United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese shares stories of the
immense suffering in Palestine and laments the gutting of international law in
her new book, “When the World Sleeps”.͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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What Happens 'When the World Sleeps' (w/ Francesca Albanese) | The Chris Hedges
Report
United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese shares stories of the
immense suffering in Palestine and laments the gutting of international law in
her new book, “When the World Sleeps”.
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| Chris Hedges |
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| Jul 8 |
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Transcript
Chris Hedges: Francesca Albanese, the special rapporteur on the Occupied
Palestinian Territories comprising the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, is
one of the singular most courageous voices against the ongoing genocide in Gaza
and the savage repression meted out to Palestinians in the West Bank. Her
detailed UN reports have been fearless examinations of the machinery of
apartheid and genocide and Israel’s disregard for international humanitarian
law. She has been viciously attacked. The Trump administration ordered the U.S.
Department of Treasury to classify her as a “specially designated national”,
cutting her off from the global financial system and blocking any U.S. citizen
and corporation from engaging with her. All of her U.S. assets have been
frozen. She is unable to carry out routine financial transactions. She has paid
for her courage and her honesty.
Her book, “When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words, and Wounds of Palestine”
lifts up the voices of Palestinians, many of whom she knows, and others in ten
short chapters to expose the human cost of Israel’s occupation and mass
slaughter. She draws from her own experience living in Palestine, weaving her
chapters around individuals who give a human face to the suffering. These
include Malak Mattar, an artist who fled Gaza to Egypt, and who suffers
tremendous guilt for those she left behind, as well as Eyal Weizman, who opened
her eyes to Israel’s vertical politics, the three dimensional use of physical
space employed by Israel to control airspace and subsoil, as well as horizontal
borders. She excoriates the Western press, the world’s diplomats, for creating
a false sense of equivalency in the conflict as if Palestinians stand on equal
footing with their occupiers. Palestinians do not have an Air Force, heavy
weapons, mechanized units and navy, or billions in military aid from the United
States and Israel’s European allies. It cannot structurally subordinate
Israelis’ control, their movement and access to land, air and water, or the
flow of goods essential to maintain a minimum quality of life.
“To use words like war and conflict masks the truth. It presents a false
version of reality. Israel’s apartheid system and genocide cannot be stopped
until it is acknowledged and understood,” she writes. This requires not only
knowledge but empathy. She fortunately is endowed with both. Joining me to
discuss her new book, “While the World Sleeps,” is Francesca Albanese.
Francesca, I want to begin with the case of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. He has been
jailed by the Israelis for eighteen months since the 27th of December 2024. He
was the head of the hospital in Gaza. And there’s very disturbing news from his
attorney, Nasser Odeh. He’s been moved to this underground prison, Rakefet,
that used to be closed and Ben Gvir has reopened. Has no light. It’s a severe
detention facility. and when Dr. Abu Safiya arrived for the attorney’s visit,
he was handcuffed, shackled, in leg irons, accompanied by masked prison guards,
and his attorney saw fresh and severe bruises on his body, especially on his
head, around his eyes, ears and neck. And the lawyers said it was hard to
recognize him.
He struggled to breathe. He struggled to speak. He appeared extremely weak. He
was terrified. He was in severe distress. He couldn’t express himself for fear,
he said, of retaliation. And he told his lawyer that after his hearing took
place on June 10th, 2026, regarding the appeal to the Supreme Court against the
extension of his incarceration order, four or five prison guards entered his
cell, beat him on all parts of his body with a hammer and batons. And he’s
basically suffered daily violence, lost consciousness several times and, as you
write in the book, this isn’t the first time that doctors have died within
Israeli prisons. You had Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, a surgeon and head of orthopedics
at Al Shifa. This was after severe torture, perhaps sexual torture. You had Dr.
Iyad Rantisi, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital’s maternity unit.
I just want to speak to this kind of very urgent case. His lawyer, Physicians
for Human Rights, Amnesty International and others are at this point saying his
life is in danger. And I think he actually told his lawyer in court that this
would be the last time, that he was finished, I think, or something like this.
