Michael Leonardi
CounterPunch / May 15, 2026
The United States government, under first Biden and now Trump, has launched a full-scale assault on one of the most courageous and honest voices at the United Nations: Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In July 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions against her — freezing assets, banning travel to the United States, and attempting to financially strangle her and her family — all for the crime of doing her job with integrity: rigorously documenting Israel’s genocide in Gaza and demanding accountability under international law.
In an unprecedented move, this appears to be the first time any country has ever sanctioned a sitting UN Special Rapporteur. The Trump administration’s attack has been particularly vicious. Israeli officials, led by UN envoy Danny Danon, had already resorted to medieval slander, publicly calling Albanese a “witch” with a “spell book” for daring to produce factual reports on Israeli crimes. The sanctions were designed to turn her into a global financial outcast: she has been blocked from accessing bank accounts, using credit cards, or managing any financial resources in both the US and Europe. Even banks in Italy and across the EU refused to open or allow access to her accounts out of fear of secondary US sanctions. Shockingly, neither the Italian government nor the broader European Union offered any meaningful defense of their own citizen and internationally mandated expert.
Thankfully, on May 13, 2026, a federal judge issued a temporary reprieve, suspending the sanctions and delivering a sharp rebuke to the Trump administration’s blatant attempt to punish protected speech and intimidate a UN mandate-holder. The ruling provides critical breathing room for Albanese and her family, though the broader threat remains.
Francesca Albanese has become one of the most authoritative and courageous international voices on Palestine. Since her appointment in 2022, she has methodically dismantled the lies shielding Israel’s colonial project. Her reports, grounded rigorously in international humanitarian and human rights law, have laid bare the reality: Israel is committing genocide, maintaining an apartheid regime, and pursuing the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Her landmark 2024 report Anatomy of a Genocide and subsequent work have become essential reading.
Her powerful book, When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words, and Wounds of Palestine (released in English in April 2026), has already become a bestseller. The documentary DisUnited Nations further amplifies her courageous navigation of institutional cowardice at the UN while exposing the complicity of powerful member states.
Italy and Europe stand exposed in their moral bankruptcy. Despite Albanese being an Italian national, the Meloni government — ever eager to prove its loyalty to Washington and Tel Aviv — offered her no support, while continuing military and economic cooperation with the genocidal regime. The broader European Union has chosen complicity over conscience.
Meanwhile, Israel and its AIPAC-driven allies in the United States have spent hundreds of millions on hasbara — a sophisticated propaganda machine designed to whitewash the sadistic face of Zionism. But the mask has slipped. The colonial, settler project stands exposed: a European transplant in the Middle East, an ethno-supremacist state built on the erasure of the indigenous Palestinian people who are the actual Semitic inhabitants of the land. The European colonizers, who founded “Israel” with their decimation of over 500 Palestinian villages and forced expulsion of millions of Palestinians beginning with the Nakba in 1948, are not.
Despite the massive propaganda blitz by Zionist forces, a global awakening is underway. Millions now see Zionism for what it is: a racist, supremacist ideology rooted in colonial conquest and maintained through relentless violence and apartheid. The live-streamed genocide since October 2023 has torn away the final illusions.
The sanctions against Albanese were never only about her. They were about sending a message: speak truth to Israeli power and the empire will come for you. The temporary court victory is welcome, but the deeper fight continues.
Francesca Albanese remains undeterred. Her courage, intellectual rigor, and moral clarity continue to inspire millions. She is doing what the United Nations was supposed to do — but rarely does: speak truth to power and defend the oppressed.
The empire is striking back because it is losing the battle for legitimacy. The more frantically it attacks voices like Albanese’s, the clearer it becomes that the Zionist project and its imperial backers are on the wrong side of history.
Defend Francesca Albanese. End the sanctions on truth-tellers. End the genocide in Gaza. End the occupation. Free Palestine.
Michael Leonardi lives in Italy
