“Such a pattern of continuing blockade under these conditions amounts to such a serious violation of the Geneva Conventions as to constitute a continuing crime against humanity,” Falk said in a statement released in Geneva. (more…)

Such investigations, the summary states, should be carried out by an “impartial inquiry mandated, and adequately resourced, to investigate allegations of violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza and southern Israel by the [Israeli army] and by Hamas and other Palestinian militants.”

The board of inquiry corroborated the already existing masses of evidence collected by local and international human rights organizations, eyewitness accounts from UN and other humanitarian personnel, and the legal examination by the distinguished (but vilified by Israel and the US) UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Richard Falk.

And yet none of this death and destruction, not the use of white phosphorus in flagrant violation of international law, not even against the UN (if that is all the secretary-general cares about) merited any further examination. (more…)

“To lock people into a war zone is something that evokes the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto, and sieges that occur unintentionally during a period of wartime,” Falk, who is Jewish, said, referring to the starvation and murder of Warsaw’s Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two. (more…)

“On an inter-governmental level, the war crimes process is essentially subject to geopolitical control, which means in practice that the criminal wrongdoing of the most powerful [the U.S. government] and its closest friends [Israel] get a free pass,” Richard Falk, a professor of international law and a U.N. human rights expert, told IPS.

Despite widespread condemnation, this practice of “geopolitical impunity” is likely to shield Israel from formal scrutiny with respect to the alleged crimes of war and crimes against humanity associated with its military operations in Gaza since Dec. 27, he added. (more…)

“With this ill-considered action, Israel put itself in the company of countries like Burma and North Korea in denying entry to UN human rights experts,” said Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division. “Strongly disagreeing with Professor Falk’s views is no good reason for denying him entry, treating him in a punitive and degrading manner, and refusing to allow him to do his work on behalf of the UN.” (more…)

Israel’s siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. It comes close to the horrors visited on Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs. It has disturbing echoes of the Nazi ghettos of Lodz and Warsaw.

“This is a stain on what is left of Israeli morality,” I was told by Richard N. Veits, the former U.S. ambassador to Jordan who led a delegation from the Council on Foreign Relations to Gaza to meet Hamas leaders this past summer. “I am almost breathless discussing this subject. It is so myopic. Washington, of course, is a handmaiden to all this. The Israeli manipulation of a population in this manner is comparable to some of the crimes that took place against civilian populations fifty years ago.”

The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, calls what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza “a crime against humanity.” Falk, who is Jewish, has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as “a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” He has asked for “the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.” (more…)

Israeli authorities on Monday expelled Richard Falk, a United Nations investigator of human rights in the Palestinian territories, saying he was unwelcome because of what the government has regarded as his hostile position toward Israel. (more…)

Notice that the New York Times immediately cites Falk’s comments about 9/11 conspiracy theories. What does this have to do with being barred from Israel? Rather than address the validity of his comments on Israeli apartheid, the Times chooses to paint him as a loony conspiracy theorist by focuses almost exclusively on his 9/11 comments…

Falk, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, has a long history of criticizing Israel, and Israel contended that his mandate, which provides him with the authority to examine only Israeli abuses against Palestinians, is fundamentally unfair. (more…)

Falk Asks “Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not.” (more…)

When he uses the word ‘apartheid,’ he means that Israel ought to be subject to the same kind of sanctions, boycott and isolation that were applied to apartheid South Africa. (more…)

Richard Falk, the Council’s special rapporteur on human rights in Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, said on Monday that Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip amounted to a “crime against humanity” and should be investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC). (more…)