Francesca Albanese: Thank you very much, Chris, for having me. The situation of
Dr. Abu Safiyah is extremely, extremely serious, extremely painful. He told his
lawyer that he doesn’t think he will survive. Imagine how painful it is for a
man who’s been unlawfully detained, he’s held without charges, without trial,
severely beaten with signs of torture, as you said. I don’t need to repeat. But
I got this message from his family yesterday. They were imploring me to do
something for their beloved one. And the sense of powerlessness is incredible.
So, there are three dimensions here. One is the fact that he’s a very
well-respected doctor who’s been injured himself, who has survived the loss of
one of his children. His child was killed during this genocide. And this,
notwithstanding, he went back to work and he stayed there. He stayed in a
hospital under siege. He said, “I cannot leave my patients behind.” He had to
surrender to the Israeli army as a way not to have the hospital raided. In any
case, the patients were displaced anyway. And so, what is done to the man is
incredible.
Again, he’s been held for 18 months now and there is no charge, just proof,
visible evidence of severe abuses. He’s lost half of his weight. He’s
emaciated. He has visible signs of bruises. He looks terrified and he’s a
doctor. This is part and parcel of a continuous relentless attack that Israel
has conducted against medical personnel, medical facilities that have been
reduced to nothing, which is also the way to ensure that whatever wound,
whatever disease, whatever illness that the Palestinians trapped in the Gaza
nightmare have, they won’t be able to be cured.
The second aspect, it’s torture, heavily documented. I’ve reported with another
special rapporteur who received a notice already in January 2024, the Special
Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Reem Alsalem, severe violence, abuse and
rape against female inmates. So, we reported it and after there have been
denunciations from Piccati, Physician for Human Rights, B’Tselem, multiple
reports denouncing torture and the network of torture centers that Israeli
prisons had turned into. Then the Committee Against Torture has documented the
recourse to torture as a state policy later in 2025. I have documented torture
after the commission on Israel and Palestine also report their torture as an
act of genocide.
There is no doubt whatsoever that torture exists and in the face of this, and
this is the third element, what is shocking is the sense of impunity that
Israel continues to enjoy. Because, you know, it’s absolutely normal that there
was a huge campaign to bring the Israeli hostages home. I just wonder why there
is a selective empathy and there is no campaign to bring the Palestinian
hostages, as Dr. Abu Safiya home. And there are 10,000 people detained by
Israel, who maintains an unlawful occupation. So, this speaks to the moral
decay of global leadership, and also many of us enjoying the summer
indifferently.
Chris Hedges: So, this is from your book: “The torture and killing of nearly a
thousand health workers is a key component of the destruction of the healthcare
system.” You’re quoting one of the people you write about, Hassan, in the book.
The Al Shifa hospital can rebuild in a couple of years. It took twelve years to
train a doctor. He’s talking about Dr. Adnan Albursh, who was probably tortured
to death. Considering the main medical specialists that Gaza urgently needs, it
can be said that of the five pathologists present before October seventh, only
two are still alive. In Gaza, there are no qualified doctors to perform
emergency surgery. And then you talk about how a healthcare worker in Gaza is
two and a half times more likely than any other individual to be killed. I just
want to stay on that. Doesn’t Israel hold eighteen Palestinian surgeons? That
number may fluctuate or change, but I think it’s about that. I just want to
talk about the savagery directed at medical workers who don’t carry weapons,
who, under international law, under the Geneva Convention, are completely
exempt from being treated as combatants.
Francesca Albanese: Look, Israel has blurred the distinction between civilians
and combatants, times and times again, during its occupation. It’s nearly 60
years long occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. What it has
done though, in the last 1,005, 1,007 days, is humanitarian camouflage. Israel
has used the categories of international humanitarian law and capsized them.
So, in order to have a more convincing narrative at the international level and
reduce criticism, it has accused everyone, everyone in Gaza to be Hamas, a
terrorist, a terrorist accomplice. And two doctors were ‘protecting Hamas’.
Hospitals were allegedly Hamas headquarters. I mean you might remember and the
audience might remember the video that was shared simulating the presence of a
Hamas headquarters built underground under the Al-Shifa hospital was a lie. You
might remember the Israeli generals pointing to the Hamas schedule of attacks,
which was a medical shift in fact, just because it was written in Arabic, so it
was easy to convince the audience that this was a Hamas planning found in a
hospital. So, this is how Israel has convinced ignorant people or naturally
predisposed to bias people that every doctor could be a potential terrorist,
henceforth deserving to be punished, arrested, detained or killed, tortured,
whatever. But so, there is no innocent civilian as many Israeli leaders have
said.
