Peace and Justice Post

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk is seen at the UN Office in Geneva on September 16, 2025.

(Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said the new law “raises serious concerns about due process violations, is deeply discriminatory, and must be promptly repealed.”

Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams, Mar 31, 2026

The top United Nations human rights official was among those who on Tuesday urged Israel to repeal legislation it passed the previous day legalizing the hanging of Palestinians convicted of terrorism-related killing of Israelis—a law critics contend will not apply to Israelis who commit similar crimes.

The law passed by the Israeli Knesset states that Palestinians must be hanged within 90 days if convicted of nationalistic killings in a military court. While the legislation does not allow pardons, it gives judges discretionary power when it comes to sentencing Israeli citizens convicted of similar crimes, and observers say it’s highly unlikely that any jIsraeli would ever be hanged under the law.

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Advocates Demand Repeal of Israeli Death Penalty Law Explicitly Targeting Palestinians

Critics Warn of Mass Executions as Israel Advances Death Penalty Bill for Palestinians

Experts argue the 90-day provision and lack of appellate process are violations of international humanitarian law.

“It is deeply disappointing that this bill has been approved by the Knesset,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said Tuesday. “It is patently inconsistent with Israel’s international law obligations, including in relation to the right to life. It raises serious concerns about due process violations, is deeply discriminatory, and must be promptly repealed.”

“The death penalty is profoundly difficult to reconcile with human dignity, and it raises the unacceptable risk of executing innocent people,” he added. “Its application in a discriminatory manner would constitute an additional, particularly egregious violation of international law. Its application to residents of the occupied Palestinian territory would constitute a war crime.”

While proponents of the law—some of whom, like Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, celebrated its passage—say they believe it will deter Palestinians from killing Israelis, studies in the United States, the only Western democracy that actively executes people, have repeatedly shown that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime.

Palestinians and their defenders have also warned that the law could open the door to mass executions, including of anyone found to have killed Israelis during the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, for which Israel retaliated with an ongoing assault and siege that has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing.

“Trials for crimes related to October 7 are supremely important, but they must not be anchored in discrimination,” said Türk. “All victims are entitled to equal protection of the law, and all perpetrators must be held accountable without discrimination.”

Other human rights defenders also condemned the new Israeli law and called for its repeal.

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“The Israeli parliament’s adoption of a racist law authorizing the hanging of Palestinian prisoners is the very definition of apartheid,” the Washington, DC-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement Tuesday. “Even the South African apartheid government never adopted a death penalty law so explicitly racist.”

Taking aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—CAIR continued, “The Netanyahu regime is completely out of control because our nation continues to bankroll its crimes, from the de facto annexation of the West Bank to the genocide in Gaza, to the ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon, to the occupation of Syria, to the illegal war with Iran that it triggered, to the closure of Christian and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.”

“Congress is not just failing to act, it is actively advancing more military support while treating that US taxpayer funding as automatic, even as these abuses escalate,” the group added. “Every member of Congress—especially Democratic leaders of the House and Senate—must condemn these crimes, including the racist execution law, and announce their opposition to any further military funding for the Israeli apartheid regime.”

A 2024 ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague—where Israel is also facing a genocide case brought by South Africa in response to the US-backed war on Gaza—affirmed that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended.

More than 9,500 Palestinians are currently locked up in Israeli prisons, including 350 children and 73 women, according to advocacy groups. Palestinian and Israeli human rights defenders say detainees face torture, starvation, and medical neglect behind bars, causing many deaths.

Former prisoners as well as Israeli staff and medical personnel say they have witnessed torture at prisons including Sde Teiman, the most infamous of Israel’s lockups, with victims ranging from children to the elderly.

Israeli physicians who worked at Sde Teiman described widespread serious injuries caused by 24-hour shackling of hands and feet that sometimes required amputations. Palestinians taken by Israeli forces recounted rapes and sexually assaults by male and female soldiers, electrocution, maulings by dogs, denial of food and water, sleep deprivation, and other torture.

