VN-rapporteur Gaza visits: ‘Do not take freedom for granted’

Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur for the United Nations, gave a lecture on Friday afternoon in the Van der Goot Building. She warned the audience about the ‘extermination’ of the Palestinian people. The largest hall in the building was packed with six hundred students and staff from Erasmus University. Despite the controversial topic, the lecture proceeded without incident.

Fifteen minutes before the lecture began, hundreds of people formed long queues in front of the entrance to the Sorbonne Hall on the second floor of the Van der Goot Building. At each door, a few volunteers checked that no one entered without a ticket. They were supported by two security guards who kept a close watch on the surroundings. In the end, six hundred people attended the lecture in person, while another thousand watched online.

Once inside, Jeff Handmaker, associate professor at the International Institute of Social Studies, opened the event and ensured that Francesca Albanese’s microphone was working properly.

Human rights

The room fell silent, and some lean forward attentively. Albanese looked at the audience with a solemn expression. “I want to apologise to the Palestinians in the room. We are sorry, we truly are,” she said. A loud round of applause echoed through the hall.

The situation in the Palestinian territories is ‘not just genocide’, Albanese stated, but ‘a colonisation project’. According to her UN report, this project is ‘part of a long-term process in which the Israeli state orchestrates the forced displacement and replacement of Palestinians’. Albanese argued that the Palestinian population has faced extensive control and oppression for decades, which over the years have become part of the people’s ‘collective consciousness’.

International law

According to Albanese, the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination is being trampled on. She invoked internationally recognised treaties such as the Geneva Convention and the Genocide Convention, which, in her view, Israel is ignoring. Under these treaties, she argued, Palestinians have ‘the right of a people to exist as a people and the right of minorities not to be erased’.

Albanese then addressed the audience directly. “In these dark times, the spark jumps over to students like you. We must persist. Israel must not escape without the label of an apartheid state on its back.”

Q&A session

After an hour, the audience was given the opportunity to ask Albanese questions. Several people immediately stood up and formed a queue in the middle of the hall. The house rules appeared on the large screen: ‘Treat each other with sympathy and politeness’. Six of the seven questioners wore a Palestinian scarf, and some nodded along as Albanese answered the first question.

After a while, those in the queue sat down on the stairs. “Now it’s turning into a sit-in!” the host of the lecture joked. The audience bursted into laughter. “Perhaps we should answer multiple questions at once so you can take a seat.”

Freedom

After responding to several questions, Albanese leaned forward slightly and looked around the room with a serious expression. “Do not take freedom, or any rights for that matter, for granted,” she urged. The audience interrupted her with applause, making the benches in the hall tremble.

There were fifteen minutes left, and Handmaker gestured towards Albanese, figuratively drawing his flat hand across his neck. Albanese mirrored the gesture. “If you do this in my country… I’m from Italy,” she said, laughing. The audience understood her reference and followed up their laughter with applause.

“Thank you for coming, Francesca. We will not give up,” said the host. The audience gave Albanese a standing ovation.