Israel defiant against the UN & freedom

Discussion in 'Politics' started by TorontoTrader2, Dec 20, 2008.

  1. the #1 threat to world peace and democracy is this cult regime.

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    My Expulsion from Israel

    When I arrived in Israel as a UN representative I knew there might be problems at the airport. And there were

    By Richard Falk
    December 20, 2008 "The Guardian" -- - On December 14, I arrived at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israel to carry out my UN role as special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories.

    I was leading a mission that had intended to visit the West Bank and Gaza to prepare a report on Israel's compliance with human rights standards and international humanitarian law. Meetings had been scheduled on an hourly basis during the six days, starting with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, the following day.

    I knew that there might be problems at the airport. Israel had strongly opposed my appointment a few months earlier and its foreign ministry had issued a statement that it would bar my entry if I came to Israel in my capacity as a UN representative.

    At the same time, I would not have made the long journey from California, where I live, had I not been reasonably optimistic about my chances of getting in. Israel was informed that I would lead the mission and given a copy of my itinerary, and issued visas to the two people assisting me: a staff security person and an assistant, both of whom work at the office of the high commissioner of human rights in Geneva.

    To avoid an incident at the airport, Israel could have either refused to grant visas or communicated to the UN that I would not be allowed to enter, but neither step was taken. It seemed that Israel wanted to teach me, and more significantly, the UN a lesson: there will be no cooperation with those who make strong criticisms of Israel's occupation policy.

    After being denied entry, I was put in a holding room with about 20 others experiencing entry problems. At this point, I was treated not as a UN representative, but as some sort of security threat, subjected to an inch-by-inch body search and the most meticulous luggage inspection I have ever witnessed.

    I was separated from my two UN companions who were allowed to enter Israel and taken to the airport detention facility a mile or so away. I was required to put all my bags and cell phone in a room and taken to a locked tiny room that smelled of urine and filth. It contained five other detainees and was an unwelcome invitation to claustrophobia. I spent the next 15 hours so confined, which amounted to a cram course on the miseries of prison life, including dirty sheets, inedible food and lights that were too bright or darkness controlled from the guard office.

    Of course, my disappointment and harsh confinement were trivial matters, not by themselves worthy of notice, given the sorts of serious hardships that millions around the world daily endure. Their importance is largely symbolic. I am an individual who had done nothing wrong beyond express strong disapproval of policies of a sovereign state. More importantly, the obvious intention was to humble me as a UN representative and thereby send a message of defiance to the United Nations.

    Israel had all along accused me of bias and of making inflammatory charges relating to the occupation of Palestinian territories. I deny that I am biased, but rather insist that I have tried to be truthful in assessing the facts and relevant law. It is the character of the occupation that gives rise to sharp criticism of Israel's approach, especially its harsh blockade of Gaza, resulting in the collective punishment of the 1.5 million inhabitants. By attacking the observer rather than what is observed, Israel plays a clever mind game. It directs attention away from the realities of the occupation, practising effectively a politics of distraction.

    The blockade of Gaza serves no legitimate Israeli function. It is supposedly imposed in retaliation for some Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets that have been fired across the border at the Israeli town of Sderot. The wrongfulness of firing such rockets is unquestionable, yet this in no way justifies indiscriminate Israeli retaliation against the entire civilian population of Gaza.

    The purpose of my reports is to document on behalf of the UN the urgency of the situation in Gaza and elsewhere in occupied Palestine. Such work is particularly important now as there are signs of a renewed escalation of violence and even of a threatened Israeli reoccupation.

    Before such a catastrophe happens, it is important to make the situation as transparent as possible, and that is what I had hoped to do in carrying out my mission. Although denied entry, my effort will continue to use all available means to document the realities of the Israeli occupation as truthfully as possible.

    • Richard Falk is professor of international law at Princeton University and the UN's special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories.
     
  2. The stupid bastard experienced the ordinary security measures at an Israeli airport and blamed it on his politics. And so what if the Israelis didn't turn the guy down the nice way, they let him fly there and then get rejected... it's tactics, turn him down the nice way they appoint another one, let it go on, rebuke the puke at the airport, it drags things out... Israel is a tiny and besieged nation, no incentive to being nice about things...
     
  3. No kidding? Liar....
    Israel sent Falk an e-mail on Saturday telling him that he would not be allowed entry, but he decided to make the trip in any case.

