At the U.N., an ugly shade of lipstick on the caterpillar

{This column was first printed in the April 11, 2008 edition of The Jewish State}

The government is lying about who shot JFK. The government is lying about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The government is lying about Pearl Harbor. The government is lying about 9/11.

Not sure if he's covered the moon landing, but former Princeton professor Richard Falk thinks the government is lying to you about the above formative historical events. According to Falk, the government has also been lying about Yasser Arafat being a terrorist, and, as he said in April 2002, "we should at least be clear that [Ariel] Sharon is a much bigger obstacle to real peace than Arafat is or ever was."

Falk's hard work has paid off; on March 26, he was appointed "special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967" by the United Nations Human Rights Council.

This newspaper offered a less than glowing appraisal of the efforts of Falk's predecessor, John Dugard, in a recent issue. As I am not especially given to "piling on," the U.N. would have to have appointed someone so clearly possessed of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist conspiracy theories to replace Dugard in order to provoke an immediate response on these pages.

True to form, they did.

Last year, Falk set out to pad his resume with something that would put him a step ahead of the competition for the U.N. job -- the privilege of consuming American and other Western taxpayer dollars while sowing the seeds of U.N.-subsidized anti-Semitism. What he came up with was an essay he authored called "Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust," in which he compared the Israeli government to the Nazis.

"There is little doubt that the Nazi Holocaust was as close to unconditional evil as has been revealed throughout the entire bloody history of the human species," Falk opens the essay.

He then goes on to explain just how gruesome and barbaric the Holocaust was, to make sure the reader understands to what he is about to compare Ehud Olmert's government.

"Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not," Falk writes. "The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing" -- the Nazis were disturbing, but the Jews are especially disturbing -- "because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty."

Falk laments how the world watched silently as the 1994 Rwandan genocide took place, as the 1995 Bosnian genocide happened, and again as the genocide unfolded in Darfur.

Though some two million people in the Darfur region of Sudan have been displaced and 450,000 have been killed since the atrocities began in 2003, "Gaza is morally far worse," Falk states.

"It is far worse because the international community is watching the ugly spectacle unfold while some of its most influential members actively encourage and assist Israel in its approach to Gaza," he writes.

And just to put it in perspective, Falk offers: "It is helpful to recall that the liberal democracies of Europe paid homage to Hitler at the 1936 Olympic Games, and then turned away tens of thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany."

Falk has left a paper trail of his journey from obscurity to subversive critic of Israel and the U.S. Unfortunately, that trail -- made up of columns contributed to various newspapers and magazines -- reveals a person who is at his best moments confused, and at his worst moments much, much worse.

For example, Falk displays an intriguing lack of knowledge about the targets of his invective in a January 2002 essay titled "Appraising the war against Afghanistan". He criticizes the administration of President George W. Bush for too broadly extending the brand of "terrorist" to include "groups" like Hamas and Hezbollah.

"These latter groups have neither ideologically nor tactically associated themselves with al-Qaeda and the visionary outlook of Osama bin Laden, and their struggles are much harder to categorize," he writes.

Yet, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that al-Qaeda and Hezbollah have worked together, especially thanks to the late Imad Mugniyeh, who trained bin Laden. Not only is Hezbollah ideologically and tactically associated with al-Qaeda, but al-Qaeda actually modeled itself after Hezbollah -- it was a clone of the organization, or close to it.

He admits that Hamas has used "gruesome terrorist tactics" against Israeli civilians, but "the context has been one in which Israel has also used even more destructive tactics against Palestinian civilian society". More destructive and gruesome than suicide bombers and the kidnapping and torture of civilians -- both embraced by Hamas? We'll never know, because Falk doesn't give any examples.

He then states that Hamas and Hezbollah should be left intact, because to destroy them would deny the Palestinians their right to self-determination, and "should such groups be destroyed the effect would be to stabilize an oppressive Israeli occupation."

This is a point on which Falk has shed some valuable light, however. In a 2006 column he wrote for the Topeka Capital-Journal, Falk calls on the U.S. and Israel to engage in dialogue with Hamas. He complains that the U.S. and Europe insist on freezing Hamas out of the discussion "unless its leaders explicitly renounce terrorism, recognize Israel, accept all prior agreements between the Palestinians and Israel, and annul that part of the Hamas charter that calls for Israel's destruction."

This is unreasonable, he declares, because such devotion to terrorism and Israel's destruction is part of the genetic makeup of Hamas-led Palestinians. Take that away, and there's nothing left of Hamas.

"The chance of Hamas meeting these political conditions all at once is essentially nil since they amount to a renunciation of struggle and almost a declaration of surrender," he writes.

In other words, it's like telling the sun not to shine.

And the sun isn't shining, apparently, in the wilderness in which Falk wanders. He gives this away in his prescription for peace, published in The Nation in April 2002. Since only the Palestinians' violence is designated as terrorism, he writes, "Israel's greater violence" gets off scot-free.

