Richard Falk
Photo: AFP
Boycott recommendation
Op-ed: Richard Falk had two options – forced hospitalization or taking job as UN Rights Council rapporteur
While the UN shows that it has no problem observing the chaos and carnage in Syria with intellectual curiosity from afar, the activity aimed at condemning Israel has reached new heights.
Earlier this week, Richard Falk, the special rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council, released a report in which he called for a boycott of private companies that are "engaged in profit-making" in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Anti-Israel
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In the report, Falk singled out 13 companies, including Hewlett Packard, Motorola, Volvo, Caterpillar and even Veolia, which holds shares in the company that operates the Jerusalem light rail system and provides transportation for the residents of the capital's eastern sector.
Falk, a Jewish-American professor, has had a long and peculiar career. Following the Iranian revolution he accused critics of the ayatollah regime of racism and hatred of Muslims. He published articles comparing the situation in Gaza to the Holocaust, and after 9/11 he claimed that neoconservatives took part in a plot to attack the World Trade Center.
With such an impressive resume, Falk had to options: One was forced hospitalization and medication treatment, and the other was to be appointed special rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council in 2008. He chose the second option.
Falk's report has already been condemned by the US and Canada, but it is still an official product of the UN Rights Council, a long-running farce that is completely ignored by Israel.
The UN's main engines are agreements between countries and money. The world body is based on donations, mainly from the US. Currently, Israel has some influence in Washington, so, if it can't beat the biased Council, it should make every effort to stop its funding.