And therefore, everyone was to be considered guilty until proven innocent. This
has always been the norm. But they’ve endured a treatment which includes
extrajudicial killing, torture and again, this is the blowing of the
international humanitarian legal system, which is premised upon distinguishing
between civilians and combatants, civilian objects and military personnel. So
yes, you’re right when you say, but aren’t medical personnel, medical workers
and hospitals protected under international humanitarian law? Surely so and for
two reasons, both as civilians and second, because they serve an incredibly
important and a vital function in a situation of hostilities, helping continue
to provide medical care. But this is exactly why Israel has targeted the
medical system. This is why Israel has killed and tortured, I mean, over a
thousand medical personnel in order to make sure that the people in Gaza have
no redress, no medical support.
This is part and parcel of the genocide. What I find, however, incredibly
disturbing is the fact that how, and again, now I’m investigating as I speak,
the role of the media. There was a video that I shared from BBC speaking of Dr.
Abu Safiya yesterday. It was a two minute, three minute video. And most of it,
instead of talking about the torture, how visibly abused the doctor appears,
the fact that he has been detained without charge for 18 months and the fact
that he reports his fear of being killed, of having been taken in these dark
places, in this dungeon in order to be killed, the BBC journalist goes on and
on and on saying, “I’ve been casting doubt about him as an Hamas acolyte.” This
is the point. Western audiences do not even have the opportunity to understand
what’s happening because legacy media, instead of scrutinizing, has amplified
the Israeli narrative. This is not journalism. This is complicity, complicity
with genocidal propaganda.
Chris Hedges: Which has been true from the beginning. Israel started attacking
hospitals and at once denying that they were responsible, although we now know
from the genocide that this was Israeli policy from the beginning to eradicate
the health care system, and the press dutifully reported these lies. We should
also be clear that the only journalists on the ground in Gaza were Palestinian,
over two hundred and fifty of whom have been killed, large numbers, perhaps
most, in targeted assassinations. So, I mean you call your book, “While the
World Sleeps.” Unfortunately much of the world, certainly the Western world,
and including the media, they didn’t sleep at all. They were completely
complicit.
Francesca Albanese: Yeah, absolutely. I think that like in any genocide, and I
truly encourage people who feel so compassionate with Israel because of the
Holocaust, I really encourage people to go and read for real what the Holocaust
was and how Jewish people were treated before the Holocaust and even after the
Holocaust because there was, I mean, since the 60s, there has been such a
manipulation of the memory of the Holocaust to serve the Zionist agenda. But
the Jewish people have suffered transnational denigration from the media of the
time as well. And this is so similar in a way to what’s happening to the
Palestinians with the added element that in 2026, we have a legal framework
which should have prevented certain phenomena of decay and moral collapse in
light of what has happened in the past. So, we like to claim - we, I say we in
the so-called West. But definitely, the media has amplified the Israeli
narrative and contributed to portray the Palestinians as part of the problem to
be eradicated.
The word sleep is part of indifference, part of lack of knowledge, but even
those who know, even those who see, seem to be paralyzed and they seem not to
understand that this moment of awakening requires action, requires change,
change in every sphere of life. We cannot be the same in the time of genocide.
This is the only thing that I keep on repeating over and over, that there is
hope for a change. And we will stop this genocide the moment even that those
who are awakened will be able to connect that awakening to a sense of action
and responsibility.
Chris Hedges: Well, you write in the book, I think correctly, that the genocide
in Gaza has kind of exposed a new and very frightening world order, one that
has utter disregard for the rule of law. You write, “The crisis in Gaza is
symptom of a global crisis. I think more and more often that all of this, while
it is bound to instill fear, must give us courage. The system that represses
the Palestinians, a well-established alliance between Israel and in all the
other states whose elites guarantee it the impunity it has always enjoyed, is
the same one to which we belong. It is the system that decides for us on issues
that are crucial to our lives without listening to us and representing us. It
is the system that transforms secure jobs into part-time and temporary work,
rights into privileges that alienates us from each other.
making us all more fragile and insecure, that considers solidarity a subversive
act and empathy a form of mental and social dysfunction.” You actually talk
about for you, Palestine was the red pill in the matrix. Talk about that or
place Palestine and the genocide in that global context.
