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Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, told the UN Human Rights Council on Monday that Israel has turned torture into "state policy," alleging a pattern of systematic abuse so pervasive it amounts to "collective vengeance and destructive intent."
Presenting her latest report to the Geneva-based council, Albanese directed her sharpest criticism not only at Israel but at the broader international community, accusing governments worldwide of enabling the abuse through inaction. "Israel has effectively been given a licence to torture Palestinians, because most of your governments, your ministers, have allowed it," she said.
Her report described life under occupation as "a continuum of physical and mental suffering," arguing that the scale and nature of the alleged abuses extend well beyond detention facilities.
Albanese told the council that the systematic character of the practices she documented points to something far larger than isolated incidents. "Torture extends far beyond prison walls, in what can only be described as a torturous environment imposed by Israel across the entire occupied Palestinian territory," she said.
She described the human toll in stark terms, saying that torture destroys the conditions that make life meaningful, strips away dignity, and leaves behind empty shells. The testimonies gathered by her office and other investigators, she argued, constitute "evidence of atrocity crimes targeting the totality of the Palestinian people, across the totality of the occupied land, through a totality of criminal conduct."
Israel swiftly rejected the report and its author. In a statement issued by its Geneva mission on Monday, Israel called Albanese "not a promoter of human rights" but rather "an agent of chaos," dismissing her findings as "nothing but a politically-charged, activist rant."
The mission further accused Albanese of advocating "dangerous extremist narratives to undermine the very existence of the State of Israel." She has long faced accusations of anti-Semitism and repeated demands for her removal from the role, particularly from Israel and some of its allies, over her sustained criticism and her characterization of Israeli conduct as genocide.
Though special rapporteurs are appointed by the Human Rights Council, they serve as independent experts and do not speak on behalf of the United Nations itself.
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