Israel has chosen Greece to advance its regional ambitions and will exploit Greek fears and insecurity to do so, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese said.
Speaking at a presentation of her new book, When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words and Wounds of Palestine, at the Trianon cinema in Athens, Francesca Albanese cautioned that some circles in Greece hold the “wrong perception” of their alliance with Israel.
“You think that you have chosen Israel in order to secure peace from your eternal enemy. I don’t think so,” Albanese said. “Israel has picked you. Israel has chosen you, and it’s going to exploit your fears and your insecurity, because this is what Israel does to advance its regional hegemony” .
The event also featured a conversation with former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who remarked that Greece “manifests the greatest example of Israelization… more than any other country in Europe”.
Albanese specifically criticized Greek authorities for their cooperation with Israel’s interception of the Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla Sumud off Crete on Friday.
“The fact that the Greek authorities go hand-in-hand with the Israelis in stopping a humanitarian mission is wrong,” she said.
Regarding the military cooperation between Greece and Israel, she added that Greece, while presenting itself as a defender of international law, is in practice assisting a state that maintains an illegal occupation.
“Israel has no right to stop anyone going to Gaza. Greece should be taking positive measures to stop the genocide, instead of cooperating with the Israeli weapons industry. Greece is directly involved in Israeli crimes; this cooperation makes it directly complicit.”
Albanese’s mandate involves investigating and reporting on human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza. While she is supported by various human rights organizations and scholars for her documentation of Israeli actions, she has become a deeply polarizing figure, facing intense criticism and sanctions from several Western governments.
In July 2025, the United States government imposed sanctions on Albanese, citing “unabashed antisemitism” and support for terrorism. This led to the termination of her affiliate scholarship at Georgetown University. n early 2026, the French Foreign Minister and several other European officials called for her resignation following claims she had characterized Israel as a “common enemy of humanity.”
Despite these pressures, Albanese was confirmed for a second three-year term in April 2025. She maintains that her work is rooted in international law and that accusations of antisemitism are “illegitimate attempts” to silence her reporting on Palestinian human rights.