The World Council of Churches’ new campaign called “From Condemnation to Consequences” aims to pressure governments to hold Israel accountable for its deepening occupation of the West Bank and its accelerated program of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

By Jeff Wright, Mondoweiss, March 11, 2026

Scenes showing the widespread destruction of buildings and infrastructure caused by Israeli attacks during the Gaza genocide in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. February 22, 2026. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)

Last week, the World Council of Churches (WCC), headquartered in Geneva, launched a month-long campaign titled “From Condemnation to Consequences.” The program calls its member churches—clergy leaders and lay alike—to hold Israel accountable for its failure to fulfill its obligations under international law.

George Sahhar, Advocacy Officer in the Jerusalem Liaison Office of the World Council of Churches, tells Mondoweiss. “When attention is focused on the war in the Middle East, we want the world to see that human rights violations by Israel against Palestinians continue, and that annexation is ongoing and deepened.” 

During a webinar introducing the March 4-31 campaign, Kenneth Mtata, WCC Program Director for Life, Justice and Peace, said, “[O]ur campaign needs to remain focused on the commitments that the churches have made together, with all their partners, to see how we move from the statements and condemnation of the occupation and annexation of Palestine, and to try to translate this into concrete changes and transformation.”

“When attention is focused on the war in the Middle East, we want the world to see that human rights violations by Israel against Palestinians continue, and that annexation is ongoing and deepened.” George Sahhar, Advocacy Officer in the Jerusalem Liaison Office of the World Council of Churches

In short, the World Council of Churches, comprised of 356 member churches representing more than half a billion Christians around the globe, has acknowledged that offering “thoughts and prayers” alone is not enough to address Israel’s decades-long occupation and its accelerated program of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

In an alert to be published by Kairos Palestine later this month, Dalia Qumsieh, human rights lawyer and Founder/Director of Balasan Initiative for Human Rights, insists, “Churches are called to realize their power and leverage in action, with a full understanding that statements don’t stop bulldozers, condemnations don’t restore stolen lands and resources, and prayers alone cannot restore families who were uprooted from their ancestral lands. Only solid action will.”

The WCC’s appeal to members in the pews—“reach out to your elected officials [and] your faith leaders to call for renewed efforts for a just and sustainable resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict”—is an implied acknowledgement that with few exceptions heads of church around the globe have not yet responded to the pleas of Palestinian Christians to stand with them in solidarity, to act with courage and conviction in naming the realities that Palestinians are suffering: genocide, ethnic cleansing, and settler violence. 

The campaign, organized by the WCC’s Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), grounds its advocacy in decisive finding by the WCC (such as this) and the International Court of Justice’s provisional findings regarding Israel’s violations of international law and the responsibility of states to prevent genocide and to punish states committing genocide.

“We call on states, churches, and international institutions,” campaign material reads, “to impose consequences for violations of international law, including targeted sanctions, divestment, and arms embargoes. Full support must be given to the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and UN mechanisms both regarding investigations of crimes on all sides as well as initiatives towards a just peace for Palestinians and Israelis.”

Campaign resources include stories from the field, factsheets, and talking points to prepare people to approach decision- and policy-makers with a clear explanation of the legal framework and explicit asks. 

Peter Makari, Global Relations Minister related to the Middle East and Europe for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ, tells Mondoweiss, “After over two years of genocide, renewed U.S. and global efforts are needed to press our elected officials who support and enable Israel’s many years of denial of Palestinian rights. The consequence of a lack of accountability has resulted in devastating consequences for Palestinian lives and rights.”

In a further move, the World Council of Churches sent a delegate to the People’s Congress for The Hague Group meeting in Amsterdam last week. The group focused on widening the work of civil society to insist that states meet their legal obligation to end Israel’s program of genocide: instituting sanctions, closing ports to weapons, ending corporate and institutional complicity, and furthering accountability across courts, contracts, campuses and communities.

“The People’s Congress is an important space for civil society to collectively design its defense of international law and human dignity,” said WCC’s Mtata. “Churches and people of faith have an obligation to stand in solidarity with the suffering and resist impunity. Our presence here is part of a broader commitment to justice, accountability and, hopefully, to a just and peaceful coexistence of Palestinians and Israelis.”