Francesca Albanese: Yeah, I think those who have read the book, and then I’d
like also to say a few words about how difficult it’s been to have this book
made available to the US readership, because there has been such pressure from
pro-Israel support groups against it. You guess why. Yeah, for me, Palestine
has been a revealer. It’s not that all of a sudden, we woke up in a world that
is dominated by the US, especially the world we are part of politically,
militarily, strategically, the US is the dominant character here. And Israel is
a sort of extension of it in the Middle East. It’s an extension of Western
power and Western supremacy. I know that the Israelis do not like it, but I do
also believe that they do not realize how instrumentalized they are because of
interests that are above all of us. We tend to think in terms of states as the
ultimate decision makers. We think of it in democracies. We think of it in
dictatorships. But, in fact, I don’t think that states are the decision makers.
States today, more than before, more than a few decades ago, respond to certain
interests, economic, military and financial interests that are connected to the
main power holders in this world. I mean, and there are numbers. What I’m
saying may sound like conspiracy theories to people who might not know enough
about the inequality of the world. The Thomas Piketty Institute in its most
recent inequality report mentions this data, which I found shocking,
staggering, the fact that half of the world population retains altogether one
third of the wealth which is retained by 50,000 people in the world. I repeat,
50,000 people in the world retain three times the wealth retained by half of
the world population. How is it possible? Who are these? Clearly, they are not
just individuals like you and I. They retain pockets of power. And it’s those
connected to the extractive industry for the control of natural resources,
those connected to securing the use of force, military power and surveillance,
and those connected to financial transactions, corporations and banks and
pension funds. So, these are the main powers with certain corporations like
pharmaceuticals more influential than others, or those related to tourism for
example. However, this is the brain power of those 50,000 people.
And today there is also Big Tech. They are above the law. I mean, when you try
to sue corporations, you are inundated with problems, with issues, with more
legal issues, with more litigation. And so, it’s impossible to face this.
Palestine has revealed this world order. Palestine has been the epicenter of it
because - this is the reason why I was sanctioned for that report, “From
Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide” that we discussed earlier last
year, Chris. But again, explaining to the world that while the economy of many
Israeli families and individuals was collapsing, the stock exchange of Tel Aviv
was rising, skyrocketing, doubling, tripling its value, has been a revealer.
So, there was someone profiting from the genocide and these are Palantir and
the likes, these are Lockheed Martin and the likes, the military industry, not
just Israeli and US, but all connected. And because we are all connected, this
is the second and last part of the story, we are part of it. We are part of it
as consumers. We are part of it as producers, because you know how many trade
unionists or workers I’ve been speaking with over the past two years. You know
how many consumers I’ve been speaking to and they say the same, “You know how
difficult it is to get out of this market. You know that we would like not to
work for this company, which is for example connected in Italy to the military
industry like Leonardo,” but they’re scared of losing their job. They realize
that their fragility is part of the system because they have to choose between
producing weapons that are used to kill children and not working at all. But
this means that we are part of or we are seeing pockets of populations who are
just sacrificial. They are sacrificial entities, sacrificial beings and
probably we can change this order. This is the other thing that Palestine is
telling us. Through boycotting, divesting, we can break the ties of the system
and through sanctions we can curtail the complicity with Israel. But this
requires individual commitment.
Chris Hedges: And I should say I was in Italy with you last November joining
the dock workers, who have refused to load weapons onto Israeli ships. I think
both you and I feel that is where all of our energy should go, that kind of
blockage of the system. People can watch an hour documentary on it called
“Resistance 101”.
You write in the book that when you were at the School of Oriental and African
Studies you discovered two fundamental things. The first was that Palestine
could and should be discussed as a legal issue of protracted institutional and
systematic illegality, not simply as a political issue with opposing claims.”
The second thing you said you discovered was “the encounter with law firms
influenced by critical race theory, a way of understanding law in a critical
and decolonial key, framing it in the historical evolution not necessarily
written by the victors, but observed from the perspective of the people who,
until recent times, have been subjected to international law as it has been
formulated above all by Western countries.” I do want to talk about the
sanctions against your book, but just address those two points if you could
first.
