United Nations "Special Rapporteur" for Palestine Richard Falk, who has suggested Israel was planning a "Palestinian Holocaust," touted 9/11 conspiracy theories, and called for a corporate boycott of the Jewish state, now blames Israel for the recent violence in Gaza.
An organization calling itself International Movement for a JUST World posted a U.N. press release on its website Thursday touting Falk's recent weeklong trip to Cairo and Gaza.
Falk said he initially planned to travel to the region "to assess the overall impact of Israel's prolonged occupation and blockade against the Gaza Strip." But the fighting triggered "an urgent need to investigate Israel's seemingly deliberate attacks against seemingly civilian targets during recent hostilities," he said.
Israel "killed and harmed civilians in a grossly disproportionate manner and thus clearly violated international law," Falk said, and warned that "Israel is not likely to carry out its obligations under the ceasefire agreement."
The press release said nothing about inconvenient subjects that conflict with his anti-Israel narrative, like Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005; terrorist rocket attacks from Gaza targeting Israeli civilians; or Hamas' use of children as human shields in fighting Israel.
The release followed a lengthy essay Falk posted on his own website in which he tried to whitewash Hamas statements calling for the destruction of Israel. He praised senior terrorist operatives Khaled Meshaal and Mousa Abu Marzook as "moderates" and declared that Palestinians were "unquestionably" entitled to the "Right of Return," which most Israelis regard as a formula for the destruction of the Jewish state.
Falk mocked the argument that that Israel had the right to defend itself from Hamas rocket attacks by targeting Gaza-based terrorists. A "more accurate " interpretation would take into account "the American plot to reverse the outcome of the 2006 electoral victory of Hamas" and "the Israeli punitive blockade" and "many instances of provocative Israeli violence," including targeted assassinations of terrorists, he wrote.
Claiming that Israel has "absolute impunity" for "violations of international criminal law," Falk asked why Americans don't treat Hamas with the same respect accorded anti-Nazi resistance groups during World War II: "Those who lost their lives in such a resistance were honored as martyrs. Meshaal and other Hamas leaders have made similar arguments on several occasions, in effect asking what are Palestinians supposed to do in the exercise of resistance" given the failure of traditional diplomacy "to secure their rights under international law."
UN Watch has been closely monitoring Falk's actions. Read more here and here.