JERUSALEM: Israel announced on Monday a visa ban on the United Nations special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories over recent comments denying Hamas’s Oct 7 raid was “anti-Semitic”.

The UN-appointed independent expert, Francesca Albanese, said last week she disagreed with French President Emmanuel Macron’s description of the attack as “the biggest anti-Semitic massacre of our century”.

“No”, Albanese wrote in French on social media platform X. “The victims of 7/10 (Oct 7) were not killed because of their Jewishness, but in response to Israeli oppression.” Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz and Interior Minister Moshe Arbel called her online remark “outrageous” and said in a statement she was now “denied entry to the state of Israel”.

The immigration authorities had been instructed not to issue Albanese a visa, they added, also calling for her dismissal.

In response, Albanese wrote on X: “Israel’s ‘denying me entry’ is not news.” She said “all” special rapporteurs for the occupied Palestinian territories have been denied entry by Israel since 2008.

“This must not become a distraction from Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, which are taking a new level of horror with the bombing of people in `safe areas’ in Rafah.” Israel’s ties with several UN bodies and representatives have soured since the start of the Gaza crsis.

The Israeli ministers said in their statement that “if the UN wants to return to being a relevant body, its leaders must publicly disavow the anti-Semitic words of the special envoy — and fire her immediately”.

Albanese has previously said she was “disappointed” that the response to Macron’s comments had been interpreted as her “justifying” the Hamas raid, pointing out that she had condemned it several times.

“Explaining these crimes as anti-Semitism obscures their true cause,” she has said, calling anti-Semitism a “global threat”.

UN special rapporteurs are unpaid, independent experts mandated by the Human Rights Council.

They do not speak for the United Nations, but report their findings to the council’s fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms.

Israel has previously criticised Albanese after she and other UN-mandated rights experts said in November that Palestinians in Gaza were “at grave risk of genocide”.

She has also criticised the decision by several donor countries to suspend funding of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, over Israeli allegations that 12 staff members were involved in the Oct 7 raid.

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2024