While civil society organizations in the U.S. are bringing people out into the streets in the tens of thousands to resist the current administration, to advocate for Palestinians and, now, to end the U.S./Israeli war on Iran, it remains to be seen if this nascent program of the WCC moves an increasing number of church leaders and grassroots Christians to name the realities Palestinians are suffering and to make their voices heard.

It’s not official policy but Israeli leaders are allowing new ‘facts on the ground’

Analysis | Middle East

Paul R. Pillar, Mar 03, 2026

Israel’s new war with Iran coupled with slaughter in the Gaza Strip — where Israeli military operations have killed more than 600 Palestinians since a “ceasefire” supposedly went into effect last October, adding to the tens of thousands killed during the previous two years — has diverted attention from events in the West Bank.

That diversion is fine with those intent on cementing Israeli control there and continuing the subjugation or displacement of the 3.8 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Among the measures that Israel has taken toward that objective during the past few months is legislation in the Knesset making it easier for Israelis to purchase land in the West Bank. More recent actions by the Israeli cabinet have furthered that same goal as well as extending Israeli control over certain holy sites and portions of the West Bank that, according to the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Palestinian Authority is supposed to administer.

At least as significant in creating facts on the ground has been violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian residents. That violence has surged since the beginning of the assault on the Gaza Strip, with the perpetrators evidently taking advantage of the diversion of international attention to Gaza and now Iran. The increase in violence continues. Nearly 700 Palestinians were displaced by settler violence and intimidation this past January — the highest monthly figure since the Gaza offensive began in October 2023.

The Israeli government is an accessory to the settler violence. It has done little to discourage it and more often condones it. Units of the Israeli Defense Forces have even participated in it.

The Israeli activity in the West Bank is illegal and recognized as such by most of the international community. It is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilian populations. By settling its own citizens in Palestinian territory that Israel conquered in a war that it initiated in 1967, it is especially violating Article 49 of that convention, which expressly prohibits the transfer of any of the conquering nation’s civilian population to the territory it occupies.

The United States, through multiple administrations of both parties, has paid lip service to the concept of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while doing little to impede Israeli actions in the West Bank that have been putting that solution out of reach. The Trump administration has carried these tendencies even farther. The administration’s posture is personified by the U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, an outspoken Christian Zionist whose statements appear designed less to uphold U.S. interests in the face of Israeli actions than to support religious rationales for Israeli expansionism.

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In a further move along this line, the embassy that Huckabee heads announced last week that it will start opening “pop-up” consular offices in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This move can be seen as part of the same policy that during Trump’s first term saw the closing of a U.S. consulate in Jerusalem that had long been one of the chief channels for U.S. relations with the Palestinians.

Notwithstanding the administration’s assertion that last week’s announcement does not represent a policy change, delighted Israeli officials and dismayed Palestinians each saw it as a significant statement that bestows a U.S. stamp of legitimacy on the settlements. It would be difficult to justify the move as merely a matter of administrative convenience. The first settlement to receive one of the pop-up consulates is only eight miles from the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, where consular services already are available.

The administration says it opposes Israeli annexation of the West Bank. The White House said so just last month. But that opposition refers only to formal, openly declared annexation. What matters more is the de facto annexation that has been going on for years. The administration policy toward that is not opposition but instead a condoning of it and, as the move regarding the consulates illustrates, active support for it.

Although some of the most extreme Israeli figures, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have called for formal annexation of most of the West Bank, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in no hurry to make such a declaration because it is getting almost everything it wants from the de facto annexation. A formal declaration would make it more difficult for that government to deflect international criticism of its actions in the West Bank. It would no longer be able to string along the international community with the fiction of a possible two-state solution and instead would have to defend its apartheid policies within what it says itself are its national boundaries.

With moves such as the opening of consulates in the settlements, the United States is associating itself ever more closely with the Israeli expansionist project and its inhumane treatment of the Palestinians. This is contrary to U.S interests, partly because it puts the United States ever more conspicuously on the wrong side of legality, morality, and international opinion.

