To Falk’s discredit by Ruthie Blum

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=18639

The outrageous report released this week by the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western ‎Asia — which concludes “beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that ‎constitute the crime of apartheid” — should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with its co-author, ‎Richard Falk.‎

This is not the first time that the former U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian ‎Territories has given bias a bad name. Indeed, throughout his career, the American legal “scholar” has ‎shown a deep loathing for Western democracies, including his own, while not even attempting to ‎disguise his deep attraction to and affinity for evil Islamists. ‎

Though infamous since 2001 for blaming the U.S. for the 9/11 attacks, linking the Boston Marathon ‎bombings to America’s Mideast policies and warning that Israel was committing genocide, Falk was ‎busy apologizing for bloodthirsty radicals and their regimes long before that.‎

In January 1979, when he was still a professor of international law at Princeton, Falk accompanied ‎former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and Don Luce, a prominent member of Clergy and Laity ‎Concerned (established in 1965 by the National Council of Churches to “struggle against American ‎imperialism and exploitation in just about every corner of the world”) on a private, eight-day fact-‎finding mission to Iran. At the end of the trip, the trio stopped over in France to meet Ayatollah ‎Ruhollah Khomeini, who had been living in exile for 14 years.‎

Right around this time, the ousted, cancer-ridden Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled the country. ‎Two weeks later, on February 1, Khomeini returned to his native land to take the helm of the new ‎Islamic Republic of Iran.‎

On February 16, Falk published an op-ed in The New York Times called “Trusting Khomeini.” In it, he ‎waxed poetic about the Muslim cleric, who would turn Iran into the nuclear weapons-hungry ‎theocracy that it is today. “The depiction of him as fanatical, reactionary, and the bearer of crude ‎prejudices seems certainly and happily false,” Falk wrote.‎

He then went on to praise Shiite Islam. “What is distinctive, perhaps, about this religious orientation is ‎its concern with resisting oppression and promoting social justice,” he said, concluding: “Having ‎created a new model of popular revolution based, for the most part, on nonviolent tactics, Iran may ‎provide us with a desperately needed model of humane governance for a Third World country.”‎

This “humane governance” began with the backing of students who took over the U.S. Embassy in ‎Tehran and held dozens of its staff hostage for 444 days, while then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter tried ‎to negotiate their release by “understanding the grievances” of Tehran’s mullahs.‎

The denunciations of Falk’s latest report — and assertion by U.N. Secretary General Antonio ‎Guterres that it does not reflect his views — were quick in coming. ‎

Major American Jewish organizations were among those to condemn the report, with World Jewish ‎Congress CEO Robert Singer calling it “a sad attempt to reinstate the infamous 1975 U.N. resolution that ‎considered Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination.”‎

Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon stated, “The attempt to smear and falsely label the only ‎true democracy in the Middle East by creating a false analogy is despicable and constitutes a blatant ‎lie.”‎

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said, “That such anti-Israel propaganda would come from a ‎body whose membership nearly universally does not recognize Israel is unsurprising. That it was ‎drafted by Richard Falk, a man who has repeatedly made biased and deeply offensive comments ‎about Israel and espoused ridiculous conspiracy theories, including about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is ‎equally unsurprising.”‎

Haley is right on all counts, which is why Falk should have been discredited academically and politically ‎decades ago. Alas, people of his ilk, who purport to care about the issue of human rights while siding ‎with and apologizing for its greatest abusers, are not only immune to consequences, but are rewarded ‎with illustrious titles and lucrative positions.‎

Rather than beating our breasts every time the Falks of this world spew their mendacious vitriol, let us ‎instead disgrace — and withhold financial support from — the institutions that employ and promote ‎them. ‎

Ruthie Blum is the managing editor of The Algemeiner.‎

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