According to the BBC, Richard Falk is a “senior UN human rights official.” The phrase confers on him a gravitas which he doesn’t deserve and masks the farce involved in handing a 9/11 conspiracy theorist a mandate to bash Israel.
Yesterday, Israel expelled Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories. Israel was right to do so.
Isabel Kershner provides a quick refresher course on Falk:
He has compared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to Nazi atrocities and has called for more serious examination of the conspiracy theories surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks. Pointing to discrepancies between the official version of events and other versions, he recently wrote that “only willful ignorance can maintain that the 9/11 narrative should be treated as a closed book.”
In his capacity as a United Nations investigator, Mr. Falk issued a statement this month describing Israel’s embargo on Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, as a crime against humanity, while making only cursory reference to Hamas’s rocket attacks against Israeli civilian centers. Israeli officials expressed outrage.
When his appointment was announced by the Human Rights Council last spring, the Israeli representative said it was “impossible to believe that out of a list of 184 potential candidates,” the members had made “the best possible choice for the post.”
Falk’s ejection has already inspired a tantrum from the President of the UN General Assembly, Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, “who decried Israel’s treatment of Falk and blamed the country’s diplomats for inciting death threats against him.” Brockmann, you will remember, is an advocate of sanctions and boycotts against Israel.
Some NGOs are also claiming that Israel’s action was undemocratic. I don’t agree. The issue is not really Falk’s seething personal hatred of Israel. Plenty of people with similar views have entered Israel in the past and will do so in future. It’s the fact that his hatred is now grounded upon a UN mandate; that he has become one more node in the UN’s extensive network of agencies, offices, commissions, committees and special representatives on Palestine which result in the diminishing of Israel’s sovereign equality under the UN’s own rules.
Israel has every right to resist this discriminatory treatment. To expect that Israel should happily enable Falk to traverse its own territory in order to continue these practices is just an insult, on a par with throwing a shoe at a US President.
Expelling Falk was an act of self-defense. The next step is to expel his position from the UN and replace it with a mandate and a person who is scrupulously balanced - in all senses of that term.
Falk holds a very high position of responsibility in the UN, owing his selection very much to EU member states, the very EU that in 2004, called attention to the lack of a common definition of anti-Semitism.
Consequently, a working definition was written collaboratively by a small group of non-governmental organizations which specifically pointed out what constitutes antisemitism:
“*Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
*Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
*Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or
Israelis.
*Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
I’m wondering about this lack of coherence on the part of the EU. Supporting, on the one hand, a definition of an antisemite as someone who compares “contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” and, on the other hand, appointing to this job in which Israel’s policies are very much under scrutiny someone whose incontinent pronouncements subscribe to the requisite onus of this very definition.
Exactly how important (as opposed to famous) is he? According to Wikipedia the Special Rapporteurs are unremunerated, and I read somewhere else that he is only tenuously connected to either the Geneva or NYC offices.
I share the general dismay at Falk’s appointment - but I feel like Dugard was worse - though more temperate - but Dugard didn’t get banned. That’s not to say he shouldn’t have - Al Qaradawi got banned from Britain for justifying terror and threatening inter-community relations - and he wasn’t even pretending to be a diplomat.