Pressured by Nikki Haley, U.N. Pulls Richard Falk’s ‘Apartheid’ Israel Report, Head of Arab U.N. Agency Resigns

GENEVA, March 17, 2017 – UN Watch welcomed today’s resignation by Rima Khalaf from her post as head of a Beirut-based UN agency, comprised of 18 Arab states, after what she described as pressure from secretary-general Antonió Guterres to withdraw a report accusing Israel of “apartheid.” The report appears to have been deleted today from the U.N. ESCWA agency’s website.

As revealed by UN Watch, the author of the report was disgraced ex-UN official Richard Falk, who had been denounced on repeated occasions by former UN chief Ban Ki-moon and other world leaders for espousing 9/11 conspiracy theories, blaming the U.S. and Israel for the Boston Marathon bombing, and spreading antisemitism.

Earlier this week, U.S. ambassador Nikki Haley welcomed remarks by Guterres’ spokesman distancing himself from the report, but she demanded that the UN “withdraw the report altogether.”

“When someone issues a false and defamatory report in the name of the UN,” said Haley today in reaction, “it is appropriate that the person resign. UN agencies must do a better job of eliminating false and biased work, and I applaud the Secretary-General’s decision to distance his good office from it.”

“Guterres deserves credit for doing the right thing,” said Hillel Neuer, who sparred with Falk repeatedly during the latter’s fraught 6-year term as the UN Human Rights Council’s investigator of alleged Israeli violations.

“But there is no question that the initial moral voice here was that of U.S. ambassador Nikki Haley, and that it was U.S. leverage which prompted the UN to act.”





https://www.unwatch.org/head-arab-un-agency-resigns-report-apartheid-israel-nikki-haley-demanded-un-pull-report/



And this is what the problem is today with the UN, that there is a majority of authoritarian and theocratic countries over that of democratic nations, within the UN. It ceases to be effective. Where here 18 Muslim majority autocratic and theocratic nations make an appalling and unfounded charge against one single nation. When those presenting this report, fail in countless areas of human, civil and equal rights for its on citizens.

As I keep saying. Those that continually make these unfounded accusations to the worst aspects of history like Nazism and Apartheid to Israel. Are attempting to normalize and legitimize hating Israel/Jews and making it acceptable. No country would accept hate promoted of any Muslim nation and its people and yet we see this often happen to Israel and Jews.

Even reading the report, is based on lies and would make every nation an Apartheid state, including their own Muslim nations, based on their claims. Its so shockingly poor, I am glad people are standing up and being vocal to this vile hate speech.

Its time the world stood up to this racial situation. Israel does commit wrongs and should be criticized for these wrongs, but to make unfounded comparisons, is nothing short of hate speech.

It is good to see the new leader of the UN, is not tolerating this propaganda hate speech.

Thorin wrote:As I keep saying. Those that continually make these unfounded accusations to the worst aspects of history like Nazism and Apartheid to Israel. Are attempting to normalize and legitimize hating Israel/Jews and making it acceptable. No country would accept hate promoted of any Muslim nation and its people and yet we see this often happen to Israel and Jews.

Pretty serious charges.  Any facts to back this up?  Another matter:

Thorin wrote:Earlier this week, U.S. ambassador Nikki Haley…demanded that the UN “withdraw the report altogether.”

This reeks of the kind of censorship on university campuses you frequently speak out against so eloquently.

Also, you speak of “democratic nations,” but isn’t Nicki Haley a Republican from the US?  The US is hardly a democratic nation.  Its president is not elected, but appointed by a council.  In turn, Niki Haley is appointed by the president, an appointed executive.  It doesn’t sound like “people standing up”.  Sounds like autocratic US is dictating to the rest of the world.

Israel is being criticized for its policies and practices of settler colonialism, or Lebensraum, with regard to occupied territory.  I think the criticisms should be heard.

Original Quill wrote:Pretty serious charges.  Any facts to back this up?  

Thorin wrote:Earlier this week, U.S. ambassador Nikki Haley…demanded that the UN “withdraw the report altogether.”