Francesca Albanese: Absolutely. And even here I think that Palestine epitomizes
what happens, let’s say, to the most disadvantaged part of the world, the
former colonies, people whose indigeneity has been experienced as a toll,
almost as a crime in the eyes of the colonizer. Palestine are among them. And
Palestine have always been projected as potential savages in the Western media,
for example. When I think of western media, they’re always the ones deemed
barbaric or according to violence. I mean, the discourse concerning Arab
people, Muslim people, is so vicious, violent, that I say, “How do we not
connect the dots and understand that this is the way we were talking about the
Jewish people 100 years ago?” And probably less, because there is still
antisemitism and we should talk of the real antisemitism instead of apartheid
Israel’s paranoia and manipulation of what antisemitism means. But however, I
think that for a long time, Palestinians have been, even by those
well-intended, proposed, presented as a humanitarian issue to be managed
instead of a critical political issue, to be resolved in line with
international law. For example, now the International Court of Justice, so
there is an international tribunal, which has pronounced itself on the fact
that the occupation is unlawful. Henceforth, it is to be dismantled totally and
unconditionally. The deadline was September 2025. No one is talking about that,
but this is why I say that international law already offers a roadmap, a way
out of this quagmire. And instead, the situation continues to be treated as if
it was a humanitarian emergency after an earthquake or after a flood.
I think that this is part of the problem, which is also intimate to what has
gone wrong within the United Nations. However, international law has been used
often as part of the problem because I remember 15 years ago, it was
unthinkable to look at the occupation as a whole illegal endeavor. Even those
who were progressive back then used to refer to the legality of the occupation
because of Israel’s occupation violating such and such provision of
international humanitarian law, for example, abusing the detainees or
translating into abusive practice leading to home demolitions, punitive home
demolitions. So, it was criticized because of its excesses, but not
ontologically, not in its entirety, which today is normal. And I think it’s
because there has been finally a shift, I hope as a special rapporteur to have
helped that effort, but there has been a shift from addressing the symptom type
of approach to looking at the overall phenomenon of the legality of the
occupation. Critical studies have played an enormous role and critical studies
are primarily animated by scholars from the global majority, from South Africa,
from Kenya, from Nigeria, from Palestine, from indigenous scholars themselves,
from Australia or Canada and the United States or Asia. And this is beautiful.
I think that this has helped us progress as lawyers. But of course, of course,
there is still a lot of patronizing attitude and chauvinism in legal studies as
in many other disciplines.
Chris Hedges: So, let’s talk about what’s happened to the book. But let’s begin
with the broader sanctions. You were sanctioned, as I mentioned in the
introduction. You won a court case that lifted those sanctions, and then the
Trump administration turned around and reimposed them. And, of course, that has
- I mean you can talk about that process - that has affected your ability to
even publish and disseminate this book.
Francesca Albanese: In a way, yes, absolutely because the sanctions… I mean, I
would like people to spend a moment to reflect upon what freedom of expression
means. Because here we are outside the physiology of a democratic debate. The
moment you prevent someone you do not agree with to speak, this is no longer a
liberal space. You and I do not have to agree. People can disagree with me, but
I will always protect the right of those who think differently from me to speak
because this is the essence of a democratic space. This is the essence of
protection of freedom of expression. All the more, I am protected as a UN
person who’s voluntarily, I serve on a pro bono basis just for those who are
wondering, the United Nations and the protected person under the Convention on
Privileges and Immunities. So, I shouldn’t face consequences for words spoken,
actions taken in the execution of my mandate. Instead, I’ve been sanctioned at
very severe instruments taken normally against drug dealers or dictators in the
US, and this time to sanction me, the judges and prosecutors of the
International Criminal Court who have investigated Israel’s crimes and
Palestinian human rights organizations who have provided evidence for those
trials. So, you see, there is also such an attempt to tamper with evidence and
strangle the international justice system that the US helped to create with the
Nuremberg trial and after the Nuremberg trial. So, it’s vicious. And because of
it, people in the US cannot entertain financial interactions with me of any
nature, including a glass of wate is the commission of a felony, which means up
to 20 years in jail and up to $1,000 in fines for those who are caught
providing an economic advantage to me.
