GENEVA, August 12 – UN Watch, the Geneva-based non-governmental organization that monitors the United Nations, has called on World Bank President Ajay Banga to fire their senior economist Massimiliano Cali, accusing him of grossly violating World Bank neutrality rules by publishing years of inflammatory social media posts inciting antisemitism, promoting jihadist terrorism, and attacking Israel and the United States. Click here for UN Watch Complaint Letter to World Bank.
Cali, a senior official of the World Bank in Tunisia, is the husband of Francesca Albanese, the purported UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine who was recently sanctioned and barred from entering the United States for her own extremist statements, and for waging economic war against Israel and American companies.
As seen from his Facebook posts documented by UN Watch, Cali is a major promoter of and collaborator with Albanese’s extreme anti-Israel incitement.
UN Watch has determined that under the sanctions announced on July 9th, Cali is also now banned from entry to the U.S., which could be a severe complication for him given that the World Bank is headquartered in Washington.
Cali has worked as a World Bank economist for more than a decade, while at the same time publicly accusing America of seeking to kill children, branding Israel “the most terrorist state on earth,” comparing Israelis to Nazis, and justifying Palestinian suicide bombings and stabbings.
In posts documented by UN Watch, Cali:
- Engaged in Holocaust inversion, equating a Jewish child suffering from the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto, to a Palestinian boy holding a toy rifle.
- Claimed Israel invents “phantom” stabbing attacks to justify “carnage.”
- Whitewashed young Palestinian terrorists who were killed while planting roadside bombs, calling them “children in the outdoor prison of Gaza.”
- Promoted his wife’s UN report accusing Israel of genocide, while completely ignoring the Hamas October 7 atrocities.
- Promoted a petition in 2014 to prosecute “mass murderer” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the International Criminal Court.
UN Watch said Cali’s extremist political conduct, all done in public, flagrantly violates World Bank staff rules which require employees to “act responsibly in making public statements” and which warn that social media posts can “compromise World Bank neutrality” and cause “reputational risks.”
“Massimiliano Cali’s long record of antisemitic, anti-American, and pro-terror rhetoric makes a mockery of the World Bank’s own code of conduct,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer. “Keeping an apologist for terrorism on staff undermines the Bank’s credibility and damages its reputation.”
The Geneva-based watchdog noted that Cali’s violations are aggravated by his promotion of statements from his spouse that led to her U.S. sanctions and travel ban under Executive Order 14203.
“Given that World Bank staff are perceived as representing the organization even when expressing views in a personal capacity, it is shocking that for over a decade the World Bank has allowed Calì to publish social media posts that propagate antisemitism and justify Jihadi terrorism,” said Neuer.
“We’re calling on the World Bank to fire him, to explain how the organization tolerated his dangerous and inflammatory posts for over a decade, and to hold his supervisors accountable — including Alexandre Arrobbio, the World Bank’s country Manager for Tunisia. If the U.S. is helping to fund $500 million for World Bank Tunisia projects, that office needs to be held accountable.”
UN Watch’s full dossier of Cali’s posts is available here.
