Richard Falk, UN Official Calls for Study Of Neocons' Role in 9/11

A new U.N. Human Rights Council official, Richard Falk assigned to monitor Israel is calling for an official commission to study the role neoconservatives may have played in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

On March 26, 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) appointed american-jewish Richard Falk for a six-year term as a special investigator on Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories. He has previously compared some Israeli policies with regard to the Palestinians to the Nazi-Germany record of collective punishment. 

Falk has also stated, however, that "the comparison [of some Israeli policies to those of Nazi Germany] should not be viewed as literal, but...that a pattern of criminality associated with Israeli policies in Gaza has actually been supported by the leading democracies of the 21st century."

Falk replaces South African professor John Dugard, an expert on apartheid who will leave his post in June after seven years. Dugard himself made waves when he compared Israeli actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories with apartheid and colonialism. Mr Dugard continues;

"Israel's laws and practices certainly resemble aspects of apartheid".

"It is difficult to resist the conclusion that many of Israel's laws and practices violate the 1966 Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination," says the report.

"House demolitions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are carried out in a manner that discriminates against Palestinians.

"Throughout the West Bank, and particularly in Hebron, settlers are given preferential treatment over Palestinians in terms of movement (major roads are reserved exclusively for settlers), building rights and army protection and laws governing family re-unification".

Richard Falk, Milbank professor of international law emeritus at Princeton University, whose specialty is human rights and international law, since the attacks in 2001, has devoted some of his time to challenging what he calls the "9-11 official version."

On March 24 in an interview with a radio host and former University of Wisconsin instructor, Kevin Barrett, Mr. Falk said, 

"It is possibly true that especially the neoconservatives thought there was a situation in the country and in the world where something had to happen to wake up the American people. Whether they are innocent about the contention that they made that something happen or not, I don't think we can answer definitively at this point. All we can say is there is a lot of grounds for suspicion, there should be an official investigation of the sort the 9/11 commission did not engage in and that the failure to do these things is cheating the American people and in some sense the people of the world of a greater confidence in what really happened than they presently possess."

Central to the theme of his life's work, which includes the writing of more than twenty books, is Falk's consistent opposition to American foreign policies, including the War on Terror. He characterizes such measures as the Domestic Security Enhancement Act and the Patriot Act as "sweeping powers" that represent a "slide toward fascism."

In a 2003 article titled "Will the Empire be Fascist?" Professor Falk cites "unaccountable military power," "uncritical and chauvinistic patriotism," and "an authoritarian approach to law enforcement" as indicators of America's move toward fascism. He alleges that terror warnings and threat assessments are tools used by the U.S. government to frighten and thereby control the American people, observing that the "periodic alarmist warnings of mega-terrorist imminent attacks" have not yet been followed by any actual attacks.

Also in March 2008, Falk told Kevin Barrett of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth that he was skeptical about what he termed the "official version" of what had occurred on September 11, 2001. Said Falk: "It is possibly true that especially the neoconservatives thought there was a situation in the country and in the world where something had to happen to wake up the American people. Whether they are innocent about the contention that they made that something happen or not, I don't think we can answer definitively at this point. All we can say is there is a lot of grounds for suspicion, there should be an official investigation of the sort the 9/11 commission did not engage in and that the failure to do these things is cheating the American people and in some sense the people of the world of a greater confidence in what really happened than they presently possess."

Israel is denying him entry and blacklisting him for comparing its crackdown on the Palestine to the Nazis.

Falk is the current Chairman of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and a longtime prominent member of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.