So, even my publisher, Other Press, has faced huge pressure. They had to hire a
lawyer in order to find a way to publish the book because Judith Gurewich, who
really liked the book, and she was the first one. Other Press has been the
first one to offer to translate the book, which is now available in 60
countries and in 20 languages. But the English one should have been the first
to come out, in the US, in Australia and in the UK. But apart from the longer
process of publishing in the US, there has been a huge opposition in order not
to have my book published and distributed. So, I said, “Look, I don’t care. I
don’t need to claim the copyright of this as I’m sanctioned. I don’t want the
publisher to go in trouble. I want people to read this book.” So, we found a
way for me to keep on sort of working pro bono even as a writer and I said, “It
doesn’t matter. I still want the book to be to be read.” And this was the only
agreement we could find to have “When the World Sleeps” available on US
bookstores.
One thing is that because the United Nations and no other states, certainly not
Italy, found the courage to stand before the International Court of Justice
bringing a case against the US for violation of privileges and immunities of a
UN person. My 13-year-old daughter and my husband who works for a US-based
organization, who are clearly directly impacted by the fact that my assets in
the US. We own a small apartment in the US where my daughter was born. It’s
been taken. My bank account was shut down and I’ve not been able to open a bank
account anywhere else. So, I cannot be paid. I cannot be reimbursed even for
medical expenses. And even my private insurance doesn’t reimburse me anymore.
You know, it’s a very heavy situation and because it affects my entire family,
they recur to justice. So, because the United Nations didn’t even give me the
possibility to defend myself in court, my 13 year old daughter brought to
court, President Trump and Secretary of State Rubio and others involved in the
sanction. The first instance, a federal judge in the First District Court in
Washington DC recognized the fact that the proceeding appeared not to be right,
to have persecuted me just for exercising freedom of expression and so proposed
to suspend the sanctions. And then because of the system and because of the
fact that there are judges appointed by the executive, there was an appeal
against the suspension of the order of the sanctions. And now, I need to wait
until the judge pronounces itself on the merit. So, I’m still sanctioned by the
US.
Chris Hedges: Let’s talk a little bit about Gaza. In the book you write about,
“President Trump has repeatedly intimidated anyone who dares to touch Israel,
saying that they will have to, ‘deal with us,’ a threatening language
unbefitting of politics, as we have known it until now, but which is entirely
consistent with the substance of what Trump himself said when he declared,
‘Everyone I’ve spoken to likes the idea that the United States owns that piece
of land, referring to the Gaza Strip.’” In this sentence you write, “There is
all the violence of an unbridled power that can achieve everything through
force, because like Caligula of the twenty first century, he considers himself
above the law. In fact, he doesn’t even know the law.” I want to talk about his
proposal for Gaza and, of course, Hamas has said that they would step aside for
a technocratic government. I don’t think that any appeasement that Hamas makes
is going to placate Netanyahu, but let’s address that.
Francesca Albanese: Yeah, first of all, I think that you are the first
interviewer who picks up on the fact that I define Trump as the Caligula of our
time, but it’s real. I mean, you don’t need to be an expert on Roman history to
understand what Caligula’s features were and the absolute arbitrary power
unconstrained by the law, the extreme narcissism and self-aggrandizement, the
corrupt preciousness and erratic nature of power, the humiliation of opponents,
the cult of personality, all of this, all of this makes me think of Caligula,
the Roman emperor.
So, when President Trump came out with this Gaza Riviera thing in February
2025, I said three things. It’s unlawful because the United States has no right
whatsoever to speak decisively of the future of Gaza or the rest of the
occupied Palestinian territory or Palestine or frankly any part of the world,
full stop. Because there is something called the right of self-determination of
people and the Palestinians have the right of self-determination vis-à-vis
Israel, vis-à-vis the United States and anyone else. It’s unlawful and this
would embroil the United States in a different set of crimes, like the crimes
of forced displacement, because this would entail the forced displacement of
Palestinians as Israel is doing. I said it’s unlawful and it’s immoral because
what on earth would push the president of the United States to say something so
disrespectful toward a population at the time of greatest suffering that the
latter is enduring? And then I said it’s irresponsible because it will prompt
more sense of impunity and license to kill, torture and displace among the
Israeli leaders, which is in fact what has happened. So, it’s unlawful immoral,
irresponsible. This is what I said, and this is what I think still.
