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Francesca Albanese explains why Israel's actions in Gaza amount to 'genocide' | James O'Brien
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Jul 11, 2025
James O'Brien interviews Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur, who asserts that Israel’s actions in occupied Palestinian territories meet the legal definition of genocide, supported by UN bodies and experts. Her report highlights the complicity of companies and governments in sustaining this through economic, military, and technological support. 00:00 -Defining genocide in Palestine 07:25 - The role of companies in occupation 13:10 - The impact of recent Gaza events 19:45 - Humanitarian camouflage and incremental violence 26:30 - Public and corporate responsibility 33:05 - Historical context and manipulation Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #jamesobrien #francescaalbanese #gaza #LBC LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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The report Francesca Albanese is called from economy of occupation to economy of genocide
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There's no quotes, there's no quotation marks there. The use of the word genocide is still considered controversial in some quarters
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Unqualified use of the word genocide, but not by you. I wouldn't say that I'm the only one who has concluded that Israel has committed acts of genocide
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And by the way, as a UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, I am mandated by the United Nations to investigate, document the violations of international law committed primarily by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory and report to the United Nations
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So when by the time I wrote the first report, Anatomy of a Genocide in March 2024, already two dozens of special rapporteurs, independent human rights experts of the United Nations, had reached the same conclusion
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There was a genocide unfolding. And by now, I'm definitely not the only one
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actually there is an increasing consensus among genocide scholars, historians, genocide historians, including Israeli historians. But in the United Nations, I'm definitely not
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the only one because there is the Commission of Inquiry on Israel and Palestine appointed
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by the Human Rights Council, which last before summer, no, sorry, in its last report of 2024
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concluded that Israel had committed acts of genocide of imposing measures calculated to prevent birth and it does continue to document genocidal
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genocidal practices and intent and so the Committee on Israeli practices which
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is a political body I mean they are UN ambassadors based in Geneva they have
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concluded that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid and genocide. So, definitely not the only one. I would like people
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to understand what is genocide. This is not a political statement. It's a legal assessment
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based on the fact that if there is an intent to destroy
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a group as such through acts of killing, creation of conditions calculated
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to destroy, or infliction of severe bodily or mental harm or measures calculated to prevent
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birth or subtraction of children, which is the only genocidal act that has not been investigated by
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me or others so far. Even Amnesty International and an increasing number of civil society groups are seeing this genocide
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And frankly, coming from the United Nations, from the Human Rights Council, I register
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that there is an increasing consensus among diplomats that there is no other way to call it a genocide because Israel is
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targeting Palestinians as such. It doesn't matter if they are young or old, if they are doctors or
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if they are nurses or other civil servants, they're all targeted and all killable, all destroyable
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And look at what Gaza has been turned to. These are conditions calculated to destroy
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It is. I wanted to clarify that because to apply the word to Israel's actions in Gaza is one thing to apply it to companies, to the complicity of companies that are household names that most people listening to this now will be clients of or customers of or users of some of the software, some of the technology
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it's um it it it's designed the report to land with individuals as much as it is with institutions
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so that people will will question i mean are you accusing customers of complicity look um first of
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all again as a as a special rapporteur i have to investigate and state facts and their qualification
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under international law i'm not supposed to please i'm not supposed to accuse them but i'm
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sharing my findings and I'm not accused any anyone in particular. I've exposed that there is
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there has been for a long time, for decades, an economy of
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occupation, meaning private actors enabling or driving or enmeshed with what Israel has
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made in what remains of Palestine, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which means displacing the Palestinians
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and replacing them. So displacing Palestinians and replacing them with settlers, with colonies
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with companies producing goods and services and or developing a tourism industry
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in the occupied land. This is unlawful. It's unlawful under international humanitarian law
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it's unlawful under human rights law, it's unlawful under the UN Charter
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So I could have written this report already years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, because the economy of occupation has
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been established. And, for example, arms manufacturers or companies producing bulldozers and other machinery used
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to destroy and build infrastructure, water and electricity grids or rails and roads
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These have profited from an unlawful endeavor. However, however, in the last 20 months, instead of pulling out in the face of legal developments like genocide proceedings before the ICJ, the ICJ declaring the occupation, other than by name, an act of aggression, enabling racial segregation and apartheid, instead of pulling out, they have maintained their commitment and their engagement
