Imagine the UN appointing David Duke to report on how Blacks are victimizing whites, or Hugo Chavez to report on American foreign policy, or Mohammad Ahmadinejad to investigate whether the Holocaust occurred.
Well the UN has done something comparable by appointing Richard Falk as its supposedly impartial "rapporteur" on Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories. For those of you who don't know who Richard Falk is, he is a notorious crackpot who believes that the United States is hiding the truth about 9/11, implying that our government has "complicity" in that terrorist attack and that it's role "taints the legitimacy of the American government" which he has characterized as "fascist." His rants have become fodder for conspiracy nuts all over the world who claim that America and Israel orchestrated the attacks.
More relevant to his role in the Middle East, Falk, a retired professor, wrote--before he even began his job--that it is not an "irresponsible overstatement" to accuse Israel of perpetrating a "criminalized" Nazi Holocaust on the Palestinian people. This from a hard-leftist whose relative silence with regard to real genocides committed by communist nations such as Cambodia, and Arab nations such as Sudan, speaks volumes.
In making his comparison between Nazi Germany and democratic Israel, Falk ignored the Hamas rockets directed against Israeli citizens and the suicide bombs employed by Palestinian terrorists to blow up school buses, discos and religious ceremonies. Any comparison between Israeli efforts to defend its citizens from terrorism on the one hand, and the Nazi Holocaust on the other hand, is obscene and ignorant--unless one does not really believe that the Nazis murdered millions of Jews or unless one bizarrely believes that Israel has murdered million of Palestinians in gas chambers! Even if one believes that the Israeli military has overreacted to terrorist provocations, there is surely a difference between military actions taken in self defense, and the systematic policy of the Nazis to murder every Jewish man, woman and child living in Europe, though the Jews posed no danger to Germany. The Nazis even ingathered Jews from the far flung corners of Europe in order to gas them in Auschwitz and other murder camps. Despite these enormous differences, it has become conventional for anti-Israel extremists to compare the Jewish state of Israel to the Nazi government that came close to murdering all the Jews of Europe. That is why this allegedly false comparison is the province of anti-Semites, assorted nuts of the hard right and the hard left, and haters such as Richard Falk.
I propose a new rule for civil discourse in a civilized society: anyone who compares what the Nazis did to the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust with what the Israelis are doing with regard to the Palestinians, has disqualified from being taken seriously on any issue relating to Jews, Israel or the Middle East. Such people have a right to express their obscene and barbaric views, just as anti-Semites are entitled to express views denying the Holocaust. But they should be treated as pariahs by all decent people who believe in nuanced and calibrated consideration of complex and divisive issues. Comparison between the Holocaust and Israel is simply beyond the pale of reasoned discourse. It belongs to that genre of hate speech that includes claims that blacks are racially inferior, that women enjoy being raped and that all gays are pedophiles. No one who holds such views should ever be appointed to a position of trust and responsibility that requires fair judgment and an ability to distinguish truth from falsity--especially with regard to the Middle East. Richard Falk belongs in this category of bigoted crackpots. That he was selected by the United Nations to assess the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians tells us more about the United Nations than it does about Israel. Whether Israel was right or wrong, as a matter of principle or tactics, in excluding Falk from entering its borders, one can certainly understand why the Jewish state would refuse to cooperate with a rapporteur whose objectivity has been compromised by his bigotry.
What I am proposing in no way undercuts freedom of speech. Bigots and crackpots are free to set up soapboxes anywhere they choose, and everyone is free to accept or reject their ideas in the marketplace. Freedom of speech does not treat all ideas equally. Those that are rejected in the marketplace are still free to compete--as Holocaust denial, racist and sexist speech are competing today--but some ideas are so hateful, so demonstrably false, so ill-motivated and so bigoted that they belong in the trash bin of history. Encouraging decent people to toss those ideas into that waste bin is an important exercise of freedom of speech.
So let Richard Falk spew his hate-speech on the Internet or other private soapboxes, but do not let his bigotry, anymore than that of David Duke, to receive the imprimatur and funding of the United Nations.
Debate me... please.
-Zoeycam
At the risk of offending him I ask " who should we compare Israel to?" We have witnessed over 40 years of oppressive occupation and huge atrocities by Israel's killing machine. Look at the numbers of dead on each side professor. Who else compares ? Even aparteid South Africa did not kill as many.
As regards Gaza, it is a very large prison with the prison guards controlling all people movement, utilities, food and medicine and regularly greatly restricting each of these. Israel is trying to starve Gazans into submission. Collective punishment is a human rights violation is it not? Who else compares?
Hamas is unarmed compared to Israel but is labeled the aggressor. What should they do, lay down their arms? Would Israel withdraw from Palestinian land? Not in 100 years.
Why is Israel building settlements, for negotiating purposes or to expand their borders permanently?
Many of Israel's actions are similar to the way the Nazis treated the Jews. That is exactly why it is so astonishing that Israel continues to behave in this manner.
That said, there is plenty of blame to go around, and persecutions of other religions besides the Jews.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-utz/religious-minorities-unde_b_152267.html
Looking at some of his past positions DOES make his judgements rather suspect. It hardly is a security threat for him to be in Israel, and one does not win points by denying him entry. It is not a valid comparison of Falk to the KKK. Just as he has said that the Israelis are NOT an exact replica of the Nazis either. A far better criticism would be to attack his past views and judgements which are seriously flawed, and show a serious lack of responsible judgement. I DO agree with Allen on that point.
Every time someone says something bad about Israel, Washington and the press, goes into a tizzy
and we cant get anything else done until the Israeli's are happy again.
I've had it with them,let them fight there own wars, besides, with friends like Israel, who needs enemies?
2. "Notorious crackpot"? Try professor emeritus of international law at an Ivy League university.
3. Recognizing that Israel may be making a mistake in the Palestinian territories does not automatically make one an "anti Semite", "nut" or "hater".
4. I'd have considered appointing Dr. Falk to this position, were it my place to do so. He's Jewish, but could be more likely than others to balance his interpretations due to his views about the treatment of Palestinians.
Please don't turn me in to the Anti-Defamation League, Mr. Dershowitz. I am no anti Semite; just trying to cut down on my knee-jerk reactions.
Are you sure he's not a comedian? From Wikipedia: "On February 16, 1979, two weeks after the Iranian revolution returned religious leader Ruhollah Khomeini to Iran, Falk wrote an op-ed for the New York Times entitled "Trusting Khomeini." He criticized President Jimmy Carter's accusations of "religious fanaticism" and media descriptions of Khomeini as being backward, antisemitic, and guilty of "theocratic fascism." Believing that Khomeini had been judged unfairly, he concluded "the depiction of [Khomeini] as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false ... To suppose that Ayatollah Khomeini is dissembling seems almost beyond belief. ... Having created a new model of popular revolution based, for the most part, on nonviolent tactics, Iran may yet provide us with a desperately-needed model of humane governance for a third-world country."["
And the present Iran is a testimony to the correctness of Professor Falk's prediction. All of the above quotation you make is proven right. So, what is your point?
Otherwise, the comparison becomes more appropriate every day of the Gazan blockade.
And any propaganda campaign which attaches phoney labels of 'bigot' to any who call Israel's policy
against the Palestinian what it is will fail. The writing's on the wall.