However, I also think that the Gaza Riviera is a distraction. I don’t think
that anyone is really planning to have a Riviera in Gaza. Gaza has been
ungrounded. Gaza has been made unlivable. I already started researching for a
next report I want to write about ecocide. But what this current US
administration is surely champion of among many, is psychological, overwhelming
of its audiences, including us in Europe. Every day in this part of the world,
in Europe, we wake up with a new shocking thing said by President Trump. It
might be the Gaza Riviera or it might be that he is intervening in the World
Cup in a way that only Caligula would do if he was with us today in 2026
because the level of self-restraint, the inexistent self-restraint of this man
is incomparable, immeasurable. So, I do think that this is a way to distract us
from the real plans of, again, displacing the Palestinians and using Gaza as an
extension of Israel, probably for economic purposes. I keep on thinking of why
Netanyahu has brandished over and over the plan to have a gas duct that goes
from the Arab countries, Gulf countries, into the Mediterranean through
southern Israel and probably Gaza because this is something that is going to be
convenient for Israel. But in any case, whatever the plan they might have, it
remains unlawful, immoral and irresponsible.
Chris Hedges: Well, we should be clear there are extensive gas fields in
southern Lebanon and on the northern coast of Gaza that Israel wants.
Francesca Albanese: Exactly. And this is why there is need to scrutinize each
and every company involved in it because these amount, for the companies
themselves, in the crime of pillage. Recently, and I can think that it was also
following external pressure from myself, the working group on business and
human rights, Italian civil society, and probably also internal from
conscientious people working for the company, that the energy giant ENI went
out of the consortium to exploit those fields of offshore gas in Gaza. And
again, this is why we need to pressure both states and companies to disengage
and divest from the Israeli occupation.
Chris Hedges: Those gas fields are in territorial waters of Lebanon and
Palestine, correct?
Francesca Albanese: Yes, these gas fields are outside Lebanon, historical
Palestine, so Israel and Gaza. Gaza toward Egypt.
Chris Hedges: I want to close with, you write about children and what’s been
done to children by Israel. You write, “I attended several trials against
minors. I have seen with my own eyes their absurd brutality.” You’re talking
about the Israelis. “The children were brought into the courtroom in chains.
And I felt like I was watching scenes of slaves and labor camps. Small,
emaciated, exhausted, anxious at the thought that for the first time since
their arrest, they would be seeing their parents again in these hearings that
lasted no more than a few minutes. The judge often did not even look at them.
He heard the charge. ‘He was throwing stones’, and handed down the sentence,
two years in prison, three years in prison, and so on. And that’s a generous
judge. Given that the punishment for Palestinians who throw stones is up to ten
years, twenty if done with the intention of harming someone, how can anyone be
surprised that when jailed Palestinian children return home, they are
traumatized, do not want to go out, are afraid, wet the bed, and exhibit
disturbances or violent behavior? We are talking about 12, 13, 14 year old kids
but even younger kids are arrested. There were children as young as five or six
being taken away by Israeli trucks, perhaps not detained, but interrogated and
then sent home.”
Let’s talk about this and, of course, this war on children has reached epic
kind of proportions in Gaza where children, if they walk too close to the
yellow line, are just killed by snipers.
Francesca Albanese: It’s interesting, Chris, because I used exactly the same
words you just used a few weeks ago in another interview saying, “The war on
childhood has reached epic proportions in Palestine.” And you can see that. I
mean, it was already quite bad, probably when you and I, at the various times
we’ve been living in Palestine, but it has, because there has never been the
possibility to enjoy childhood for kids who risk to have their homes
demolished, their schools demolished, their teachers, parents, uncles either
killed or arrested and then returning like zombies because they’ve been beaten
and tortured and sometimes raped in prison. And so, coming back and having so
much repressed rage, anger and violence. And so, the entire life of a
Palestinian child is contaminated by violence, is hijacked by violence and over
decades, the horizons of hope has been shrinking and shrinking.
But what I’ve seen happening in the last 1,005 days since October 2023 is of
another league and this interrogates both Israelis, who think they are
bystanders, and bystanders around the world. Whatever you qualify what Israel
does but have you seen the bodies of the kids turned into pieces? Have you seen
bodies of kids hanging, or what remains of them, hanging from walls as if they
were coats? Have you seen mutilated bodies? I mean, Gaza is the place with the
highest ratio of orphan children in the world, amputated children in the world.
