STRIPPING ISRAEL OF ITS BLANKET IMMUNITY

On December 14, UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur to the Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, was deported from Israel after arriving at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport from Geneva. Falk, an elderly Jewish American professor, was forced to spend the night in one of Ben Gurion's infamous holding cells before being transported back to Switzerland.

What really ruffled Israel's feathers and put a permanent black spot next to Falk's name was a June 2007 article by Falk entitled "Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust". In it he wrote:

"It is especially painful for me, as an American Jew, to feel compelled to portray the ongoing and intensifying abuse of the Palestinian people by Israel through a reliance on such an inflammatory metaphor as ‘holocaust'... Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not."

Who will tell Israel that it is completely unacceptable to deny a UN official entry into its country or that blocking shipments of humanitarian aid is the act of an oppressive military occupation and not of a western democracy? Until there are more brave voices backed by even braver political powers driving this point home at every possible turn, it is unlikely that even the most watered down resolution or agreement will ever come to fruition....MORE