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And many of them with knowledge, intent and purpose have provided the means for this economy to turn genocidal
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genocidal, what I mean. For example, arms manufacturers have continued to provide weapons
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intelligence, technology for Israel to make its weaponry more and more sophisticated and
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lethal while costing less and less in terms of risk and life for the Israeli army
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Think of the unmanned technology, military technology that has been deployed in Gaza
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Think of the F-35 flying in beast mode. Think of the unmanned technology of the quad cops used to kill people in Gaza or to maim people in Gaza, especially children
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Think of the Volvo and Hyundai machinery that has already, and these companies have been put on notice for decades, that they were part of an unlawful endeavor because they've been used by Israel to uproot Palestinian orchards and trees or to destroy, to demolish Palestinian homes in the West Bank
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Well, they've been now used in Gaza to pulverize homes, the remnants of homes and buildings
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It's an extension of impunity from government to commerce. I might be misreading you slightly
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Are you surprised that the recent events in Gaza haven't focused the minds or the energies of the companies that you report on more
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Because as you say, it's been going on for decades, but the recent events in Gaza haven't acted as any sort of catalyst to change
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Yeah, I am reading you right. No, you're reading me right. I mean, I've been shocked
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Look, I've engaged in very troubling investigations since especially since I became a special rapporteur
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I've operated in other conflict areas, conflict scenarios. this is something completely different what I've seen as a special rapporteur in the past three
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years. But this investigation has been particularly painful because, you know, there are human beings
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making decisions. For example, when the CEO of Palantir is asked in a public meeting
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but why are you providing Israel with this technology? You know that this is used to kill
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Palestinians, my family has been killed like that. And you are killing, you're killing
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Palestinians. And he says, yes, most probably, most probably terrorists. Now, this statement
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has been made after months and months of genocidal assault, when genocidal, the genocidal proceedings
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were ongoing, where criminal proceedings against Israeli leaders were ongoing. And so this
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This is why I say these men, these men has assumed ideologically that Israel was killing
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terrorists when the when the statistics were already reporting and had been reporting from
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the beginning that 70% of the victims were women and children. So who are the terrorists that the CEO of Palantir thinks Israel was killing
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How does it justify the killing of 70% of the Gaza victims as being women and children
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I don't know if this is unduly speculative when you talk about him adopting an ideology or believing an ideology
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I mean, in commercial terms, they don't have to, do they? They can simply deploy the same cover that Israel has deployed
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So Israel's rationale, even with 180,000 Palestinians now killed or injured, Netanyahu's rationale remains
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oh no, we take enormous pains not to harm civilians. We are going after terrorists, which many people would say
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you can see from space that that's not true. But if there are huge sums of money to be made in Gaza and the West Bank
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then that provides you with the camouflage that you need to keep doing business
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Absolutely. Camouflage is the term that I've used in my Anatomy of a Genocide report
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which is a report that just provided an x-ray of what Israel had been done militarily in Gaza for five months
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in Gaza and in Gaza alone. And I said, I warned in the international community in March 2024, if this operation goes unpunished, Israel will have been allowed to commit humanitarian camouflage, meaning to capsize, to distort categories of international humanitarian law, like evacuation order to justify forced displacement of millions of people, safe zones that have been turned into trap zones or death traps, in fact
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or killing civilians, then calling them collateral damage or human shields. This is this is humanitarian camouflage
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And six months later, Israel has used the same script to justify an assault on Lebanese civilians
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meaning starting military operations without any precautions, distinctions or any protection of the civilian populations
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And this is becoming the new normal. James, it's very disconcerting. And it's very incremental. I don't know if you came across this when you were studying at SOAS, but we have a figure of speech boiling a frog. So you turn the temperature up so slowly that the frog doesn't realize until it's too late that it's died. And that seems to me to be what we've been watching for the last nearly two years is it's happened incrementally
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So there's no point at which the thing you thought might happen would have happened, at which point companies throw their arms up in the air and say, we want nothing more to do with this
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Customers are not receiving the information they need to know what they are by association helping to support or aiding the complicity
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There's no real pivot point. Yeah. I didn't know this expression of the frog in a boiling water
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It's not a very nice one. No, but it's quite vivid and graphic
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And I don't think that we are watching. We are living through this. This is happening to us. Because again, look, I mean, I keep on engaging also with people in Italy, but I don't think it would be that different from the British in this, the British people in this country
