During the Second World War, a handful of Americans and one Briton, William Joyce, better known as Lord Haw-Haw, went to work for the Nazis and the Japanese. Among them was Mildred Gillars, the broadcaster American troops called Axis Sally. She told them over German radio, “I say damn Roosevelt and Churchill, and all of their Jews who have made this war possible.” The rest of her programming was built to make men in uniform homesick, suspicious of their own leaders, and ready to quit. A jury convicted her of treason in 1949, and she served twelve years in federal prison.
Francesca Albanese is not an Israeli citizen, so unlike the Israeli directors of the documentary NAZA, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, whom Culture Minister Miki Zohar publicly accused of treason while calling for their citizenship to be revoked, she cannot be accused of betraying her own country. She holds a United Nations mandate instead. As Hillel Neuer of UN Watch put it, she is Hamas’s de facto spokesperson at the United Nations. Call her Hamas Franny, the UN’s answer to Axis Sally.
Pro-Hamas Is Not Hamas, but It Is Still Pro-Hamas
Neuer’s UN Watch alleges that the UN itself helped bury the question of who pays her bills: “Yet this report reveals how the UN and its rapporteur engaged in a deliberate cover-up to conceal her funding by pro-Hamas lobby groups, and her commission of other grave ethical violations and financial misconduct, warranting an urgent and independent investigation.” Pro-Hamas lobby groups are admittedly not Hamas. They are, however, pro-Hamas.
According to the report, Albanese took a lobbying trip to Australia and New Zealand in November 2023 without conducting any investigation under her mandate, and outside groups, most likely pro-Hamas lobby organizations in those countries, paid part of the cost. Article 3 of the UN Code of Conduct for Special Procedures forbids mandate-holders from accepting favors, gifts, or payment from non-governmental sources. Albanese and the UN deny the charge, but UN Watch’s allegations implicate the United Nations as much as they implicate her. That is no surprise from an organization with the UN’s record on Hamas, other terrorist groups, and state sponsors of terrorism such as Iran.
The U.S. State Department does not hedge: “Albanese has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West. That bias has been apparent across the span of her career, including recommending that the ICC, without a legitimate basis, issue arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.”
Israel is not her only target. The State Department adds that she has escalated her campaign by writing threatening letters to dozens of entities worldwide, including major American companies in finance, technology, defense, energy, and hospitality, making what the department called “extreme and unfounded accusations” and urging the ICC to investigate and prosecute those companies and their executives.
The International Kangaroo Court Has No Authority Over Americans
The United States never ratified the Rome Statute, and the International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction over American nationals or American corporations. Congress made the point in writing. The American Service-Members’ Protection Act authorizes the president to use all means necessary and appropriate to free American and allied personnel held by or on behalf of the ICC. Critics nicknamed it the Hague Invasion Act, and the nickname is earned. If the court ever arrests an American soldier, the United States reserves the right to go and get him or her. That is how we deal with pirates and kidnappers, and the ICC should take it seriously. If Israel has no equivalent law protecting its own soldiers and officials, it should pass one.
Will Albanese Sue Neuer?
Albanese threatened to sue Neuer for defamation over the “de facto spokesperson” line. She should think harder about that. UN Watch has documented her own accusation that Neuer belongs to what she called “The Pro-Genocide Mafia,” which hands him a ready-made counterclaim. To sue him in an American court she would have to submit to that court’s jurisdiction, counterclaims included, and open her emails and financial records, including the transactions UN Watch alleges, to discovery. Discovery is like turning over a rock. The things underneath do not want to see daylight.
She may face that ordeal anyway. Two American nonprofits, Christian Friends of Israeli Communities and Christians for Israel USA, sued her for defamation, trade libel, and tortious interference in federal court in Colorado in September 2025, after she accused them of complicity in war crimes and called for them to be blacklisted and investigated. Albanese tried to avoid being served. In May 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado ruled that she could not. When UN Watch, the State Department, and the Anti-Defamation League all describe her the way Neuer does, her own defamation claim collapses before it starts.
