Western silence as US sanctions Albanese

The move against the UN special rapporteur is part of a wider effort to intimidate those pursuing de jure justice in a world where imperial power makes the rules.

UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese (left) is being sanctioned by the United States. (Photo: The Left via Flickr)

Silence over US sanctions imposed on UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese shows just how fragile the post-war system of international humanitarian law is as the West remains hellbent on supporting Zionist aggression.

Albanese, a special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, has been a tireless campaigner over the past 20 months, travelling the world to sound the alarm over Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

It is no coincidence the US move against her comes less than a week after she released a damning report naming businesses benefitting from that genocide, putting at risk reputations and economic interests of major corporations.

"Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt (International Criminal Court) action against US and Israeli officials, companies, and executives," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement on June 10 (NZT).

The Italian lawyer has characterised the move as “mafia style intimidation” and took to Twitter to say she remained “firmly and convincingly on the side of justice”.

Governments across the West did not pass comment on Albanese’s treatment. Here in the South Pacific, New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters was busy announcing a military agreement with fellow NATO partner Japan after meeting his Japanese counterpart, in preparations for a catastrophic US war with China, one that Japan seems increasingly reluctant to fight.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong was in Malaysia attempting to convince wary foreign ministers of ASEAN nations of the dangers of China increasing its strategic influence in its on backyard. Rubio as well as Peters were expected to attend the ASEAN event.

Neither Peters or Wong, nor any of their ministry officials, made a statement condemning or even mentioning the sanctions to be imposed on Albanese. They join other Western champions of the rules-based international order in ignoring the sinister act of intimidation and by extension, the attack on the UN and its system of international humanitarian law itself.

Albanese has been calling on countries through the UN Human Rights Council to fulfil their obligations under the Genocide Convention and sanction Israel and impose an arms embargo.

In her report From economy of occupation to economy of genocide, Albanese names over 60 companies helping Israel to maintain illegal settlements and to devastate Gaza. These included not only arms manufacturers, but also big tech and e-commerce companies like Google and Amazon, logistics giants like AP Moller – Maersk, as well as academic institutions and those within other industry sectors. She pushed for legal accountability for executives complicit in those crimes and the Gaza genocide.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has accepted Israel’s continued onslaught against Gaza is a plausible case of genocide and as the evidence continued to gather at its door, its sister court in The Hague, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in November 2024 issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Marco Rubio speaking at the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland in 2014. (Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr)

In response the US imposed sanctions on four ICC judges.

The US effort to intimidate the ICC and Albanese should be seen as part of a wider effort to undermine international norms and post-war consensus bodies of the UN by pressuring, removing or threatening those attempting to uphold them. Republican and Democratic administrations have pursued this bipartisan agenda over many decades, although Trump’s recent efforts have been more transparent.

Trump has ceased dealing with the UN Human Rights Council.

He has also continued to defund Palestinian relief agency UNRWA, a Biden-era policy that helped pave the way for Israel’s effective use of starvation as a weapon of war and the emergence of US-Israel controlled pseudo-aid groups likes the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Since its establishment in February, the Foundation has been implicated in the killing of nearly 800 starving Palestinians, shot dead while queueing for aid in Gaza.

Trump’s belligerent approach has even scorned the human rights optics offered by USAID and other US foreign influence instruments, which he cut funding for. Instead, Trump has opted for outright intimidation, demonstrated this week with a 50 percent tariff threat to Brazil over the trial of former far right president Jair Bolsonaro.

Naked acts of aggression, including last month’s illegal bombing of Iran, as well as helping to put Jihadist Abu Mohammed al-Jolani into power Syria last December and embracing him in Western corridors of power over recent months, have further exposed the US and its Western allies for their lawlessness in West Asia. Al-Jolani’s Hayat-Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) continues to massacre the country’s Christians and Alawites.

Human rights and international law, as many Realist political analysts have long argued, have been instrumentalised to mask and serve imperial power. When these get in the way of those welding that power, the mask comes off.

Pursuing de jure justice nevertheless, Albanese has used her position within the UN to expose genocide and has very effectively put pressure on those materially benefiting from Zionist barbarism. Too effectively for the US, which has now decided smearing her as an antisemite is not enough.

It is a harbinger of what may come to anyone in Western countries who decides to challenge US power and its narratives dutifully carried by the media.