Israel is ‘genocidal,’ says UN’s Richard Falk in TV interview
December 17, 2013, 2:19 am
He’s done it again: Richard Falk, whom the United Nations ranks as a top official, has accused Israel of targeting Palestinians with “genocidal intent.”
Falk is the UN Human Rights Council’s
permanent investigator of “Israel’s violations of the principles and
bases of international law.”
Here is the transcript from the scurrilous program broadcast multiple times on Sunday and Monday by Russia Today to a global TV audience, and now being played on the Internet:
RT: “The UN’s special rapporteur on human rights warns ‘the world is slouching towards nothing less than a Palestinian Holocaust.’ Professor Richard Falk thank you very much for joining us. Why is this behavior actually genocidal?”Professor Richard Falk, UN human rights rapporteur: “When you target a group, an ethnic group, and inflict this kind of punishment upon them, you are in effect nurturing a kind of criminal intention that is genocidal.”
Falk uses his imprimatur as a UN official to
make the grievously false accusation that Israel is acting with
“genocidal intent” and perpetrating a “Holocaust.”
If Israel really is “genocidal,” it only follows logically that Falk will justify violence against Israelis, as he did in a recent blog post,
berating “demands by Israel that Palestinians renounce violence” while
Israel “sustains a structure of occupation and oppression.”
It’s time for
the the U.S. to at least attempt to remove the 9/11 conspiracy theorist
and Hamas supporter from his post—and to eliminate his prejudicial and
outdated Human Rights Council mandate.
UN Watch today sent a letter to
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urging him to condemn Falk. When the
name of the world body is misused to promote specious canards—and as an
odious warrant for terrorism—the UN chief has a moral duty to speak out.
But the truth
is that Falk, like other Human Rights Council appointees, answers only
to the U.S. and the 46 other member states of the UNHRC. In this case, the buck does not stop with Ban Ki-moon; it stops with Samantha Power, U.S. ambassador to the UN. That is why I have urged her, in a UN Watch letter sent today, to take action.
(You can do it too, by clicking here to send Ambassador Power a message.)
And because the Obama Administration—more than any other country, and even more than the UN itself—has forcefully promoted
the narrative that the UNHRC has been made credible, effective, and
authoritative, the U.S. bears a special responsibility to initiate the
removal of Falk.
Recall that only a few years ago, as revealed by Wikileaks, it was the Palestinians themselves who tried to remove Richard Falk.
In reacting to previous outrages by Falk, the
U.S. merely asked the former academic to voluntarily resign; he refused.
The U.S. must now take action to remove him.
This it can do by formally endorsing the draft resolution prepared by UN Watch.
Moreover, the U.S. should act to eliminate the mandate itself: the
UNHRC’s permanent investigation of Israel, unchanged after 20 years,
which examines the actions of only one side, and presumes guilt in
advance.
In 2014, we will finally see some movement
against inequality: Israel will finally be accepted into one of the
council’s regional groups, the Western group, and EU and other Western
countries have agreed not to participate in the hateful day against
Israel that is held at every council session.
It will be equally fitting if, after 20 years
of investigating ”Israel’s violations of the principles and bases of
international law,” 2014 is also the year when this unjust, one-sided
and prejudicial mandate is removed as well.
Labels: Anti-Semitism, Israel, United Nations
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