Monday, December 15, 2008

Richard Falk barred from entering Israel

Richard Falk, the man sent to the occupied territories by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council, as the UN Special Rapporteur to monitor human rights abuses there, has been barred from entering Israel. It would appear that Falk, a Jewish American and professor emeritus at Princeton University, compared the situation in the occupied territories with the Nazi Holocaust.(1) Oh Richard, you should have known that you were crossing a little red line there; the Holocaust is unique, it cannot be compared with any other crime against humanity and certainly, most certainly, it cannot be compared to Israels treatment of Palestinian militants and terrorists in what we call "the occupied territories" but, which an increasing number of Israelis refer to as "Judea and Samaria". Perhaps, Richard should have contented himself with a similar criticism of Israel's actions to that made by the council's previous investigator, John Dugard from South Africa, who compared the Zionists treatment of Palestinians to that melted out by the racist apartheid regime in South Africa towards blacks.(2) On the other hand, as a Jew, it might just be that for Richard there was an unconscious pychological comparison with the Holocaust while for John Dugard the immediate connection was going to be with the apartheid regime in South Africa.
The reality, of course, is that Richard's freudian slip is most welcome, in a Zionist state, that will even use its anti-semitic card against Jews. What Israel doesn't need at the moment are people on the ground criticising its fascist policies. It really is time for the racist regime in Jerusalem to be reminded that it has an ob
ligation as a member of the UN and as a signatory to a number of human rights treaties to respect the work of UN representatives, to enable their human rights missions and to assist them in fulfilling their responsibilities without fear of repercussions."(3) Ooops, have I said anything anti-semitic there?
1 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1046838.html
2 ibid
3 ibid

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