A planned briefing to Congress by the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, on Gaza was cancelled due to political pressure, according to organisers.
American author and human rights activist, Medea Benjamin, shared a video expressing frustration at Congress, with Albanese noting that her report highlighted Israel’s crimes against Gaza, questioning the US role in undermining 75 years of progress in international law.
In a video posted on X, Benjamin criticised Congress, citing allegations in Jewish Insider that labelled Albanese’s position as anti-Semitic, which reportedly led Democratic leadership to pressure for the cancellation.
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese was set to brief Congress today on her latest findings from Gaza. But in a last-minute twist, pressure from “higher-ups” led to the cancellation. The halls of Congress should echo with voices of truth and accountability, not fear and… pic.twitter.com/mec4KUfB6c
— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) October 29, 2024
“Francesca Albanese was going to talk to us about her new report of what Israel is doing in Gaza. And we were very excited about it. We had a lot of RSVPs for it and then, suddenly yesterday, there was an article that came out in the Jewish Insider that started talking about the accusations in the Biden administration about the Special Rapporteur being anti-Semitic,” she said.
She added, “Now this is crazy. You can label anybody anti-Semitic who is faulting Israel for the slaughter that it’s doing but they’re not anti-Semitic. And Francesa Albanese is not anti-Semitic but, because of that article, the representative who was hosting us here got scared; he said he was getting calls from ‘higher ups’, which we assume is higher up in the Democratic Party that pressured him to cancel this briefing.”
Benjamin further called for open congressional discourse on US support in Gaza.
“It is outrageous,” she said. “We have got to open up this Congress to the voices of reason and to the voices of truth if we’re ever going to get a US policy that stops supporting genocide.”
The Israeli offensive in Gaza was triggered by an attack led by Hamas fighters on Israel on 7 October, in which 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken as hostages back into the Palestinian enclave, according to Israeli officials.
However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.
The overall death toll in Gaza is approaching 43,000, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.
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