Richard Falk is a long-time anti-Israel (and often anti-American) polemicist. A retired Princeton professor, Falk has dedicated much of his life to blaming Israel and the United States for the world’s woes, while coddling extremism everywhere else in the world. Not surprisingly, Falk also is the special envoy of the anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council investigating “war crimes” in Gaza.
Falk is Jewish, a fact he uses to deflect criticism. He peddles the false syllogism that being Jewish means being fair to Israel. It is the same false argument used by the equally anti-Israel Norman Finkelstein.
The Associated Press uses a similar tactic to lend legitimacy to Falk’s anti-Israel views in an article titled “U.N. rights envoy sees Israeli war crimes in Gaza.” What a surprise. Falk finds war crimes based on Israel’s use of the military in densely populated Gaza to stop Palestinians from firing missiles into Israel from those densely populated areas.
The article notes that Falk was “denied entry to Israel two weeks before the assault started, forcing him to abort a planned mission to Gaza.” The article does not mention that the reason Falk was denied entry was that he was viewed as so biased, and as having such an anti-Israel agenda, that Israel took the almost unprecedented step of denying entry to a UN official. By contrast, UN agencies and personnel operate freely in Israel and the Palestinian areas, so denying Falk entry was a big step reflecting Falk’s lack of neutrality.
Instead of noting Falk’s anti-Israel past, the AP article seeks to legitimize Falk’s criticism’s of Israel by noting that Falk is Jewish:
Falk, who is Jewish, suggested the Security Council might set up an ad hoc criminal tribunal to establish accountability for war crimes in Gaza, noting Israel has not signed the Rome statutes establishing the International Criminal Court.
Why not just report the truth about Falk to put his findings in proper perspective, rather than insulating Falk from criticism based on his religion?
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