UN expert faces backlash from Israel over Hitler-Netanyahu remarks

Israel on Friday slammed a UN rights expert for "anti-Semitism" after she endorsed a social media post comparing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, has faced harsh criticism from Israel previously, especially after she in March accused the country of committing genocide in the war in Gaza.

On Thursday, she responded to a post on X, formerly Twitter, displaying a picture of Hitler being celebrated by a crowd with Nazi salutes and cheers above a shot of Netanyahu appearing to be greeted by US congressmen this week.

"History is always watching," Craig Mokhiber, a former UN human rights official who resigned late last October accusing the world body of failing to prevent the "genocide" of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, wrote in the post.

"This is precisely what I was thinking today," Albanese, an independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2022 but who does not speak on behalf of the United Nations, said in her response on Thursday.

Israel's foreign ministry was quick to respond, slamming her on X as being "beyond redemption".

"It is inconceivable that (Albanese) is still allowed to use the UN as a shield to spread anti-Semitism," it said.

Israel's mission to the UN in Geneva also chimed in.

"When a current UN 'expert' endorses Holocaust distortion spread by the former (UN rights office) director in New York... the system is rotten to its core," it said.

"It's high time to #UNseatAlbanese!"

Israel's new ambassador in Geneva, Daniel Meron, used the same hashtag, decrying that "Francesca Albanese abuses her (UN) title to spread hatred and inflammatory rhetoric".

Israel's top ally the United States also weighed in.

"UN Special Rapporteur’s comparison of Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler is reprehensible and antisemitic," US ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva Michele Taylor said on X.

"There should be no place for such dehumanising rhetoric. Special rapporteurs should be striving to improve human rights challenges, not inflame them."

Albanese on Friday hit back at the criticism, insisting that "the memory of the Holocaust remains intact".

"Institutional rants and outburst of selective moral outrage will not stop the course of justice, which is finally in motion."

The Hamas attack that started the war on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Out of 251 people taken hostage that day, 111 are still held in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 39,175 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.