This reeks of the kind of censorship on university campuses you frequently speak out against so eloquently.

Also, you speak of “democratic nations,” but isn’t Nicki Haley a Republican from the US?  The US is hardly a democratic nation.  Its president is not elected, but appointed by a council.  In turn, Niki Haley is appointed by the president, an appointed executive.  It doesn’t sound like “people standing up”.  Sounds like autocratic US is dictating to the rest of the world.

Israel is being criticized for its policies and practices of settler colonialism, or Lebensraum, with regard to occupied territory.  I think the criticisms should be heard.

I am all for criticism to be heard, not down right lies, as this document is.
So you clearly back Fake News then by this biased UN body

The head of the UN also distanced himself from the hate speech document.
If you read it, basically states that all Arab states are apartheid by default
So as per usual you defend falsified documents produced by 18 Muslim majority countries of which the majority do not recognize Israel. Was put together put someone antisemitic.

Then you prove your antisemitism, by invoking yet again a false claim of Lebensraum.

Its not occupied territory









This is why we now see racism as bad on the Far Left, that we see on the Far Right.
Its no surprise you defend hate speech Quill and I expect nothing less.
The document has been widely shammed around the world as nothing more than the attempt to deligitimize Israel off one of the worst aspects in history.
This is what Regressives ignorant on history do, make hate acceptable

Fortunately, it's not about me. To the extent you try to change the subject, you abandon your point.

Here, the issue is free speech. You want to censor what you call "hate speech" and "racism" but if you were confident in your position, you would let the words stand the test of judgment by others.

Original Quill wrote:Fortunately, it's not about me.  To the extent you try to change the subject, you abandon your point.

Here, the issue is free speech.  You want to censor what you call "hate speech" and "racism" but if you were confident in your position, you would let the words stand the test of judgment by others.  

Its is when you use troupes of antisemitism.
The issue is not Free Speech, but one of truth.
The document is a lie, intended to deligitimize Israel through the false charge of Apartheid.
I thought you were against lies and hate?
So nothing to do with censorship, the UN is rightly disowning its name from the document.
That is all that has happened.
The document is free for you and the world to read online.
So even your argument is complete rubbish

Richard Falk's report that calls Israel an "apartheid state", commissioned by UN ESCWA, relies heavily on Israel's defining itself as a Jewish state as proof that it is discriminatory against non-Jews.

So he writes:

Where a State’s constitutional law provides equal rights to the entire citizenry, it can provide an invaluable resource for people challenging discrimination at all levels of the society. However, if constitutional law defines the State as racial in character — as in Israel (as a Jewish State), and apartheid South Africa (as a white-Afrikaner State) — movements against racial discrimination not only lack this crucial legal resource but find themselves in the far more dangerous position of challenging the regime itself. Such a challenge will naturally be seen by regime authorities as an existential threat and be persecuted accordingly.

Falk is astonishingly dishonest in later quoting Israel's Declaration of Independence as proof that Israel defines itself as a Jewish state without noting that that same Declaration says that all citizens must have equal rights - and Israel's Basic Laws refer to the equal rights section of the Declaration, giving it the force of constitutional law.

The report by UN ESCWA believes that the "Jewish state" is inherently discriminatory, rejecting any objections to "the ethnic premise of Jewish statehood [as] illegitimate, because it violates international human rights law."

Yet how do ESCWA members define themselves?

Here is a chart showing how every ESCWA member defines themselves in their constitutions.

