Francesa Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, speaks at a conference, “A Cartography of Genocide: Israel’s Conduct in Gaza,” at the Roma Tre University, in Rome, Italy, Oct. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Remo Casilli

Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, lambasted Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, as a “liar” and a “fraud,” challenging her latest accusations against Israel and questioning her fitness to hold a position entrusted with defending human rights.

Israel’s representative at the UN also presented Albanese with a mock resignation letter on Monday, saying she has done damage to the global body with her conduct.

Albanese’s latest report, which she presented at the UN, accuses Israel of systematically targeting media workers during the Gaza war. Danon rejected the allegations, arguing that her repeated condemnations of Israel reflect a broader pattern of political hostility rather than impartial human rights advocacy.

“You are a liar, a fraud, and a stain on the United Nations,” Danon said to Albanese during a heated confrontation. “Your accusations are not proof, your assumptions are not evidence, and repeating the word ‘genocide’ does not make it true. You claim to defend human rights while ignoring the Hamas terrorist organization that tramples them.”

The Israeli ambassador accused the rapporteur, who has a mandate from the UN to advise the international body on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of overlooking Hamas’s crimes and failing to adequately confront the terrorist organization’s responsibility for the suffering caused by its war against Israel.

Danon then presented Albanese with the mock resignation letter bearing her name, arguing that her conduct had damaged the credibility of the United Nations. He called on her to step down, accusing her of using the authority of her office to promote an anti-Israel political agenda.

“You are undermining the credibility of the United Nations and exploiting its emblem to spread anti-Israel propaganda,” Danon said. “The only official letter you should issue is your resignation letter. It’s time for you to go home.”

Francesca Albanese, YOU’RE FIRED!

Stop lying!

IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO GO HOME!
@FranceskAlbs https://t.co/x65Me69Qqb

— Danny Danon 🇮🇱 דני דנון (@dannydanon) October 27, 2026

The confrontation highlights a longstanding dispute over the role of UN officials in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel has repeatedly argued that international bodies apply disproportionate scrutiny to the Jewish state while failing to give comparable attention to terrorism, hostage-taking, and other abuses committed by Hamas.

Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’s attacks on the Jewish state.

She has faced criticism over previous statements concerning Israel and the war that followed Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. In earlier remarks, she argued that the attack should be understood in context and connected it to Israeli policies — an approach that critics contend risks obscuring Hamas’s agency and the deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians.

Albanese’s past rhetoric has also generated controversy. In 2022, previously published social media posts included a reference to a “Jewish lobby” controlling the United States. Albanese rejected allegations that the remarks were antisemitic, saying they had been mischaracterized.

In the months following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities across southern Israel, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.

Albanese has also issued a scathing report accusing companies of helping Israel maintain a so-called “genocide economy.” She called on the companies to cut off economic ties with Israel and warned that they might be guilty of “complicity” in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza.

More recently, comments she made at an Al Jazeera conference drew condemnation from several European Union foreign ministers. Albanese criticized governments that continued providing Israel with military and political support and referred to a “common enemy” confronting humanity. She subsequently disputed claims that she had explicitly identified Israel as that enemy.

The UN adviser has come under immense condemnation for outright claiming that Israelis moving into foreign countries are exporting apartheid and are spearheading the so-called “Israelization” of the world.

“Instead of cutting ties with this, European states have continued to trade to protect, to arm, to sell weapons, to buy spying tools from Israel, increasing the security grip in their societies, arresting them, arresting activists, arresting activists, and crushing fundamental freedoms. This is so there are. This is the Israelization of our societies,” Albaense said in May.

The Trump administration sanctioned Albanese in 2025 in response to her criticism of Israel, adding another dimension to the international dispute surrounding her role.

“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt [International Criminal Court] action against US and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced in July 2025.