When the World Sleeps, Francesca Albanese, Italy, 2025
Francesca Albanese is the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2022 (a three-year appointment that was renewed in 2025), and her book looks at the situation in those small islands of what is left of Palestine and the impact the State of Israel has had on both the country and the people. Her report is extremely balanced, relying not only on the testimonies of many Palestinians but also taking into account the efforts of those Israelis – academics and others – who are working tirelessly to revert the unjust policies; policies which, apart from causing millions of deaths, wanton property destruction and homelessness, have created a situation of apartheid.
Before being appointed UN Special Rapporteur Albanese worked as a human rights expert for the UN for more than a decade. With law degrees from both Italy and England and experience with human rights in both the Middle East and Africa she is well equipped for the work she does. Nevertheless her stand regarding the crisis in Palestine has seen her labelled an anti-Semite, and the American administration has named her ‘a specially designated national’, meaning that she has been sanctioned by the United States – a label she shares with Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin and Nicolás Maduro, among others. Her comment: ‘Antisemitism and discrimination against Jews as Jews is gross. But frankly I couldn’t care less if Israel were run by Jews, Muslims, Christians or atheists… All I want is for Israel to conduct itself in line with international law.’
Unfortunately the term ‘anti-Semite’ has over the last decade changed its meaning. Initially, as Albanese writes: ‘… it [meant] hatred, discrimination, prejudice, violence against Jews as Jews’, but then, in 2016, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) put forward a new definition (which has been widely accepted) and which labels any criticism of the State of Israel as antisemitic. Whether or not they actually agree with this new definition, countries like the United States and others, all with considerable investment in Israel, are prepared to endorse it.
Albanese tackles her subject from the experiences of ten different people – Palestinians, Israelis and others. Her first story tells of six-year-old Hind who was cruelly killed when attempting to escape in a car with her family. Albanese asks the question: What is childhood in Palestine? Many times throughout the book she reverts to her own family (husband and two children) emphasising the difference between what most people would consider normal and right and what Palestinians have been forced to accept as normal and completely wrong.
She discusses the situation in Jerusalem, a divided city, where Palestinians have been forced from homes in which they had lived for generations and where access around the city is now hindered by walls built by the Israelis. Adults are unable to continue with their livelihoods, and attending school has become an impossibility or a nightmare for most Palestinian children.
While Israel puts forward her need for security and self-defence, Albanese, together with a number of Israeli academics and human-rights advocates, question Israel’s interpretation of both history and the guidelines underlying the formation of the State of Israel in 1948. Israel’s need to subjugate, indeed annihilate, the Palestinian people has nothing to do with security and everything to do with expanding the borders of the Israeli State. This is not a conflict but an occupation. As Albanese suggests the situation in Palestine can only be described as apartheid.
Albanese has suffered greatly for her stance on Palestine, and her family has been threatened. Despite this she continues to lecture, write and advocate in the hope that the world wakes up to what is actually happening in Palestine and how, unless something is done and done very soon, a people and a culture will be obliterated.