Moreover, oppressed Palestinians will not forever be submissive. The long history of this conflict has already seen two intifadas, which have taken violent as well as nonviolent forms, and there could be more. The conflict will continue to be a prime source of instability in the Middle East. Besides inhibiting any U.S. effort to “pivot” away from the region, the close association of the United States with the oppressive policies of Israel makes the United States more of a target for terrorism or other reprisals.

Paul R. Pillar

Paul R. Pillar is Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Geneva Center for Security Policy.

Israel lobby groups have spread doctored quotes by UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Francesca Albanese to defame her. Their desperate campaign is a testament to her work and the threat she poses by holding Israel accountable for genocide.

By Michael Lynk, Mondoweiss, February 24, 2026

Francesca Albanese in Bogotá, Colombia, July 2025 (Photo: Andrea Puentes – Joel González/ Presidencia de la República de Columbia)

Mark Twain and Winston Churchill are both purported to have once said that a lie can travel half-way around the world before truth has had a chance to put its pants on. 

On February 7, Francesca Albanese, the current UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in Palestine, gave a short presentation by video conference to a media forum in Doha, Qatar, organized by the Al Jazeera network. She was part of a panel, which included Fatou Bensouda, the former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, speaking about the role of international law in addressing serious human rights violations. 

In her remarks, Albanese spoke sharply about the Israeli genocide in Gaza since October 2023. In particular, she pointed out that many Western states and corporations had not only armed Israel, but had provided it with economic and diplomatic support throughout the genocide. She also criticized much of the Western media for amplifying the rhetoric of Israel’s pro-apartheid and genocidal narrative. In her presentation, Albanese went on to say that:

“…if international law has been stabbed in the heart, it is also true that never before has the global community seen the challenges that we all face. We, who do not control large amounts of financial capital, algorithms, and weapons, we now see that we, as a humanity, have a common enemy. And freedoms, the respect for fundamental freedoms, is the last peaceful avenue, the last peaceful toolbox that we have to regain our freedom.”

What happened next created a firestorm, based entirely on slander and deception for something she never said.

Albanese’s warning that humanity is facing a common enemy was clearly directed at the international system of finance capital, large tech corporations, and weapons manufacturers that had enabled the genocide in Gaza. She contrasted that system with the rights-based principles of international law, which are designed to protect and enhance our personal and collective freedoms. 

The following day, a doctored version of Albanese’s presentation was posted on the YouTube site of UN Watch, a notorious private organization headquartered in Geneva whose raison d’être is to attack the United Nations’ scrutiny of the many human rights violations committed through Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory. The truncated version by UN Watch had Albanese saying: “Instead of stopping Israel, most of the world has armed, given it political excuses, political sheltering, economic and financial support.” And then the video cuts to: “we now see that we as a humanity have a common enemy.” The clear implication in the edited video was that Albanese had called Israel “the common enemy of humanity”. 

This doctored UN Watch video spread like wildfire through the official politico-system of the Global North. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot called for Albanese’s immediate resignation for her “outrageous and reprehensible remarks which target not the Israeli government, whose policies can be criticized, but Israel as a people and as a nation, which is absolutely unacceptable.” 

The German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul piled on, stating that: “Ms. Albanese has already made numerous missteps in the past. I condemn her recent statements on Israel. She cannot hold her position.” Antonio Tajani, the Italian Foreign Minister, said that her “behavior, statements and initiatives aren’t appropriate for the position she holds.” Similar calls were issued by the foreign ministers of Czechia and Austria. 

Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary General, offered no defence for Albanese, even after the revelation that her alleged comments on Israel had been doctored. During a press conference at the UN headquarters in New York on February 12, Stéphane Dujarric, the official spokesperson for the Secretary General, was asked about the call by the French Foreign Minister for Albanese’s resignation. Dujarric replied laconically that: “We don’t agree with much of what she says.” 

After this initial wave of denunciations, international civil society began to fight back. Albanese, who had been voted by PassBlue as one of the United Nations’ Persons of the Year for 2024, referred to the full transcript of her presentation, and remarked: “I have never, ever, ever said ‘Israel is the common enemy of humanity.’” She pointed to the ongoing campaign of attacks on her by pro-Israeli organizations following the release of her comprehensive recent report to the United Nations on the genocide in Gaza and, in a separate report, the naming of large corporations (including Microsoft and Amazon) as potentially complicit in aiding Israel’s atrocities. 

