In breach, and knowing it
Friday, April 11th, 200810/4/08
Israel has announced that it will not grant a visa to UN human rights investigator Richard Falk, a professor emeritus at Princeton University, who would not back down from comments he made comparing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the collective punishments of others by Nazi Germany. Israel, failing to persuade the UN’s Human Rights Council to expand the envoy’s mandate to include Palestinian human rights abuses against Israelis, protested that such a comparison simply holds no water, even though it was not meant to be one of the number of victims, but rather one of method. Israel’s objection is predictable in view of its unique historic sensibility regarding the Nazis. Yet the comparison is valid nonetheless.
