UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s book When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words and Wounds of Palestine (Hardie Grant Books, 2026) opens with excerpts from her speech to the UN General Assembly on 30 October 2024. “Those of you who have not uttered a word about what is happening in Gaza demonstrate that empathy has evaporated from this room,” Albanese stated. As months turned into years, the international community proved Albanese right.
The book was written at a time when Albanese was sanctioned by the US as a “specially designated national”. In the introduction, Albanese writes of the contradictions emanating directly from the UN, which refused to use the word genocide when referring to Gaza. “The system that represses the Palestinians – a well-established alliance between Israel and all the other states whose elites guarantee it the impunity it has always enjoyed – is the same one to which we belong,” Albanese writes. There is no escaping that Gaza affects us all, and that the same systems oppressing Gaza also oppresses us. Arriving at this point for Albanese was a journey of learning, not only from her earlier recollections of life in Southern Italy which shaped a part of her perspective, but also from the people she encountered.
All ten chapters in this book, named after people who are either Palestinian or have links to Palestine, create a journey of knowledge and introspection that in turn weaves the Palestinian reality for the readers. The book opens with Hind Rajab, the six year old girl from Gaza who was killed in January 2024 by Israeli forces who riddled the car she was in with over 300 bullets. From this introduction to the first chapter, Albanese recalls her own interactions with Palestinian children while living in Jerusalem, noting their resilience. The same resilience is also observed when Albanese interviews Palestinian children online in focus groups, noting their precision when describing the spectrum of violations as a result of Israeli colonialism. “But I soon realised there was nothing strange about their ability to argue and interact,” she notes.
Other chapters bring other people, realities and perspectives to the reader. Abu Hassan the owner of Alternative Tours, was indispensable for Albanese to witness Palestinians’ daily lives under military occupation. In Sheikh Jarrah, Albanese encounters violent settlers living in houses that once belonged to Palestinians. She is also faced with anger at UN personnel from Abu Hassan, who perceives UNRWA as having effected no difference to Palestinians’ lives. The exchange is food for further pondering, as Albanese explains in her book, realising there is no clear answer.
As Albanese recounts her visits to various Palestinian towns and cities, including Hebron, she also gives historical context to Israeli settler-colonialism, making the book both a personal narration of travel and discovery, as well as a space from where readers can learn about Palestine. Of Shuhada Street, Albanese writes, “You see scenes resembling the theatre of the absurd: children, late for school, climbing over gates, being chased and reprimanded, or beaten by soldiers.”
Other encounters provide further insight on how Albanese gradually constructed her understanding of Israeli settler-colonialism, and of Palestine and Palestinians. One touching moment is Albanese’s first encounter with the Palestinian artist Malak Mattar in Gaza in 2010. Still in school, Mattar told Albanese she couldn’t sell her the painting as requested. Albanese and Mattar met again in London in 2024, where Mattar explained the dilemma of leaving Gaza due to the Palestinians’ attachment to their land. In obtaining visas for her family to join her in London, Mattar had to demonstrate that her parents were not a security threat. Albanese writes, “ It was necessary to show that they all oved art, theatre … As if, implicitly, those who were not cultured enough to love paintings and opera did not deserve this opportunity.”
Albanese also writes about Eyal Weizman’s work who, through architecture and technology, traces the violence of colonialism in Palestine. Perhaps the most humanitarian observation in this book, and far removed from the humanitarian propaganda that is publicised so heavily on mainstream media, is Albanese’s recounting of Weizman’s perception; “that humanitarian interventions may unwittingly end up supporting the military occupation rather than opposing it.”
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Gabor Mate, whose work on trauma is widely respected, sheds light on the repercussions of personal and historical trauma. Without negating Jewish suffering, Albanese brings the reflection back to the present, noting that the Jewish people have had “many opportunities to face and soothe their collective trauma.” Global recollection of the Holocaust, for example, retains its major focus on the Jewish people, unlike other minorities such as the Roma. Palestinians, Albanese states, have been denied the opportunity to process their trauma and continue to face ongoing violations.
Situating this reality within the context of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Albanese writes, “In the prevailing debate in the West, it seems that one cannot talk about the violence that the Palestinians experience every day without first having to consider Israel and its right to defence, even when this right is claimed by the occupier on the very little land that the Palestinians have left, and therefore illegitimately.”
There is much to glean from this book, in terms of history, personal experience, international law and profound reflections. Through perspectives and historical details, readers discover an understanding of the violence inherent in Israel’s settler-colonialism that calls for further reading and immersion at a time when the genocide in Gaza is ongoing. Furthermore, Albanese’s writing is insistent yet gentle, letting the facts speak for themselves while bringing the human element to the fore through the shared introspection and journeys within Palestine.
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