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we are facing our governments escaping engagement with the public there are masses of people
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taking the streets and challenges the government we have people including in companies
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not wanting this anymore people in Microsoft and in Google working for these companies have been the first
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to raise the alarm about what was happening so again there is a push from within the system to change it There have been people taking the street challenging both the UK and Italian government for their continuous
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supplying weapons and maintaining trade agreements with the state of Israel. However
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we also keep on seeing a rush to rearm 5% of the domestic expenditure going into weaponry
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while people are needing and asking and are suffering from the cuts in education and health and other essential services
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So this is where I think we are the frog in the boiling water. And something that may help people appreciate the speed with which it's happening
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I learned from your report, which is the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's performance since this began
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yeah i i don't want anybody to become inured to the statistics of carnage of death but those
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numbers are familiar to people even if even if they hopefully remain shocking i'm not sure they
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do but the idea that the tel aviv stock exchange has risen by 179 since the assaults upon gaza began
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and that yeah proves your point perfectly i think yeah and i have to say this is something that i
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have realized very recently when really doing the maths because I didn't need that. I didn't need
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that to know that what companies have been doing is wrong because again I'm not an economist. I'm
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just looking at facts from a legal perspective and companies have a responsibility not to engage
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not to be directly linked, not to enable, not to facilitate violations of human rights
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all the more when they amount to depriving people of their right of self-determination
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And here you have companies, but even the Pension Fund of Norway
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a country which is seen as pro-Palestine, and I hated this terminology, pro-Palestine or pro-Israel
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because this is not a football match, for God's sake. This is people's life. And if anyone thinks that the Israelis are thriving in this moment, look at the statistics of how many young Israelis are committing suicide for what they have been doing in the Gaza Strip
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This is a breaking point for the Israeli society as well. And when you think that the Norwegian pension funds invest 121 billions in 45 companies that have investigated, which are a small number, because, again, my report is not that contains a list of companies
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It's not a duplicate of the database that the UN maintains. It's just the exposure of a system where the companies I mentioned are illustrative across the spectrums
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from arms manufacturers to even charities and, again, pension funds and universities, banks
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Everyone has been lending legitimacy and normalising the abnormal. And even the Norwegian pension fund cannot divest from this unlawful endeavour
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This is the situation we live in today, and it must change and will not change without people knowing
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Because if Palestine were a crime scene, it would hold the fingerprints of all of us
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And this is why it's not about everyone is now can be brought before a court
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No, but everyone has the power, for example, as workers, as buyers, as shareholders, has the power to correct and to make this process less engaged in criminal activities
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I understand. And I appreciate you don't provide definitive lists in the report, just illustrative examples, some of which people would expect, for example, Lockheed Martin, Elbit Systems, III, and you've mentioned Palantir
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But other companies, people perhaps wouldn't expect to see Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Airbnb, Booking.com, Chevron, BP, Caterpillar and Volvo
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I mean, to expect the public to take some of these companies out of their lives would be like asking them to take the eggs out of a baked cake
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Yeah. Yeah. No, but this is why I mean, this is like when if you are someone concerned for the environment, you know that in the society and in the, let me say, in the consumerist society we live in, you cannot get rid of plastic
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I mean, you can get as close to zero waste as possible while you will still produce waste. And still, the point here is to make the change you can in your life based on who you are. And if you are, you know, there are, I've been engaging with bankers and asset managers. I didn't even know what these people were doing until four or five months ago
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And there are there are there is an increasing number of people reaching out to me. I mean, just a couple of days ago, I had a meeting with bankers and asset managers. I mean, both public and private in in Switzerland and in other places. And they're asking for guidance. They they really would like to do the right thing. And they don't know how because the system, the system itself has prevented them from knowing the complexity
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So for many people, Palestine is this debate about the two state solution
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Is this two people in bracket not getting along and fighting between among each other
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It's not that Israel has maintained an unlawful occupation, which has become a vehicle to or has been used as a vehicle to take Palestinian land and resources
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And this is structural violence that, of course, has produced violence in return
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And I know, I know that the 7th of October has been extremely violent. Crimes have been committed. But what has been, again, never a form of injustice justifies other injustices. And this applies to the Palestinians on October 7th for all what they've suffered and the Israelis since
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However an unlawful act of a people who tries to I mean who strives for their self cannot be compared to an unlawful act of an occupation which is unlawful in and of itself