ESCWA member	How it defines itself
Bahrain	Bahrain is an independent, sovereign, Islamic Arab State
Egypt	Egypt is part of the Arab nation
Iraq	This Constitution guarantees the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people.
Jordan	The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is an independent sovereign Arab State. The people of Jordan form a part of the Arab Nation.
Kuwait	Kuwait is an Arab, independent, fully sovereign State.
Lebanon	Lebanon is Arab in its identity and in its affiliation.
Libya	Islam shall be its religion and Islamic Shari’a shall be the main source of legislation.
Mauritania	Mauritania is an Islamic, indivisible, democratic, and social Republic.
Morocco	[Commits] To deepen the bonds of togetherness with the Arab and Islamist Ummah
Oman	The Sultanate of Oman is an Arab, Islamic, Independent State
Palestine	Palestine is part of the large Arab World, and the Palestinian people are part of the Arab Nation.
Qatar	Qatar is an independent sovereign Arab State.
Saudi Arabia	The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a sovereign Arab Islamic state with Islam as its religion
Sudan	The Republic of the Sudan is an independent, sovereign State. It is a democratic, decentralized, multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multi-lingual country where such diversities co-exist
Syria	The Syrian Arab Republic is a democratic state with full sovereignty, indivisible, and may not waive any part of its territory, and is part of the Arab homeland; The people of Syria are part of the Arab nation.
Tunisia	Tunisia is a free, independent, sovereign state; its religion is Islam, its language Arabic, and its system is republican.
United Arab Emirates	The Union shall be part of the Great Arab Nation, to which it is bound by the ties of religion, language, history and common destiny. The people of the Union shall be a single people, and shall be part of the Arab Nation.
Yemen	The Republic of Yemen is an Arab, Islamic and independent sovereign state

With the exception of Sudan (and to an extent Morocco) every member identifies as either an Arab state, an Islamic state or both, which - by Falk's logic - means that the nations that sponsored Falk's report to define Israel as an apartheid state are apartheid states themselves.

Yet no one ever accuses them of that, even though by any sane measure they discriminate against non-Arabs and/or non-Muslims in ways that are far more egregious than anything Israel can be accused of doing.

For example, in Bahrain non-Arabs are extremely limited in where they can lease land, while Arabs have no such restrictions and can buy land outright. Jordan and others have similar laws. Arab League states, which is the majority of ESCWA members, also discriminate against non Arabs in their citizenship laws.

This is only one example of how Falk's definition of "apartheid" for Israel would apply to many of not most other nations, including the US.

So if you accept that this report proves Israel is an "apartheid state" you must agree that so are many, many other states that also fall under that definition. By manipulating the facts to judge Israel guilty, Falk is not strengthening human rights - he is weakening the definition of apartheid to become meaningless and therefore useless.



The UN's Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) asked Israel-hater Richard Falk to write a report to paint a pseudo-legal face on their accusation that Israel practices apartheid under the definition of the term in international law.

Look at the members of this group:



The 74-page report has one purpose: to give Israel-haters something to point to in order to pretend that their hate is based on logic. Of course, for both Falk and his sponsors, the verdict is written first and the reasoning shoe-horned in later.

Throughout the document one can find things that to the ignorant sound legitimate but which could be burst in seconds. For example:

The question arises as to whether Israel has deliberately pursued fragmentation of
the West Bank into an archipelago of Palestinian cantons, divided by intervening
Jewish-only areas (the Bantustan model). Certainly, this geography will
permanently enfeeble any putative Palestinian sovereignty, preserving the
prerogative of Israel to administer intervening land for the Jewish people. Oslo II,
paradoxically, facilitated this “grand” strategy by establishing borders for the
Palestinian autonomy enclaves. The comparison with South Africa helps to clarify
an essential observation: with Israeli Jewish-national domination over an area
dotted with Palestinian autonomy zones, apartheid is expressed as fully in a
partition strategy as it is in a unified State.

But Israel offered the Palestinians their own state that would be contiguous in the West Bank. Several times! So much for that argument.

Falk makes the argument constantly that Israel, by defining itself as a Jewish state, is inherently discriminatory against its Arab citizens. Yet every Arab state defines itself as such, with no such complaints by Falk.

He also argues that since Arab citizens cannot legally challenge Israel's self-definition of being a Jewish state, that is discrimination against Arabs. This is deceptive, because Israel does not have any problem with its many Arab citizens who accept Israel as a Jewish state. Similarly, leftist Jews who want to change the character of the state has the same roadblocks as the anti-Israel Arabs do. So the Jewish state does not inherently discriminate against Arabs; it discriminates against people who want to change the character of the State, Jew or Arab.

