​​​​​​​HAMILTON, Canada

The UN's special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) on Tuesday said Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Francesca Albanese described the attacks as "the culmination of decades of moral and political failure" and condemned the complicity of countries that continue to arm and support Israel.

"On day 751 of the genocide in Gaza, I begin by honoring the victims and survivors of all genocides, past and present," said Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory that has been occupied since 1967, in a virtual address to the UN General Assembly's Third Committee.

She said that her report on the OPT reveals that "these horrors are not an aberration, but the culmination of decades of moral and political failure within a resilient colonial world order – sustained by a global system of complicity."

Noting that many countries enabled Israel's assault on Gaza, she said: "Through unlawful actions and deliberate omissions, too many states have armed, funded, and shielded Israel's militarized apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territory, allowing its settler-colonial enterprise to metastasize into genocide, the ultimate crime against the Indigenous people of Palestine."

She said "over 240,000 (have been) killed or injured, thousands missing, buried under rubble or disappeared into Israeli dungeons," adding that Gaza "remains strangled, starved, and shattered."

Albanese criticized the US for sanctioning her for her work. "I deeply regret not being able to present this report in person, due to certain unlawful and spiteful sanctions imposed on me by the United States for fulfilling my UN mandate."

"These measures are an assault on the UN itself, on its independence, its integrity, its very soul," she added.

Calling on states to take concrete action, she urged: "States must secure a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, full Israeli withdrawal from every inch of the occupied Palestinian territory and dismantlement of the colonies."

She warned that if the Security Council remains deadlocked, "this assembly shall act under 'Uniting for Peace' in ways more robust than it has until now."

"From the ruins of Gaza and from the hope of South Africa, through the resilience of the Palestinian people -- may a new multilateralism rise: not a facade, but a living architecture of rights and dignity of the many, not for the privileges of the few," she said.

Albanese also responded to Israel's UN envoy Danny Danon's inflammatory attack against her in his speech, as he accused her of witchcraft.

"It is grotesque and frankly delusional that a genocidal state can't respond to the substance of my findings, and the best thing that he resorts to is accusing me of witchcraft. So be it. You're the one accused of genocide; if the worst thing you can accuse me of is witchcraft, I take it," she said. "If I had the power to make spells, I would use it not for vengeance. I would use it to stop your crimes once and for all, and to make sure that those responsible end up behind bars."

The committee's chair reprimanded Danon for his inflammatory attack.