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And must withdraw with its troops and its settlements and its businesses and its profits
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We don't have much time, but I'm interested in the parameters of public morality are not set by businesses, are they
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They're set by governments or they're set by organizations, ideally like the United Nations or the International Criminal Court
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Well, by lawyers. I'm not an expert on morality, but the parameters of legality
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Where law and morality meet. Ethics. Yes. And if Israel's history of completely ignoring international law is now essentially proved contagious to commerce
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I'm glad you said that because I think this is the case
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it's more of a question than a statement I think it's pretty correct
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but I don't think that it's really Israel look what I've realised through these three years
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is that somewhat Israel is a byproduct of an unhealed trauma and the manipulation of interests connected to this
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because one thing is sure. And I say that as a European
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who's aware of what we have done for centuries to the Jewish people
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After the Holocaust, and it's true that there was a settler colonial project that had
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started toward Palestine, helped by the Brits. I mean, the Zionist project was a settler colonial
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project. But however, the Jewish people who survived the Holocaust had really
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no place where to go. However, what has been what has happened over time is that their fear and their trauma has been manipulated and and there has been an active indoctrination of the Israelis
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I do hear I do see these Israeli young people who are completely confused that they know that what they are doing in Gaza is wrong
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And at the same time, they cannot make sense of betraying. They cannot envisage the possibility of betraying the IDF
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because the IDF is who they are. They don't want to be traitors. And this is what has shaped their morality
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And so there is so much, so much manipulation and instrumentalization from Western countries of Israel
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And cognitive dissonance as well. You describe cognitive dissonance. Yeah, but Western countries, the United States
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first and foremost and I wouldn't even say say the United States but there is an
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ideological component and it's Christian Zionist and other I mean there is
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always richness of people who indulge in their races who have recognized
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themselves as close to I mean have recognized an affinity with this Israeli
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government this needs these us produced a reality where ethics has gone lost
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And the path of law has also gone lost. We need to push back on this lawlessness, James. Now it's the turning point. Palestine can be the defining moment in history where we get to awakening and we change course
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Because if we continue to persist in dismantling international law, in dismantling human rights, both at domestic level and internationally, we will all have something to lose in this. I'm not just saying this for the Palestinians
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This won't be the last time we see it. We see the consequences of it if it is not arrested now, if it isn't stopped now. Other countries will display similar contempt, expecting similar levels of impunity
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Final question then. How hopeful are you? A little bit
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No, look, I have the optimism of the will and the pessimism of the reason, as Antonio Gramsci would say
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In the sense, I realize that the situation is really dark and grim, but also I see how many positive elements are out there
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the young people who have taken what they've taken they've confronted their universities
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and they've faced university cracking down on them with the police look at what's happening
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in Germany in this country it's pretty depressing to see a country like the UK going after journalists
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and peace activists Holocaust survivors priests and women in their 80s and arresting them for
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standing against genocide, holding people on the count of counterterrorism organizations, journalists and individuals alike. This is a very dangerous moment for the UK, but not different
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than what is happening in my country. So the point what is happening as well is that there is a push
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back from civil society. I don't know in the UK, but in my I do see that people keep on taking the
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street and this is phenomenal in this country. Civil society is so inspirational. But I also see
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in my country, something that has never happened, is the lawyers getting together
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constitutional lawyers taking on the government, taking the government to court for violating the constitution
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because of, they say, your political activity, your decision-making is not that of a king
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You operate in a constitutional system. You are our civil servants. You are mandated by us, the people
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And this is something that echoes across the world. Look at the Global South
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Look at the Hague group, for example. These member states getting together
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and now convening a big meeting in Bogota against the huge pressure that the US is using
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against everyone, threatening them that attending would result in further measures and retaliation
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But this is the time to stand united against this mafia-style techniques
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because coming from the south of Italy, I can tell you, there is only silence and cowardice and fear
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that let this mafia-style techniques win over the people. And we need to resist this
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Francesca Albanese, thank you. Thank you
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