"The point here is not in any way to excuse Palestinian suicide bombers and other violence against civilians, but to suggest that when a struggle over territory and statehood is being waged it can and should be resolved at the earliest possible point by negotiation and diplomacy, and that the violence on both sides tends toward the morally and legally impermissible," Falk writes.

To the casual observer living in the United Kingdom (or Waziristan, for that matter), that comment may seem erudite and reasonable -- a given. But in fact, as we know, the conflict is not about land or statehood, since the Palestinians have repeatedly refused any offer of land or statehood that wasn't prefaced by "From the river to the sea...."

Falk also wrote that the contention that Arafat resorted to terrorism is "seriously misleading." In fact, Falk writes, Arafat was the "moderate voice," dramatically fighting to protect Israeli civilians from attempted Palestinian terrorism; anyway, it was Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount "that started the second intifada."

Wild-eyed conspiracy theorists are usually interesting -- from a distance. But Falk doesn't keep his distance from such people, rather he keeps their company.

One of those characters is David Ray Griffin, who wrote a book called "The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11". Though the book is a reinvention of the wheel, its sales riding the wave of earlier 9/11 conspiracy theorists, it was very important to Falk that this book be published. Falk helped find a publisher for it, and wrote the introduction to the book as well.

"As with Pearl Harbor there are ample reasons to receive news of massive attack with some skepticism," Falk writes in the introduction. "As with the difficulties of the Roosevelt presidency in rallying the country for war, here too, the neocon advisers shaping the foreign policy of the Bush Administration had been frustrated by their inability to mobilize the country for war. These prominent advisors had made no secret of their fervent wish for some sort of hostile attack of dramatic magnitude that would awaken the American people to their sense of the dangers of the post-cold war world, as well as of the opportunities for global domination, a vision of global empire that was openly embraced by neocon leading lights."

Falk accuses the media of ignoring the evidence, and the American public of resisting the truth. He explains that in Europe, clear-thinking people were immediately proposing "official complicity" in the attacks, but for some reason Americans just didn't get it. Of course, the "neocon leading lights" were primarily Jewish, pro-Israel advisors, so it's unclear if Zionist brainwashing was the cause of the public's ardent support for its country, its military, and its president immediately following 9/11.

It shouldn't surprise anyone, then, that Falk didn't face much competition; according to U.N. Watch, the Islamic and Arab states pressured the council leadership to list only Falk as a nominee for the post.

This is the new, "reformed" U.N. human rights body. It calls to mind what former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said about the U.N.'s efforts to build a new rights council from the same broken pieces and using the same shoddy workmanship as the last.

"We want a butterfly," Bolton said. "We don't intend to put lipstick on a caterpillar and call it a success."

Opinion polls pave the 'street' to Ramallah

{This column was first printed in the March 28, 2008 edition of The Jewish State}

If we never successfully figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg, is it proper to assign blame to either one for the sins of both?

Many of us have, with the best of intentions, done just that, as we hold on to some receding ray of hope for peace in Israel.

We will routinely say, "It's the leadership that's the problem with the Palestinians, not the people." It's a noble tack, I admit, but do we really know which came first, the Palestinian leaders or the Palestinians? Do the Palestinians get the leaders they want, or do the leaders get the Palestinians they want?

That question appeared to be answered by the election of the Islamist Iranian satellite Hamas, a terrorist organization committed to the destruction of Israel, by the Palestinian people in January 2006.

But then people said, "Well, Fatah was corrupt, and the election was a vote against corruption, not a mandate for perpetual war."

Such apologia have been far more difficult to find since the March 17 release of the new survey conducted by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR).

The survey, titled "Palestinian Public Opinion Poll No. 27," finds that the "moderate" Fatah government led by Mahmoud Abbas and Western darling Salam Fayyad endured a sharp drop in public support in the West Bank and Gaza, while Hamas, led by Ismail Haniyeh, has won over another 10 percent of the Palestinian population.

And it's not just a superficial yea-or-nay vote, either. The pollsters found that not only is the Hamas leadership more "popular," but the Palestinian public has offered more support for Hamas's positions and policies, as well as its legitimacy.

Most politicians love focus groups and opinion polls because the polls basically tell them what to do. So, reading the polls, how does a politician or party gain the favor of the Palestinian "street"?

"These changes might have been the result of several political developments," according to the survey's Main Findings, "starting with the breaching of the Rafah border with Egypt during the last week of January and first week of February, followed by the Israeli military incursion into the Gaza Strip leading to a large number of Palestinian causalities and an increase in the number of rockets launched from the Gaza Strip against Israeli towns such as Sderot and Ashkelon, the two suicide attacks in Dimona and Jerusalem leading to the death of nine Israelis, and ending with the failure of the Annapolis process in positively affecting daily life of Palestinians in the West Bank, in stopping Israeli settlement activities, or in producing progress in final status negotiations."

