“Palestinians’ right to resist is inherent to their right to exist as a people,” Francesca Albanese tweeted. “An unlawful act of resistance does not make the resistance unlawful.”
By World Israel News Staff
Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch NGO, has called on United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres to condemn “ugly incitement to violence” by a UN official.
Francesca Albanese, the UN’s “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967,” defended Palestinian terrorists on Monday after a ceasefire was put into effect following three days of fighting between the IDF and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
The IDF launched Operation Breaking Dawn on Friday in response to ongoing rockets fired by PIJ for several days and an imminent threat of attack by the Islamic terror organization on Israeli civilians, TPS reported.
Within the first 180 seconds of the operation, fighter jets and drones targeted and killed 15 Islamic Jihad operatives, including Taysir al-Jabari, commander of the Islamic Jihad’s northern division.
“This terror organization (PIJ) is now under attack. We won’t allow any organization—not here and not in the North and not in Judea and Samaria—to harm the sovereignty of the State of Israel. We are at the height of a justified operation, aimed at protecting the Israeli people,” IDF Chief Aviv Kochavi stated Saturday night.
The next day, Wennesland condemned the assassination of a terrorist leader, saying in a statement that he was “deeply concerned by the ongoing escalation between Palestinian militants and Israel, including the targeted killing of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader inside Gaza.”
Taysir al-Jabari was responsible for multiple terror attacks against Israelis.
“The continuing escalation is very dangerous. The launching of rockets must cease immediately, and I call on all sides to avoid further escalation,” Wennesland said.
On Monday morning, Albanese defended Palestinians’ “right to resist” Israeli “occupation.”
“Palestinians’ right to resist is inherent to their right to exist as a people,” she tweeted. “An unlawful act of resistance does not make the resistance unlawful. An unlawful act of an unlawful occupation makes the occupation more unlawful (and the list on the desk of the [International Criminal Court] Prosecutor longer).”
Neuer responded, writing that “after Palestinian terrorists just attacked Israel with 1,000 rockets, the UN Human Rights Council’s Francesca Albanese says Palestinians have a ‘right to resist.’ As she knows, for all Palestinian groups—Hamas, Islamic Jihad or Fatah—’resistance’ means killing Israelis.”
He then called on Guterres “to strongly condemn this ugly incitement to violence by a UN official.”
“The context makes it worse,” he added. “Albanese has often compared the Palestinians to Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and implied that Israelis are Nazis,” he said..
Backing up his statement, Neuer posted a video of the UN official comparing the Shoah to the Nakba – Arabic for “catastrophe,” referring to the establishment of the State of Israel.
“Without wanting to make simple equations—which often cause me many problems—just as tragic, terrible, unspeakable is the tragedy that befell the Jewish people with the Shoah, so for the Palestinians the Nakba represents the crumbling of the connective tissue of a people…” /4 pic.twitter.com/D3A8coJC6r
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) August 8, 2022
Prime Minister Yair Lapid appealed to Palestinians in Gaza to embrace peace and prosperity.
“There is another way to live. The path of the Abraham Accords, of the Negev Summit, of innovation and economy, of regional development and joint projects. The choice is yours. Your future depends on you,” Lapid said.
Operation Breaking Dawn was launched as an effort to protect the lives of Israeli civilians, and that the military had taken great care to minimize collateral damage and spare Gazans who were not part of PIJ, he said.