At a conference in Doha, captured on publicly available video, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, declared Israel “the common enemy of humanity.”
Not a violator of international law. Not a country whose policies she opposes. Humanity’s enemy.
She delivered that line at the same gathering where Khaled Mashaal, a senior Hamas leader, and Iran’s foreign minister were present. Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. Yet a UN mandate holder shared the stage and used language that should be at home in a political rally, not a human rights briefing.
Albanese also accused Israel of “stabbing international law in the heart.” That is not sober legal analysis. It is a slogan.
Special Rapporteurs are technically independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council. But they operate under the UN’s banner. Their reports move through official channels. Their titles carry institutional authority. When one of them brands a member state as “the common enemy of humanity,” it is not freelance commentary. It lands with the weight of the blue flag behind it.
And that is where this becomes dangerous.
When rhetoric becomes institutional
The UN was founded in 1945 in the ashes of the Holocaust. “Never Again” was the promise that the world would not allow a people to be isolated, demonized, and ultimately destroyed while international institutions issued carefully worded statements.
Now, under that same UN banner, the world’s only Jewish state is being cast as a universal threat.
Germany, France, and Italy have condemned Albanese’s remarks. That is welcome. But words of disapproval are no longer enough. Statements of concern do not restore credibility. They do not impose standards. They do not draw lines.
If the UN cannot police its own mandate holders, what exactly is the mandate worth?
This was not an isolated outburst. Since the October 7 massacre, Albanese has repeatedly advanced rhetoric that many governments view as extreme. She has questioned whether Hamas’s attacks meet the definition of terrorism. She has expressed skepticism about reports of sexual violence. She has accused Israel of genocide while giving comparatively little weight to Hamas’s openly stated goal of eliminating the Jewish state.
Criticizing a government is fair. Democracies can withstand scrutiny. Israel, like any country, is subject to criticism.
But calling a nation “the common enemy of humanity” crosses a bright line. That is not policy analysis. It is collective demonization.
History shows where that path can lead.
In the 1930s, Jews in Europe were portrayed as a global menace, corrosive and dangerous, and an enemy to civilization itself. As that rhetoric intensified, legal discrimination followed. Then violence. Then catastrophe. International bodies expressed sympathy. They convened conferences. They issued statements. When decisive action was required, it did not come.
The UN was meant to correct that failure. Instead, a familiar pattern is reappearing in a different form. The target is no longer Jews as a dispersed minority. It is the Jewish state. The language of exceptional evil has simply shifted its focus.
And the institution created to prevent that logic from taking root is allowing it to circulate under its own seal.
The secretary-general has not issued a meaningful public rebuke. The Human Rights Council has not launched a transparent review. There have been no visible consequences. In bureaucratic terms, perhaps that is routine. In moral terms, it is glaring.
Institutions do not collapse overnight. They erode. They lose authority step by step, each time they tolerate what they were established to prevent.
Meanwhile, antisemitic incidents are rising worldwide, on university campuses, in major cities, and outside synagogues. Jewish communities are on edge. In that climate, a UN official labeling the Jewish state as “humanity’s enemy” is not an abstract flourish. It reinforces a narrative that treats Jewish self-determination as uniquely illegitimate.
Supporters will say this is passionate advocacy. They will argue that it reflects frustration or moral urgency.
But human rights language carries force because it is meant to be principled and universal. Once it becomes a tool for branding one nation as the embodiment of evil, it stops protecting the vulnerable and starts isolating them.
Germany, France, and Italy have spoken. That is a start. But if condemnation is the end of the story, the message is clear. The guardrails are optional. The standards are flexible. The slogan remains, but the substance fades.
“Never Again” was supposed to mean that no people would be placed outside the circle of protection. If the UN cannot recognize the danger in calling the Jewish state “the common enemy of humanity,” then the promise forged in 1945 is being hollowed out from within.
Silence is not neutrality. At some point, condemnation without action becomes complicity.
The question is straightforward. Will the United Nations enforce its own standards, or will it continue to let them dissolve, one incendiary phrase at a time?
The writer is the director-general of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation.