Italy’s ambassador to the United Nations has rejected a report by UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese that accuses 63 countries, including Italy, of complicity in Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza.
“The report presented by Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese is totally lacking in credibility and impartiality,” said Ambassador Maurizio Massari, Italy’s permanent representative to the UN, on Wednesday.
Massari said the document goes beyond the rapporteur’s mandate, which does not authorise investigations into alleged violations by other states. “The content of the dossier clearly exceeds the specific mandate of the Special Rapporteur,” he said. “It does not include assessments of cooperation between third countries and the International Criminal Court.”
Albanese, a 48-year-old legal scholar from Campania, presented her 24-page report to the General Assembly’s Third Committee. She accused Israel of leaving Gaza “strangled, starved, and destroyed” and called for a “new multilateralism” to prevent further atrocities.
The report claims that “illegal actions and deliberate omissions” by third countries helped sustain what she described as Israel’s “militarised apartheid” and “colonial enterprise.” It argues that these conditions allowed the situation to “metastasize into genocide, the supreme crime against the people of Palestine.”
Israeli ambassador calls Albanese “evil witch”
Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon dismissed Albanese as an “evil witch,” calling the report an outrageous distortion of events.
Massari said the report also violated the UN’s own Code of Conduct for Special Rapporteurs, which requires impartiality, good faith, and restraint. “These are the foundations of any credible report and of the United Nations itself,” he said.
He added that Albanese’s public comments and interviews showed a “clear lack of neutrality.” The ambassador questioned whether her work would help peace efforts or worsen tensions. “It would be a tragic paradox,” he said, “if the UN were perceived as an organisation that undermines peace rather than promotes it.”
