‘Watermelon Revolution’: Student Protests Draw Support from U.N. Rapporteur Who Warned about ‘Jewish Lobby’

A U.N. rapporteur who previously warned that a “Jewish lobby” is subjugating America praised the “watermelon revolution” sweeping Columbia University and other colleges.

The official, Francesca Albanese, is the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the “occupied Palestinian territories,” a position from which she has launched a global campaign against Israel. U.N. rapporteur positions, while granted a small amount of funding, don’t represent the organization’s institutional views.

“Hope comes from the ‘Watermelon Revolution (if its brave souls allow me to call it such),” she wrote yesterday in a post on X about the ongoing anti-Israel demonstrations across the United States.

Last week, Columbia administrators authorized the NYPD to arrest students who had set up a tent city on campus in violation of the university’s rules. Students and unaffiliated anti-Israel demonstrators returned to Columbia over the weekend. Some of them assaulted and harassed Jewish students, according to a report in Jewish Insider.

The demonstrations have since spread to schools across the country.

Referring to the Columbia arrests and other incidents in Europe and Canada, Albanese accused Western governments and universities of attacking foundational Western values.

“This sustained, global Palestinian-driven mobilization is a bold new phase in an ongoing wave of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle against Israel’s decades-old system of occupation, apartheid and settler-colonialism and for the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to justice, freedom, dignity,” Albanese added.

She also pointed to “mass intersectional consciousness today, including Jewish communities worldwide” that has “placed Palestinian emancipation at the center of the global struggle for justice.

Albanese recently drew criticism from the U.S., France, and Germany for denying the antisemitic nature of Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack.

U.S. officials accused her of peddling antisemitic perspectives and pointed to messages she posted about the influence of America’s “Jewish lobby” in 2014. In 2022, she said that she now views those comments as “mistakes.”

Last month, she also issued a report accusing the Israel of carrying out “genocide” against Palestinians and pushed thinly sourced allegations of rape by the Israel Defense Forces.