A United Nations expert who published a report saying there were reasonable grounds to believe Israel has committed genocide in Gaza during its military campaign in Gaza said she had received threats throughout her mandate, Reuters reported.

Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the West Bank and Gaza, presented a report entitled “Anatomy of a Genocide” to the UN Human Rights Council which Israel said it “utterly rejects”.

Asked whether her work on the report had caused her to receive threats, Albanese said: “Yes, I do receive threats. Nothing that so far I considered needing extra precautions. Pressure? Yes, and it doesn’t change either my commitment or the results of my work.”

 “It’s been a difficult time,” she said. “I’ve always been attacked since the very beginning of my mandate.”

Albanese said one of her key findings was that Israel’s executive and military leadership and soldiers have intentionally “subverted their protection functions in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people.”

“The only reasonable inference that can be drawn from the unveiling of this policy is an Israeli state policy of genocidal violence toward the Palestinian people in Gaza,” she said.