Marco Rubio sanctions UN rapporteur for criticism of Israel
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the US imposed sanctions against Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the West Bank and Gaza
UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
On July 9, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio imposed sanctions against UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese. Albanese is an outspoken advocate for the Palestinian cause and in revealing international complicity in Israeli apartheid and genocide.
Rubio accused Albanese of having “directly engaged with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of those two countries.”
Rubio added, “Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated. We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”
The Secretary of State also accused Albanese of having “spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West.” Rubio also denounced Albanese’s support for the ICC issuing arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
The announced sanctions on Albanese come just weeks after she released a groundbreaking report titled “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide”. The report exposes the involvement of over 60 multinational companies in Israel’s illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank, and the ongoing genocide in the besieged Gaza strip. Some of the US tech giants included in the report are Google, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft.
Read more: The genocide industry: UN rapporteur exposes over 60 companies complicit in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians
In the report, she called for holding the involved companies legally liable for their complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide, displacement, and replacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
This latest move by the State Department comes as Netanyahu is visiting the White House in defiance of the ICC’s current arrest warrant. The fact that the United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that created the ICC, and does not respect the court’s arrest warrant, is something that Rubio noted in his July 9 press statement.
