Episode notes
Israel has always killed and tortured Palestinians, but when our democracies crush freedom of expression, they reveal that they are part of “the same system,” Francesca Albanese told Blindspot.
On March 23, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese presented a report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, alleging that Israel has adopted the systematic use of torture as state policy against Palestinians. Titled “Torture and Genocide,” the report argues that torture is a structural feature of the ongoing Israeli occupation and genocide, aiming to break the spirit of Palestinians as a people.
“I see a system,” denounces Albanese. “A system that has enabled, provided weapons and means to Israel to commit this genocide. And this system is acting erratically, violently, without any restraint, but because it’s losing the legitimacy that it had.”
The UN Special Rapporteur called, on August 24, for an “international protection presence” in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, stressing such a deployment was “absolutely urgent.”
“Third states have an obligation, per the ICJ, to act to end Israel’s unlawful occupation,” Albanese wrote on the social media platform X, referring to a July 2024 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice that ruled Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory unlawful and underlined that states must not assist in maintaining it.
Photo: Francesca Albanese © Nelson Pereira