The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, said that the genocide committed by Israel against the Palestinians is reminiscent of the Holocaust.
This came in a speech she delivered yesterday, Saturday, during the opening of the “Maghreb-Mashreq Social Forum” in Tunisia, under the slogan “Palestine is our future… The war of extermination against Gaza represents a challenge to human and democratic values.”
Speaking about the ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, Albanese said, “How can we ignore what is happening in Gaza now? This is a tragedy.”
She pointed to human rights violations in Gaza and the martyrdom of 35,000 people at the hands of Israeli forces, including about 15,000 children, stressing that Israel aims with these attacks to take revenge on all Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
In this context, she called on the international community to take action to stop the Israeli attacks, adding, “I say without hesitation that what is happening in Gaza is not a war, but a genocide, and although Western countries are not comfortable using the word genocide, the genocide in Gaza reminds us of the Holocaust.”
In her speech before the conference – which concludes today, Sunday – the UN rapporteur touched on the protests against the Israeli attacks in Gaza, saying, “We must support student movements around the world.”
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip, causing tens of thousands of victims, the majority of whom are children and women, and leaving behind widespread devastation, health and environmental disasters, and humanitarian crises, which necessitated the trial of Tel Aviv before the International Court of Justice on the grounds of genocide.