In other words, what floats the average Palestinian's boat? Bombing a border wall with Egypt, launching rockets at innocent Israelis, suicide bombing Israeli towns, and shooting up a yeshiva library while killing as many inside as possible.

What are some of the average Palestinian's pet peeves? Prolonged exposure to peace negotiations and Jewish villages.

For a while, Fatah held a sizeable advantage in head-to-head polls with Hamas, if new parliamentary elections were to be held immediately. No mas.

The survey finds that the gap has narrowed from 18 percent to seven, putting Fatah up only 42 percent to 35 percent. In December, it was 49 percent to 31 percent.

Eleven percent remain undecided in both polls. That would be the "swing" vote, perhaps waiting to see how many dead Jews each party is willing to offer for their vote.

Another bad omen for Fatah is that it is slightly more popular in Gaza than it is in the West Bank.

In December, polls showed Abbas would beat Haniyeh in a presidential election 56 percent to 37 percent. The new survey shows that Haniyeh would win a nail-biter if elections were held today, 47 percent to 46. (Haniyeh shouldn't get too excited; he loses badly in a head-to-head matchup with jailed intifada veteran and renowned Jew-killer Marwan Barghouti, 57 percent to 38.)

The other findings are similar — the legitimacy of the governments, the favorable-unfavorable ratings of each administration, approval rating comparisons, etc. In fact, although Hamas's takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 is still rejected across the board, the Palestinians have moved away from blaming Hamas for their actions.

"The tendency to avoid blaming Hamas alone for the continuation of the split reflects a change in public perception regarding the positions of the two factions regarding return to dialogue as an exit from the current crisis," the findings state. "Support for Fatah's and Abbas's position, which demands a return to the status quo ante as a precondition to dialogue drops from 46 percent last September to 39 percent in this poll. Support for Hamas's position, which calls for unconditional dialogue, increases from 27 percent to 37 percent during the same period."

Here are the survey results vis-a-vis the peace process:

• "66 percent support and 32 percent oppose the Saudi initiative, which calls for Arab recognition of and normalization of relations with Israel after it ends its occupation to Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 and after the establishment of a Palestinian state.
• 55 percent support and 44 percent oppose mutual recognition of Israel as the state for the Jewish people and Palestine as the state for the Palestinian people as part of a permanent status agreement.
• But 80 percent believe that the negotiations launched by the Annapolis conference will fail while 14 percent believe it will succeed.
• Moreover, 68 percent believe that the chances for the establishment of a Palestinian state during the next five years are non-existent or weak and 30 percent believe chances are fair or high.
• 75 percent believe that the meetings between Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert are not beneficial and should be stopped while only 21 percent believe they are beneficial and should be continued.
• 64 percent support and 33 percent oppose launching rockets from the Gaza Strip against Israeli towns and cities such as Sderot and Ashkelon.
• An overwhelming majority of 84 percent support and 13 percent oppose the bombing attack that took place in a religious school in West Jerusalem. Support for this attack increases in the Gaza Strip (91 percent) compared to the West Bank (79 percent)."

The emphasis on the last poll result is added (though they meant to write "shooting," not "bombing," presumably), because it is the nutshell in which the psyche of the Palestinian "street" resides.

Each poll conducted by PSR — which, by the way, uses sample sizes large enough to trust the results, and reputable Israeli polling institutions have collaborated with PSR on past surveys — since the beginning of 2008 shows the same thing: an upward trend in popularity for anyone that can accomplish significant feats of violence on behalf of the Palestinian people.

That means that these poll results weren't a surprise to Haniyeh; he knew exactly how to win over the Palestinian people.

So disciples of Edward Said can jump up and down all they want about "Western imperialists," but here in America, President George W. Bush's approval ratings plummeted with each kernel of news about violence committed against terrorists on behalf of Americans, Europeans, Iraqis, and the general cause of freedom. By contrast, in the Palestinian "street," senseless violence committed on behalf of senseless, violent people against innocent teenage students is enough to solidify your lead in the polls.

Said's glazed over, proudly subversive followers would call drawing attention to this problem a form of "post-colonial" hysteria. But these PSR surveys are the sugar in Said's engine of intellectual Orientalism. They blow to pieces the apologetic theories of the leftist American academe, toppling its ivory tower and its minions.

Because the truth — unfortunately for Palestinian sympathizers and terrorist apologists — is right here in the PSR's findings: one hand may be shaking that of a Western diplomat, as long as the other hand is holding a grenade with Israel's name on it, ready to spill innocent blood.

As for which came first, the headless chicken or the rotten egg — maybe it's time to stop exploring the origin of the sequence, and start figuring out how to break the cycle.