“It is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses the entire 1.5 million Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to a struggle to survive in terms of their health,” Falk said when I reached him by phone in California shortly before he left for Israel. “This is an increasingly precarious condition. A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people without the will to live. Over 50 percent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live.”
Who says what might be regarded by some as some sort of unwarranted anti-Israel attack? None other than the The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk.
Chris Hedges - former Jerusalem Bureau Chief for the NY Times - in his regular piece for truthdig.com cites the above statement by Falk. Hedges begins his truthdig piece with the following:
"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.”
Footnote: Arrogance, arrogance! The only word for the Israelis whose every actions become more and more lawless and arrogant by the day. The Washington Post reports in "Israeli Authorities Detain, Expel U.N. Human Rights Envoy":
"Israeli authorities detained a U.N. human rights envoy for more than 20 hours at the Tel Aviv airport before expelling him, putting him on a plane bound for Los Angeles, U.N. officials said Monday.
The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed "regret" over the action and said the United Nations had notified Israel in advance of American Richard Falk's plans to visit. "One doesn't expect a U.N. special rapporteur to find himself in that position," said UNHCR spokesman Rupert Colville.
The Israeli mission to the United Nations defended the decision, saying that Falk had been repeatedly warned that a visit would not be welcome."
Who says what might be regarded by some as some sort of unwarranted anti-Israel attack? None other than the The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk.
Chris Hedges - former Jerusalem Bureau Chief for the NY Times - in his regular piece for truthdig.com cites the above statement by Falk. Hedges begins his truthdig piece with the following:
"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.”
Footnote: Arrogance, arrogance! The only word for the Israelis whose every actions become more and more lawless and arrogant by the day. The Washington Post reports in "Israeli Authorities Detain, Expel U.N. Human Rights Envoy":
"Israeli authorities detained a U.N. human rights envoy for more than 20 hours at the Tel Aviv airport before expelling him, putting him on a plane bound for Los Angeles, U.N. officials said Monday.
The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed "regret" over the action and said the United Nations had notified Israel in advance of American Richard Falk's plans to visit. "One doesn't expect a U.N. special rapporteur to find himself in that position," said UNHCR spokesman Rupert Colville.
The Israeli mission to the United Nations defended the decision, saying that Falk had been repeatedly warned that a visit would not be welcome."
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