The case has moved since then. I checked PACER for the latest filings in Christian Friends of Israeli Communities v. Albanese, No. 1:25-cv-02805. The clerk entered default against Albanese on June 8, 2026. The United Nations intervened and argued, among other things, that “Defendant Francesca Paola Albanese is entitled to immunity under the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations” and that the default should therefore be vacated.
The plaintiffs fired back. They alleged that “the UN and Defendant have worked in lockstep to evade the American justice system,” pointing to documents and statements they say show that UN counsel knew about the lawsuit in October 2025 and advised Albanese regarding service.
Albanese already has enough legal trouble without inviting more from Neuer. And the spectacle of the United Nations intervening to protect her does little to improve the UN’s appearance either.
In the End, It Does Not Matter
Give Albanese the benefit of every doubt. Throw out UN Watch’s financial allegations, the State Department’s findings, the statements by the Government of Israel shown below, and every question about who funds her travel. It changes nothing. If she recites Hamas’s line at every opportunity, she is speaking for Hamas whether or not anyone in Gaza ever sends her a word of instruction. That is what “de facto” means, and it is why her threatened lawsuit is empty.
The strongest case against her is the one she makes herself. The Anti-Defamation League has compiled her statements in her own words. One example out of many: in February 2024, after French President Emmanuel Macron called the October 7 massacre “the largest antisemitic massacre of our century,” Albanese replied, “The greatest antisemitic massacre of our century? No, @EmmanuelMacron. The victims of 7/10 were not killed because of their Judaism but in response to Israel’s oppression.” France and Germany both condemned her for antisemitism, the first time either government had done so to a UN rapporteur. Her justification for the mass murder of Jews could have come out of Yahya Sinwar’s mouth, just as Axis Sally’s broadcasts could have come out of Hitler’s, regardless of whether he gave her any direction whatsoever.
An Israeli government review of her conduct goes further. It states that she denied Israel any right of self-defense after the Hamas invasion, said that “all Israelis should be treated as suspects and questioned when they leave the country,” called for a medical embargo on Israel, and described Israel as a society that supports genocide. It also notes that she has appeared at events hosted by Al-Haq and the Palestinian Return Centre, organizations Israel has designated as affiliated with terrorist groups. The Women’s International Zionist Organization adds that she has promoted the antisemitic canard that a Jewish lobby controls the United States.
Then there are her numbers. In this video, speaking for herself, she claims that 680,000 Gazans have been killed, nearly a third of the prewar population, and that 380,000 of them were children under five. Gaza did not contain 380,000 children under five before the war. She is not inflating a real figure. She is inventing one, and she does it with a United Nations mandate behind her. For comparison, here is an Axis Sally broadcast.
In another video, she defends Hamas as an elected body that runs schools and public utilities. Hamas did win the 2006 Palestinian legislative election. It then seized Gaza by force in 2007, and no Palestinian legislative election has been held since. The Nazi Party never won a majority in a free German election either. It won a plurality, Hitler was handed the chancellorship, and the voting stopped soon afterward. As for the schools, Hamas built its own Hitler Youth. Its children’s programming, including the Mickey Mouse knockoff Farfour on Tomorrow’s Pioneers, taught Gazan children that they are the great ones, that a caliphate will rule the world, and that the Jews will be annihilated. This is how Gaza runs the schools Albanese mentions.
Defund the United Nations
The United States crossed $40 trillion in debt in August 2026, and Americans who paid into Social Security their entire working lives are being told the money may not be there. Spending billions of dollars a year on the United Nations under those conditions is indefensible, and Albanese is among the least of that institution’s problems. It hands seats on human rights and women’s rights bodies to China and Iran. Two permanent members of the Security Council, Russia and China, openly violate the Charter’s prohibition on the use of force for territorial gain. Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed its territory, China threatens to invade Taiwan, and China has controlled Tibet since 1950. An organization that cannot enforce its own charter against its own Security Council, and cannot discipline a rapporteur who invents casualty figures and excuses the murder of Jews, has already answered the question of whether it deserves American money.
Bill Levinson is the author of numerous articles and books on manufacturing, quality, and industrial productivity, and a diligent student of history and psychological warfare. He played a role in exposing antisemitic and other hate speech at MoveOn.org in 2006, and questionable activities by the original Million Mom March in 2000.
