‘Gaza has ignited a revolution’: Albanese addresses Anti-Zionist Jewish Congress
Attenders at the Second Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress, Dublin, June 2026
Romana Rubeo reports in The Palestine Chronicle on 26 June 2026:
Addressing the Second Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress via video link from Palermo on Friday, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese argued that the genocide in Gaza has evolved into far more than Israel’s war against the Palestinian people.
Instead, she said, it has become the clearest expression of a global political and ideological system that has normalized Palestinian dispossession while exposing the failures of international law, democratic institutions and the post-war international order itself.
The Destruction of Palestinians
Describing Palestine as both “a revealer” and “a mirror,” Albanese urged participants to view the current moment not only through the lens of Israel’s actions but through the responses—or silence—of governments, institutions and societies across the world.
“We are now in the third year of the genocide,” Albanese said, arguing that the violence imposed on Palestinians could no longer be understood as the responsibility of Israel alone. Today, she contended, Israel operates with the ideological, political and military support of a broad international network that extends well beyond its traditional Western allies.
“There is hardly a corner of the world untouched by Zionism as a political ideology,” she said, pointing to the role played not only by Western governments and private institutions but also by several Arab states and religious organizations that have helped normalize and disseminate the ideology internationally.
While acknowledging that Zionism has carried different meanings throughout its history, Albanese argued that its contemporary political expression had become inseparable from the ongoing destruction of Palestinian life.
“I think we should all be able to agree on one point,” she said. “Today, more than ever, Zionism has become predicated upon the destruction of the Palestinian people and the seizure of what little remains of their homeland.”
For Albanese, the consequences extend well beyond Palestine itself. Zionism, she argued, has evolved into an ideology that increasingly destabilizes the broader region. “Today, Zionism is no longer only about the destruction of Palestinians,” she said. “It has become an ideology contributing to the destruction of entire societies across West Asia.”
Palestine as the World’s Mirror
Throughout her address, Albanese returned repeatedly to the idea that Palestine has fundamentally altered how the world understands itself.
“Palestine has become a revealer,” she said before listing what the Palestinian struggle has exposed: “the Nakba… the colonial nature of the Zionist project… apartheid… and genocide—which is still ongoing.”
Yet Palestine, she argued, has not merely revealed the structures underpinning Israeli policies. It has also become “a mirror,” reflecting the moral choices made by individuals, governments and international institutions. “I have often said that Palestine has also become a mirror,” Albanese explained, “a mirror reflecting who we are—as individuals, as societies and as states.”
Drawing one of the speech’s most striking historical parallels, Albanese argued that comparisons with the Holocaust should not be understood as competitions over suffering but as a way of understanding how atrocities become internationalized through the participation—or acquiescence—of others.
“There is one comparison with the Holocaust that I believe can and must be made,” she said. “This genocide, like the Holocaust, possesses a transnational dimension. It is sustained not only by those who commit it directly but also by those who enable it.”
For Albanese, the tragedy of Gaza lies not only in the crimes themselves but in the fact that they are unfolding within an international legal system specifically designed to prevent such atrocities. Instead of preventing genocide, she argued, many governments have chosen to facilitate it by rendering Palestinians invisible while normalizing their dehumanization.