Acting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Dorothy Shea went completely ballistic in response to the devastating June 30 report authored by Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, who presented it publicly to the 59th Session of the UN Human Rights Council on July 3 in Geneva (see separate slug). In a ranting July 1 letter to UN Secretary General António Guterres, Shea complained that Guterres hadn’t responded to her previous complaints about Albanese, whom she accuses of having engaged “in years of virulent anti-Semitism and support for terrorism, conduct which renders her unfit to serve as Special Rapporteur and must be condemned.” Shea demands that Guterres call for “her immediate removal.”
What most incensed Shea is that Albanese had the nerve to attack some “of the most prominent” U.S. companies, which she claimed had received “threatening letters” from the Special Rapporteur accusing them of wrongdoing and “potential criminal liability.” This, Shea charged, is “political and economic warfare against the American and worldwide economy.” These companies “contribute to and help strengthen national security, economic prosperity and human welfare across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.” She dismissed as “false and offensive,” Albanese’s charge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, when it is really “fighting a legitimate war of self-defense in which it is attacking military targets” not human beings.
