Michael Lynk

'Albanese is perhaps the one figure of our times that future historians will recall as the one who did the most to redeem our generation from its guilt over the genocide of the Palestinian people. Her reflections in this book are not just timely – they are for the ages' - Yanis Varoufakis Israel’s genocide in Palestine and the complicity of powerful Western states is undermining international human rights and the UN system. The United States has imposed sanctions on lawyers, UN experts, and Palestinian officials in an attempt to bully and intimidate them into silence. One prominent example is UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who has played an important role in documenting Israel’s atrocities and those who profit from its oppression of Palestinians. This book compiles Albanese’s indispensable and damning reports on Israel’s conduct in Palestine since October 2023. First outlining the case that this period should be understood as a genocide, Albanese goes on to explain how the ongoing violence fits into a longer history of Israel’s settler colonialism, and finally presents a devastating indictment against the international corporations that treat mass killing and destruction as a business opportunity. The volume also features a reflection by Albanese on the current state of affairs; revelations by her predecessors Richard Falk, John Dugard, and Michael Lynk of their experiences as UN special rapporteurs; and a preface by Lex Takkenberg, a 30-year veteran of UNRWA, co-authored with scholar Mandy Turner. The ebook is free to download from www.plutobooks.com indefinitely, with a request for a donation to the Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA. All royalties from sales of the book will be donated to UNRWA.

This book is the first comprehensive examination of UN efforts to protect Palestinian human rights in the territories occupied by Israel more than 50 years ago in the 1967 War. Working through the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, three top international legal experts served for six consecutive years as unpaid Special Rapporteurs with a UN mandate to report on Israeli violations of international humanitarian law and human rights standards. Being outside the discipline that controls UN bureaucrats, they enjoyed a high measure of political independence in carrying out their factfinding and reporting missions. Strikingly, despite their differences in background and political outlook, they came to a unanimous consensus confirming the routine and various Israeli violations of Palestinian basic rights. This book recounts their frustrations, their trials, their experiences, and their conclusions. This joint effort breaks new ground in studies by the UN in several respects. It demonstrates both the positive role played by the UN in a politically controversial area and its blockage by geopolitical forces preventing it from securing the implementation of international law. However, the intense reactions of Israel and pro-Israeli NGOs to this UN work, most notably by UN Watch, attest to the significance of a reliable accounting of Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights Their consistent evasion of the substantive charges made by careful reporting, and recourse by Israeli supporters to discrediting, defamatory attacks on the persons of these Special Rapporteurs, with charges of anti-Semitism, the core of which is subtly shifted from its proper usage as hatred of Jews to justifiable criticism of the state of Israel. While some might argue that the UN inability to enforce international law as futile, or worse, view the UN as merely a vehicle of power politics, this book proves that international public opinion and international solidarity politics are influenced by persuasive expert findings as to international law. Such well-evidenced conclusions encourage transnational activism, as is evident from increased worldwide support for the BDS Campaign and other nonviolent external pressures. This brilliant and authoritative account of the manner in which Israel has administered the Occupied Palestinian Territory during the past 20 years should be regarded as the definitive assessment of that situation.