tomorrow. "She will present a report written with biased language that contributes to the climate of hatred we saw in the video filmed inside the rest area."
"In fact, in the report, Albanese illustrates the conflict between Israel and Hamas in a grotesque manner. Suffice it to say that the term 'genocide' appears in various forms 57 times in a 38-page report, while the words 'Hamas' and 'terrorism' never appear," he adds. "It is no coincidence that the self-styled lawyer has recently received solidarity from the terrorist group Hamas as well as from the Iranian regime of the Ayatollahs, which continues to hang members of the 'Women, Life and Freedom' movement even today."
AVS co-spokesperson Angelo Bonelli , instead, highlighted the sanctions against Albanese: "The fact that she is being targeted and sanctioned by a state simply for telling the truth and daring to denounce the genocide underway in Gaza to the world is an act of unprecedented gravity. And I find the Italian government's silence equally unacceptable and shameful."
In the report on what is happening in Gaza presented to the Chamber, Albanese is clear: "You cannot buy, sell, or cooperate with a state accused of international crimes, and therefore Italy is also in serious violation, not only for having violated its obligation to prevent genocide, but because it has continued to transfer weapons to Israel."
The meeting was promoted by the parliamentary intergroup for peace in Israel and Palestine, which nominated Albanese for the Nobel Peace Prize. "Francesca Albanese has been sanctioned by the United States for exposing the crimes of a terrorist and genocidal government," said M5S MP and intergroup president Stefania Ascari, who assured: "We will always stand by her on this path of justice and truth."
Albanese continued: “It is unfortunate that Italy, through its government, is insisting that, in the face of genocide, those people have no right to a state, while the European Union continues to be complicit, keeping the EU-Israel Association Agreement alive.”
Regarding the report, the rapporteur assures: "It is the most difficult investigation I have ever written, and the reason is that it doesn't just describe a genocide." Albanese's thesis is that Israel's genocide after 1967 relied "not only on the ideology that guaranteed that state's impunity for 56 years, but also on the profits of too many individuals and too many companies." A six-month effort, during which, the rapporteur says, "I assembled a database that includes a thousand companies in the transportation, defense, energy, and tourism sectors, financial institutions, pension funds, and subsidiaries, as well as universities, charities, and religious and non-religious organizations. How did Israel rely on the private sector to displace the Palestinian populations of the occupied West Bank and Gaza? With weapons, first and foremost," Albanese continues, "starting with the Leonardo company," followed by "land expropriation, which is a war crime."
Then, according to the speaker, "the construction machinery arrived, demolishing houses and uprooting olive trees and crops; then came the surveillance."
According to the speaker, "universities and research centers have been experimenting with the most sophisticated surveillance methods on Palestinians for years" to relocate populations. "Once the people were displaced, it was necessary to rebuild homes, roads and railways, water and electricity networks" to accommodate the settlers. "Israeli settlements," says Albanese, "are an extension of the state of Israel." Nothing, according to the speaker, "is therefore a neutral act; everything is a continuum."
Since October 8, 2023, Albanese denounces, referring to the Israeli bombings that followed the assaults by Hamas commandos the previous day, "these companies have continued, instead of stopping, to collaborate with Israel and profit, like Volvo, Hyundai and Caterpillar, whose bulldozers are contributing to the pulverization of what remains of Gaza today."
Furthermore, according to the speaker, "Microsoft and Google systems have made it possible to identify and kill the homes of civilians, journalists, and doctors: they were not used as human shields by Hamas as some are saying."
For Albanese, "the right to self-determination is the right to be free to exist as a people, politically, culturally, and economically. If there is no independent state, there must be a single state. This is the question that needs to be asked of Meloni." When asked if she was received by the Italian prime minister, Albanese replies: "No, no. But in other countries—I've been to Spain, Slovenia, South Africa, Colombia, Brazil—I'm received by the highest officials of the state, with hugs and congratulations, by the way."
La Repubblica
