The CTXT editorial board has chosen Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as Person of the Year 2024. The Italian lawyer has defended the cause of the Palestinian people with data, arguments, passion and an unwavering moral conviction, and has tirelessly denounced in every possible forum that Israel is committing genocide and practicing ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

We live surrounded by bad news generated by bad people. But we also think it is fair and nice to remember that there are people who make honesty a trench. That is the case of Francesca Albanese. Her courage, her commitment to the truth and her decency are an example for us all. Through her work she has put before the mirror the Western political elites, with few exceptions cynical, complacent or directly complicit  in the war crimes ordered by Israel’s Zionist government.

Albanese has understood that the inhuman neglect suffered by the Palestinians is all the more shameful because a large part of the media has abdicated its duty to report fully on Gaza, often broadcasting Israeli propaganda even though it was impossible to contrast it, and has tolerated without complaint both the information blockade of Benjamin Netanyahu's government, who forbade foreign journalists to enter the strip, and the selective assassinations of more than one and a half  hundred Palestinian by the IDF. 

With a pedagogical and sober tone, Albanese has documented in her reports and lectures the crimes ordered by the Prime Minister, crimes leading to more than 45,000 deaths of innocent people in Gaza; she has also recorded the siege and forced displacement of the entire population, and the denial of humanitarian aid to decimate the people of Gaza through hunger, thirst or cold. 

The UN rapporteur has also been able to put this latest Zionist offensive in historical context; she has unequivocally condemned the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 but has never forgotten to recall that the apartheid suffered by the Palestinians began with the 1948 Nakba and has intensified in recent years.

Inspired by Time magazine, we at CTXT are happy that Mrs. Francesca Albanese is the first personality to be awarded  this new honorary distinction to celebrate our tenth anniversary, and we encourage our readers to send the UN rapporteur their messages through this form.

For our part, we can only say “grazie, Francesca Albanese”.