National self-respect demands that Israel not give in on the matter of Richard A. Falk (see: Picking the right guys for the job), UN Human Rights Council nominee for “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967”. Despite the fact that the position itself is absurd and simply an excuse for producing more anti-Israel propaganda, Falk is really exceptional in the degree of bias he brings to his position.
In the essay, “Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaustâ€, he called on foreign governments to intervene in Gaza.
“The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty,†Mr Falk wrote, adding it was not “an irresponsible overstatement†to associate the Gaza situation with the Holocaust. — UK Daily Telegraph
In a recent BBC interview, Falk reiterated his position, and as a result Israel is refusing to grant him a visa.
His point of view is quite common in the academic world (Falk is Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton), despite the fact that it entirely ignores reality.
In the real world, Hamas fires rockets at Israel every day, sends terrorists across the border to murder Israelis, and is presently engaged in a huge military buildup with the help of Iran and Syria in preparation for the next war, which will probably involve coordinated attacks on Israel by Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south. Meanwhile Israel supplies fuel and electricity to Gaza.
But Falk apparently is quite accustomed to living in fantasy worlds. Here is an example:
On March 24 in an interview with a radio host and former University of Wisconsin instructor, Kevin Barrett, Mr. Falk said, “It is possibly true that especially the neoconservatives thought there was a situation in the country and in the world where something had to happen to wake up the American people. Whether they are innocent about the contention that they made that something happen or not, I don’t think we can answer definitively at this point. All we can say is there is a lot of grounds for suspicion, there should be an official investigation of the sort the 9/11 commission did not engage in and that the failure to do these things is cheating the American people and in some sense the people of the world of a greater confidence in what really happened than they presently possess.” NY Sun (my emphasis) (h/t: LGF)
Falk claims that he is “not irresponsible” in equating Israel’s actions in Gaza with the Holocaust, and I presume his ideas about 9/11 are also acceptable in his mind. I’m sure his reference to “neoconservatives” had nothing to do with the common linkage of neocons to Jews (Falk himself is of Jewish extraction). It is strange, though, that he doesn’t simply blame the Bush Administration as most 9/11 conspiracy theorists do.
But it is about time that intellectuals like Falk start to understand that their ‘provocative’ talk may have consequences in the real world, including people getting killed. Certainly anything that prevents Israel from responding to Hamas terrorism falls into that category.
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