I do not know whether you have ever heard the name of Alice Wairimu Nderitu.
Ms Nderitu was a high ranking UN official. In 2020, after a sterling career in Human Rights Education and Social Justice in Kenya, she was appointed Under Secretary General of the United Nations, which is the third highest rank in the organisation, and among other things bestows diplomatic immunity on the recipient. She was also appointed the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide.
Such appointments are for a four year term. Last year, the United Nations Secretary General chose not to renew Ms Nderitu’s appointment to either position. And she has been very clear why this happened – because she did not label the war in Gaza as a genocide. In an interview with the Air Mail news website, she described vividly how she was “hounded, day in, day out. Bullied, hounded, with protection from nobody.” She described how she had been targeted by news outlets such as Al Jazeera – “They made me the centrepiece,” she said. “Every day they were talking about me.”
She said that: “It’s instructive that this never happened for any other war. Not for Ukraine, not for Sudan, not for DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo], not for Myanmar…The focus was always Israel.”
United Nations Human Rights Council
“This was a war,” she told Air Mail. “Palestinians were killing Israelis, Israelis were killing Palestinians. It needs to be treated like other wars. In other wars, we don’t run and take one side and then keep going on and on about that one side. . . . By taking one side, condemning it every day, you completely lose the essence of what the UN was created for.”[1]
And so, perhaps inevitably, the UN froze her out. Because she said, ultimately, what the UN did not want to hear.
It is important that we keep Ms Nderitu in mind for many reasons. And one of those reasons is that on Friday April 4th it is the intention of the UN Human Right Council to reappoint Francesca Albanese to another term as UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories.
Ms Albanese has been accused of being an antisemite. And during her recent inexplicable appearance on The Rest is Politics podcast, she made sure to rubbish those accusations.
“Antisemitism is hatred or discrimination against Jewish people because they are Jewish,” she said. “Now, the allegations of antisemitism against me have nothing to do with [that]… I’m accused of being an antisemite because I criticise Israel.”
But those who allege that Ms Albanese is an antisemite need not necessarily be referring to the fact that she is a vociferous critic of Israel (though she is) or that she has repeatedly attempted to justify Hamas’s violence against Israel (though she has), or that she engages in Holocaust inversion (though she does). They can point to the following statement, which she made on Facebook in 2014, but which only came to light in 2022, not long after her appointment to the role which she currently disgraces:
“America and Europe, one of them subjugated by the Jewish lobby, and the other by the sense of guilt about the Holocaust, remain on the sidelines and continue to condemn the oppressed — the Palestinians — who defend themselves with the only means they have, instead of making Israel face its international law responsibilities.”[2]
At the time, this was condemned by Deborah Lipstadt, the US Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, as “blatantly antisemitic”.
I would like to believe that in most workplaces, such a statement would be grounds for dismissal. In a position, for the United Nations, with a direct involvement in one of the most sensitive conflicts on the planet, involving the Jewish State, to have allowed her to remain in such a position is madness, an insanity outmatched only by the possibility of her being reappointed to another term. But of course, we are talking about the UN, an organisation which quite literally had a Nazi war criminal as its secretary general for almost a decade. After that, what surprises can possibly be left?
UN Watch, the courageous NGO which documents the deranged anti-Israel obsession of the UN, has been leading the opposition to Ms Albanese’s reappointment. Last week, Hillel Neuer, director of UN Watch, took the floor at the UN Human Rights Council to describe Ms Albanese’s statements and actions. In a response which will be completely unsurprising to most Jewish people reading this article, the UN Human Rights Council rebuked Mr Neuer for “personal attacks” on Ms Albanese. Mr Neuer’s response is worth quoting – “If it’s a ‘personal attack’ when I quote the words of your official, then maybe she shouldn’t be your official.”[3]
The Dutch cabinet has publicly opposed Ms Albanese’s reappointment. The US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee Chair has described her actions and statements as having “perverted the very institution and its foundational principles in which she was appointed to serve”. The organisation I work for, the Board of Deputies, has urged the Foreign Office to publicly oppose this planned reappointment.
Part of the issue faced here, however, is an almost criminal level of apathy from those who are intelligent enough to know better. In a post-interview discussion between the two podcast hosts of The Rest is Politics – Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart – Mr Campbell seemed full of admiration for Ms Albanese – “she’s so passionate, so committed, she’s so clear in the way that she expresses herself.” And what about the antisemitism? Well, Mr Campbell was kind enough to comment on that, just after he and Mr Stewart had a little giggle about how much the interview with her was going to annoy “the Israelis who message us pretty much every week saying that we’re not fair to Israel”. And this is what he had to say:
“If we’d sought to push back on any of that – for example, when she talked about when she was attacked for being antisemitic in 2022, and then you go back and I think the first time was 2014 – but I didn’t particularly want to get into an argument about that.”
It must be quite something to be able to just gloss that over, like it isn’t important to let your audience know about. That attitude – that apathy – towards Ms Albanese would appear to be exactly what the UN is relying on with regards to its attention to reappoint her.
And so, once again, it is incumbent upon us all to make our voices heard at this moment – because if we do not, it appears that few others will.
