No one can say the Jewish state isn't consistently cowardly when it come to accepting responsibility of its human rights violations in Palestine, as this "Democracy Now!" interview with Amy Goodman and Richard Falk proves once again:
"Well, we’re still joined by a legal expert who’s just spent six years trying to hold Israel to account for its actions in the Occupied Territories. Richard Falk has just completed his term as special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights for the United Nations Human Rights Council. His writings about the Israel-Palestine issue and his experience as U.N. rapporteur are compiled in a new book. It’s out today. It’s called Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope. Richard Falk is professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and research professor in the global studies department at UC Santa Barbara. He presented the Edward Said Memorial Lecture last night at Columbia University.
"Can you talk about, well, just that, this latest news on what is happening right now with Israel and Gaza?
RICHARD FALK: Well, as far as their cooperation with the U.N. is concerned, this report that you just showed your audience is very misleading.
"They have refused to cooperate with the Commission of Inquiry in—that the Human Rights Council appointed to look into the allegations of war crimes associated with the attack on Gaza in July and August.
"And they refused to cooperate with my successor, an Indonesian diplomat who they favored, actually, and they persuaded the president of the Human Rights Council to appoint, with the expectation that they would cooperate with him. But as I’ve said all along, you only have to be 10 percent objective to come to the same critical conclusions that I came to in relation to Israel’s violation of fundamental human rights in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, the three segments of occupied territory.
"AMY GOODMAN: What is that conclusion that you came to?
"RICHARD FALK: Well, the conclusion is flagrant violations that are official policy—it’s not deviations—from the extension of the settlements as a violation of international humanitarian law, not disallowing transfer of the occupying country’s population to the occupied society, the imposition of a regime of collective punishment on the whole civilian population of Gaza.
"And locking that civilian population into the combat zone during Protective Edge is a distinctive atrocity, where women and children were not allowed to become refugees, and there was no opportunity to be an internally displaced person.
"As horrible as things were for civilians in Syria and in Iraq in recent years, they always had—the civilian population always could leave the combat zone. Here, they’re literally locked into the combat zone, and only those Gazans with foreign passports were allowed to leave. That involved 800 people out of 1,800,000.
"So it is a very extreme situation that is not treated as an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe for geopolitical reasons. The U.S. has a geopolitical veto over what the U.N. can do in relation to a situation of this kind. We react to Kobani..."
But Jews are Chosen...by Wall Street to rule over all the land between the River and the sea.
Former U.N. Special Rapporteur Richard Falk on the Legitimacy of Hope in the Palestinian Struggle Democracy Now
"Well, we’re still joined by a legal expert who’s just spent six years trying to hold Israel to account for its actions in the Occupied Territories. Richard Falk has just completed his term as special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights for the United Nations Human Rights Council. His writings about the Israel-Palestine issue and his experience as U.N. rapporteur are compiled in a new book. It’s out today. It’s called Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope. Richard Falk is professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and research professor in the global studies department at UC Santa Barbara. He presented the Edward Said Memorial Lecture last night at Columbia University.
"Can you talk about, well, just that, this latest news on what is happening right now with Israel and Gaza?
RICHARD FALK: Well, as far as their cooperation with the U.N. is concerned, this report that you just showed your audience is very misleading.
"They have refused to cooperate with the Commission of Inquiry in—that the Human Rights Council appointed to look into the allegations of war crimes associated with the attack on Gaza in July and August.
"And they refused to cooperate with my successor, an Indonesian diplomat who they favored, actually, and they persuaded the president of the Human Rights Council to appoint, with the expectation that they would cooperate with him. But as I’ve said all along, you only have to be 10 percent objective to come to the same critical conclusions that I came to in relation to Israel’s violation of fundamental human rights in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, the three segments of occupied territory.
"AMY GOODMAN: What is that conclusion that you came to?
"RICHARD FALK: Well, the conclusion is flagrant violations that are official policy—it’s not deviations—from the extension of the settlements as a violation of international humanitarian law, not disallowing transfer of the occupying country’s population to the occupied society, the imposition of a regime of collective punishment on the whole civilian population of Gaza.
"And locking that civilian population into the combat zone during Protective Edge is a distinctive atrocity, where women and children were not allowed to become refugees, and there was no opportunity to be an internally displaced person.
"As horrible as things were for civilians in Syria and in Iraq in recent years, they always had—the civilian population always could leave the combat zone. Here, they’re literally locked into the combat zone, and only those Gazans with foreign passports were allowed to leave. That involved 800 people out of 1,800,000.
"So it is a very extreme situation that is not treated as an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe for geopolitical reasons. The U.S. has a geopolitical veto over what the U.N. can do in relation to a situation of this kind. We react to Kobani..."
But Jews are Chosen...by Wall Street to rule over all the land between the River and the sea.
Former U.N. Special Rapporteur Richard Falk on the Legitimacy of Hope in the Palestinian Struggle Democracy Now