    Oh, and btw:

    Alan M. Dershowitz, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School:

    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.
    http://www.hudsonny.org/2008/12/isr...compares-the-jewish-state-to-nazi-germany.php

    Professor Falk can go falk himself.
     
  4. Falk's support for Iranian Revolution and Ruhollah Khomeini

    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.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Falk#Support_for_Iranian_Revolution_and_Ruhollah_Khomeini
     
  5. Sorry, just needed to correct it to reflect reality.
     
  6. TGregg

    TGregg

    So is anybody surprised that terrorists are trying to defend their actions here? And failing? It's too bad we can't have some competition from a culture with one or two thinking individuals behind it. Humping camels all day and stoning women all night might be fun in the desert, but it's not going to form a solid foundation for a culture of value.

    LOL. It's like <A href="http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2109641#post2109641">Wally World at EliteTrader</a> all over again.
     
  7. Attention, K-Mart Terrorists. Blue Light Special. Number of Virgins is doubled for acts of martyrdom - today only!!!
     
  8. The lies continue. Of course Israel has never stopped lying and it is not about to! Nothing that comes out of it, or its supporters, resembles the truth. No wonder that the Israel's citizens asserted in a poll that they believed Nasrallah more than Israel's politicians.

    Keep up the good work Toronto.



    Maariv Smears Richard Falk, New UN Human Rights Representative

    Apr 1st, 2008 by Richard Silverstein | 13
    Reader Rupa Shah passes along an article by Uri Yablonka from Maariv which has this to say about the appointment of Israel critic, Professor Richard Falk to be Occupied Territories rapporteur for the world body’s Human Rights Council:

    It is not every day that the Foreign Ministry decides to ban a senior United Nations emissary from entering Israel, especially when the person involved is a Jewish academic. But in the case of Prof. Richard Falk from the United States, Israel made an exception. This was because in the past Falk voiced support for suicide attacks and compared Israel’s activity with that of the Nazis.

    Whenever you read such a bald-faced statement as this it’s a good idea to treat it with more than a grain of salt. In fact, a truckload would be best in this particular case. Of course, Falk has never supported suicide attacks. There is no evidence to support such a contention and it is a deliberate distortion of his record. But in their desperate need to smear the name of their perceived enemies Israel gets out the big guns and attempts to mow them down. And why use a .22 caliber when a howitzer shell would do? That seems to be the prevailing attitude.

    Other critics of Falk who are slightly less mendacious like Israeli UN ambassador Levanon spoke in opposition to Falk’s appointment saying:

    “He has taken part in a UN fact-finding mission which determined that suicide bombings were a valid method of ’struggle’.

    Even here you’ll note that there is no reference to which mission and no direct attribution of the accusation to Falk himself. Did Falk say this? Or did he sign a document which said this? I strongly doubt it. But the onus should be on the party who makes the claim to authenticate it and Israel has not done so.

    In fact, Falk has made strong statements condemning violence on both sides of the conflict. Thanks to reader Agape in the comment thread below who pointed out this reference to a Falk article about terrorism in The Nation:

    The point here is not in any way to excuse Palestinian suicide bombers and other violence against civilians, but to suggest that when a struggle over territory and statehood is being waged it can and should be resolved at the earliest possible point by negotiation and diplomacy, and that the violence on both sides tends toward the morally and legally impermissible.

    At the very least Ambassador Levanon is a sloppy propagandist. At worst, he’s a liar.

    Has Falk made strong criticisms of Israel? Yes. Have those criticisms been any stronger than those of a good number of Israelis themselves? Not really. So why is Israel getting its knickers in a knot over someone like Falk? Because he has an international reputation and following. Because the attack on him allows Israel to carry forward the narrative of Israeli victimization at the hands of the UN. Knowing it will be called on yet again to defend the indefensible (the Occupation), Israel turns the tables on the accuser in order to deflect the attack.

    In truth, Israel is afraid of Falk. Similarly it refused entry to Desmond Tutu, the Nobel laureate because it was afraid of the international following he had and the powerful impact his criticism would have in the world community.

    The Yablonka article was translated from Hebrew. I’m trying to get the original to confirm the accuracy of the translation. But I have no reason to doubt its accuracy.

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    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/t...hard-falk-new-un-human-rights-representative/
     
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    #10     Dec 22, 2008