And now, there is starvation and there is misery. There is malnutrition,
stunting. Stunting was already an issue before the tightening of the blockade
after October 23. And you don’t even need to go to Gaza. Look at the West Bank
where Palestinians, including children, live under threat of being assaulted by
soldiers or under constant threat of settlers’ terror. Who would like to live
in a system like that? And again, it didn’t start on October 2023. It’s been
ongoing for decades. And again, I can only say the only way forward is that we
say to Israel’s violence, no more. And we let children enjoy a bit of life.
Look, the first chapter of my book, because each chapter, for those who have
not read it, each chapter has a sort of Virgil in Dante’s Divine Comedy, is a
character, a lady who’s a real person, who has existed for real. Most of them
are friends of mine who have belonged to my life, except for one, Hind Rajab,
the child who gives the name to the chapter. I wrote this chapter in January
2025, so one year after Hind’s death. So, it was a well-known case among many,
among thousands, but not as well-known as it is today. And still is one among
hundreds of thousands, is one of the tens of thousands of children brutally
killed by the Israeli army. And then the chapter talks about my experience with
Palestinian children, which has been beautiful and uplifting, but still these
kids carry a weight and preoccupations that is not for any child to hold, any
child to carry.
Chris Hedges: Well, you write in the book that when you were in Palestine and
working for the UN, you did a report on children. But you talked about how
these young children would speak to you and they sounded as if they were adults.
Francesca Albanese: Yeah, it’s almost disturbing at times because there is
someone in our mind, I mean, again, and it is not that I don’t have biases. I
mean, I try to be as open as possible, but you know, I have two children myself
and so I have my own way to measure the maturity of a child. So, when you find
a 10-year-old or a 13-year-old who starts mentioning right to education, right
to food, right to health to say, maybe it’s been taught to speak like that
because they had to meet with me. But I have met these kids times and times
again because I’ve had focus groups often with the same children and I came to
know them a little bit during two, three months of investigation, even if I
couldn’t go there. I spent the summer of 2024, July and August and part of
September, speaking almost every day to Palestinian children. And I can tell
you, the reason why they are so knowledgeable is because they’ve been forced to
grow so fast and still find a peaceful way to overcome the horror in front of
and around them. So, the fact that I could find almost destabilizing the fact
that they were speaking as young lawyers, as I say in the book, is out of
despair. They try to remain safe in a world and healthy, mentally healthy, in a
world that is horrifically unhealthy for them and horrifically unfair to them.
Chris Hedges: And, of course, one of the chapters centers around Gabor Mate,
who deals with this kind of trauma.
Francesca Albanese: Yes, I had a beautiful talk with Gabor Matej about my book,
“When the World Sleeps,” a couple of days ago. And we were talking about the
characters in the book, what they evoke. It was weird for him, at a certain
point, to say, “I’m also a character in there.” And he asked me if I feel like
screaming at times. Yeah, I wish I don’t. I don’t know. Yes, of course, at
times you want to scream at politicians who seem like dead men walking, but
dead men walking not because death is awaiting them at the next corner, it’s
just because they seem empty of life, empty of humanity. But, what else do you
need to see, whatever you want to call it? But what else does Israel need to do
and say for you to take measures, for you to take international law seriously
and do it because by letting Israel ravage the realm of international law with
impunity, you are also destroying the foundations of the international legal
system.
And yeah, I feel the pain, but it’s also a weird way of how we protect
ourselves by numbing the pain. And so, I think that I will probably be able to
process the trauma of this, I mean, the secondary trauma of being exposed
because nothing compares to what the Palestinians endure, the Palestinians in
Gaza, the Palestinians in Israel, the Palestinians in the West Bank and East
Jerusalem, the Palestinians in the diaspora. But our secondary trauma by being
exposed, by being witnesses to this, I will probably be able to deal with it
once the genocide is over because right now I really try to stay healthy and
focused on how to bring this to an end because it’s not over and people need to
understand that the end of injustice doesn’t happen because we want it or
because we pray for it, we need to act. There are things that we need to do and
we need to persevere. It doesn’t matter if it takes one day, 10 days, 100 days
or 1,000 days, we need to persevere. This is the only way to win over injustice.
Chris Hedges: It took us fourteen years to get Julian Assange free. So, that’s
a long fight. But you’re certainly one of the most important figures in that
fight for justice. Thank you, Francesca. You can find me at
ChrisHedges.substack.com.
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