Falk pretends to answers objections to calling Israel an apartheid state:

Objection 1: Consistency with international practice: The Israeli doctrine of maintaining a Jewish majority, enabling the Jewish people to have its own nation-State, is consistent with the behaviour of States around the world, such as France, which express the self-determination of their respective ethnic nations. It is therefore unfair and exceptional treatment — and implicitly anti-Semitic — to target Israel as an apartheid State when it is only doing the same. 

Falk:This common argument derives from miscasting how national identities function in modern nation States. In France, for example, anyone holding French citizenship, regardless of whether they are indigenous or of immigrant origin, are equal members of the French nation and enjoy equal rights. According to the Supreme Court, Israel is not the State of the “Israeli nation” but of the “Jewish nation”.86 Collective rights in Israeli law are explicitly conferred on Jews as a people and on no other collective identity: national rights for Jews, embedded in such laws as the Law of Return and the Citizenship Law (discussed above) do not extend to any other group under Israeli rule. Hence, racial-nationalist privileges are embedded in the legal and doctrinal foundations of the State. That is exceptional and would meet with opprobrium in any other country (as it did in apartheid South Africa) 

Germany's naturalization law includes "A foreigner who is ordinarily resident abroad may be naturalized... if ties with Germany exist which justify naturalization."

This doesn't extend to people who do not have any ties with Germany. So, by Falk's definition, Germany's law that gives preference for people of German heritage to become citizens even if they are not residents is apartheid, and should meet with opprobrium.

Has it?

Objection 2. The standing of Palestinians as foreigners: Palestinian residents of the occupied Palestinian territory are not citizens of the State and so the State does not owe them rights and treatment equal to that accorded to Israeli Jewish citizens and settlers.

Falk: The similarities between the legal situation in Palestinian territory under Israeli occupation and in Namibia under South African occupation have already been noted. Israel has denied Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory Israeli citizenship because they are not Jews. ...

Yet Israel offers citizenship to Arabs of Jerusalem in areas that Israel has effectively annexed. If Israel denies citizenship to Arabs because they are not Jews, how can Israel offer citizenship to those Arabs? Obviously the motivating factor is whether the land they live on is part of Israel, just as Israel offered citizenship to Arabs in Israel in 1948.

The entire tedious report is filled with examples like these. And, yes, it is antiemitic, because the fundamental premise behind Falk's thesis is that Jews have no right to self determination.

If anyone ever takes it seriously it wouldn't be difficult to write up a formal rebuttal of every one of Falk's points, but it is doubtful that anyone outside hardcore Israel haters will take it seriously to begin with.


http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-uns-and-richard-falks-stupid.html

Thorin wrote:

Original Quill wrote:Fortunately, it's not about me.  To the extent you try to change the subject, you abandon your point.

Here, the issue is free speech.  You want to censor what you call "hate speech" and "racism" but if you were confident in your position, you would let the words stand the test of judgment by others.  

Its is when you use troupes of antisemitism.
The issue is not Free Speech, but one of truth.
The document is a lie, intended to deligitimize Israel through the false charge of Apartheid.
I thought you were against lies and hate?
So nothing to do with censorship, the UN is rightly disowning its name from the document.
That is all that has happened.
The document is free for you and the world to read online.
So even your argument is complete rubbish

Now you are running away from your own subject. I'll leave you to stew.

Original Quill wrote:

Thorin wrote:


Its is when you use troupes of antisemitism.
The issue is not Free Speech, but one of truth.
The document is a lie, intended to deligitimize Israel through the false charge of Apartheid.
I thought you were against lies and hate?
So nothing to do with censorship, the UN is rightly disowning its name from the document.
That is all that has happened.
The document is free for you and the world to read online.
So even your argument is complete rubbish

Now you are running away from your own subject.  I'll leave you to stew.

Really?

Because all I can see is you running away.

Nice to know you refuse to condemn the falsified report.

That says everything about your hate of Israel Quill