RUTHFULLY YOURS

Appointed in 2008 as the UN “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967,” Falk spends his time as a professor emeritus from Princeton University, responding to speaking invitations, collecting awards from around the country, spouting antisemitism, and supporting 9/11 conspiracy theories.

In his latest tirade in an online journal, Falk says the Boston attacks make sense when one properly understands that “the American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world.” Consequently, he argues, we should all be “meditating” on poet W.H. Auden’s apt line “Those to whom evil is done/do evil in return.”

According to Falk, what happened in Boston was a mere “blowback.” Not only that, it will get “worse” if America does not fundamentally alter its “relations with the Islamic world.”

Falk has been peddling his grotesque opinions from the UN platform for years. Because the truth is that antisemitism and anti-Americanism is his Human Rights Council job description. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) controls the balance of power on the Council by holding a majority of seats in the African and Asian regional groups, which in turn comprise the majority of Council members.

Now Falk has pulled Boston into his twisted terrain, where fighting back is itself indefensible. He called the police action in Boston a “hysterical dragnet.” Similarly, Falk has analogized Israeli responses to Palestinian terrorism to the “Nazi record of collective atrocity.” His website has sported a cartoon of a dog wearing clothing marked with “USA” and a star of David, devouring blood spattered bones and urinating on a statue of lady justice.

Richard Falk, however, did not materialize out of thin air. Less than two weeks ago, a top UN committee charged with drafting the first comprehensive convention against terrorism, ended in disarray because Islamic states insisted that there is a distinction between terrorism and “legitimate struggle” against “colonial or alien domination.” Morsi’s Egypt led the way in pressing for a world conference on “root causes” of terrorism and “the conditions conducive to terrorism.” OIC countries insisted that these conditions include “political and economic injustice, marginalization, poverty, hunger and alienation.”

In short, the real victim becomes the terrorist, not Krystle Campbell, Lu Lingzi, Martin Richard, and Officer Sean Collier.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has become a lead champion of the UN Human Rights Council. While President Bush refused to join a human rights body that had no human rights credentials for membership, joining and supporting the Council has been a signature foreign policy move of President Obama.

The State Department has approached the experience of belonging to the Council as a game of whack-a-mole. When the unimpeded election of Colonel Gadhafi’s Libya to the Council finally became too embarrassing, they had Libya temporarily “suspended.” When the permanent bash-Israel agenda item of the Council comes up three times a year they sit mute, and send assistant secretaries of state to Jewish events across the country assuring the community they feel their pain. When Iran wanted a Council seat, they traded the country for a seat on the UN’s top women’s rights body, the Commission on the Status of Women.

The question is what are they going to whack now? Richard Falk is emboldened by a UN “human rights” Council that is emboldened by the participation and support of the world’s leading democracy. It is time to put an end to America’s support for the Council now.

Anne Bayefsky is director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust. Follow her @AnneBayefsky.