Francesca Albanese has become one of the most polarising figures in contemporary diplomacy, not because she commands armies or signs treaties, but because she insists on describing what she sees. Since assuming her mandate as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories in 2023, the Italian jurist has delivered reports that cut through diplomatic euphemism with the precision of a scalpel. In her October 2024 report to the General Assembly, pointedly titled Genocide as Colonial Erasure, she concluded there were ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe that Israel’s conduct in Gaza met the legal threshold...