On February 13, Agnes Callamard, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, issued a public statement condemning the five European foreign ministers who had called for Albanese’s head based on “a deliberately truncated video to misrepresent and gravely misconstrue her messages.” Callamard then contrasted the vehemence of these ministers’ attacks on Albanese with their sotto voce approach to the Israeli genocide in Gaza:

“If only these minsters had been as loud and forceful in confronting a state committing genocide, unlawful occupation and apartheid as they have in attacking a UN expert. Their cowardice and refusal to hold Israel accountable stand in stark contrast to the Special Rapporteur’s unwavering commitment to speaking truth to power.”

Strong statements of support for Albanese have also been issued by Artists for Palestine (whose 100+ signatories included the actors Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem, the filmmaker Spike Lee, the British pop singer Annie Lennox, the Nobel Prize Laurate for Literature Annie Ernaux and the critic Judith Butler) and through an open letter signed by 150 former European ambassadors and diplomats and former United Nations officials. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights also defended Albanese, stating that it was very worried about the rise in personal attacks, threats, and misinformation directed towards UN officials and independent human rights experts. 

United Nations special rapporteurs are unpaid human rights experts appointed by the Human Rights Council for six-year mandates to publicly report on human rights violations and trends worldwide. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called this system of human rights experts, known as special procedures, the “crown jewel” of the UN human rights system. The Special Rapporteur position for human rights in occupied Palestinian territory is, arguably, the most challenging of the approximately 60 UN human rights expert mandates, given the intense attacks that the rapporteurs have recently faced from Israel, the United States, and a suite of pro-Israel organizations such as UN Watch and NGO Monitor. 

UN Watch, in particular, acts as a ventriloquist for Israel’s justification of its illegal occupation and its genocide in Gaza. While presenting itself as a non-governmental human rights organization with official status at the UN, UN Watch’s primary task is to ardently defend Israel, invariably in incendiary language, through a neo-conservative and Likudnik perspective. It has consistently refused to reveal who its funders are, although independent reporting has named the American Jewish Committee and the Newton and Rochelle Becker Foundation as major sources. UN Watch’s many targets — including the most recent UN special rapporteurs on Palestine, the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Palestine and Israel, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UNRWA, and countries that are critical of Israel — are frequently labelled as antisemitic individuals and organizations or, slightly more kindly, as being ferociously biased against Israel.

Albanese has also been fiercely attacked by Israel. In 2024, it declared her to be persona non grata, banning her from visiting the occupied Palestinian territory, in part because of her UN reports concluding that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. In 2025, Israel released a report — drawn largely from UN Watch — where it claimed that she was linked to terrorism (because she spoke at events organized by the Palestinian human rights organizations Al-Haq) and because she supposedly spread “antisemitic rhetoric. And last week, Israel issued an extraordinary tweet on X, claiming that she is a “mouthpiece for Hamas”. This latest smear was issued despite the many times that Albanese has condemned the Hamas’ attacks on October 7 2023 as serious violations of international law because Israel civilians were killed or taken hostage.

For Albanese’s courage in previously naming the Israeli genocide and warning American corporations that their weapons and hi-tech sales to Israel might expose them to criminal liability at the International Criminal Court, American Secretary of State Marco Rubio formally sanctioned her in July 2025. He claimed that: “We will not tolerate these campaigns of political and economic warfare, which threaten our national interests and sovereignty.” 

The American sanctions against a UN human rights expert are unprecedented. They essentially freeze Albanese out of the international banking system. The sanctions have also impounded the condo that she and her husband own in Washington, prevented her from receiving reimbursement for her medical expenses from American insurance companies, and prohibited her from traveling to the United Nations headquarters in New York to deliver her annual reports. Many of her fellow UN human rights experts have publicly condemned the sanctions, pointing out that they violate international law, including the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations. The human rights experts added that: 

“The targeting of the Special Rapporteur cannot be separated from the egregious international crimes and human rights abuses being perpetrated against Palestinians and the longstanding efforts to delegitimise those who defend their rights.”