Internationally-Known Anti-Israel Speaker at UNM: Richard Falk

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Story and photos by Diane Joy Schmidt

A visit from an internationally known law professor combined his life-long rhetorical facility with a series of demagogic twists of history to present, on its surface, a smoothly seductive and intellectually engaging speech against Israel. In an hour-long talk, “The Israeli End Game versus the Palestinian Solidarity Movement,” Richard Falk spoke at Hibben Hall on the University of New Mexico campus in the late afternoon of Tuesday, December 1.

Falk, 85, was born to Jewish parents in New York in 1930. While serving as U.N. rapporteur to the Palestinians from 2008 to 2014, he made so many outright anti-Semitic statements that he was censured twice by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. One incident involved his posting an anti-Semitic cartoon on his personal blog showing a slavering dog wearing a Jewish skullcap and a U.S. banner, urinating on Lady Liberty while devouring human remains. After first refusing to even acknowledge its anti-Semitic and anti-U.S. message, the apology he finally offered was principally to the dog.

Falk was a professor of international law at Princeton for 40 years, and is now a research fellow at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is also on the editorial board of The Nation . Falk’s visit was made possible by the Lannan Foundation and at the invitation of the chairs of the American Studies and Anthropology Department at UNM.

In his talk Falk first called upon reasonable enough-sounding critiques of Israeli actions and reactions in regard to her hostile neighbors. The concepts of rule of law hovered about his words. But he departed from this professorial tone to justify and applaud Palestinian knifings in Israel and the efficacy of the BDS movement on US campuses. His facial expression would also change at those moments, giving him a more obsessed appearance.

Twenty minutes into the presentation, he said that Iran is a liberal society by comparison to Saudi Arabia. While he didn’t say he would rather align with Iran than with Saudi Arabia, the shading of the comment set up his next point, where he then equated Saudi Arabia with Israel. He said, “So there’s a real problem that emerges out of the way in which the U.S. relates to the region and specifically to Israel and Saudi Arabia. So in this sense the situation as far as intergovernmental diplomacy is concerned seems completely lost without any prospect of finding a solution. As I say it continues to be endorsed by the West European and North American governments, and in fact it’s the only game in town but it’s a game without, with no victories there.”

So he just suggested to the listeners in the audience that Israel is morally on a par with the country of Saudi Arabia, and that U.S. support for the two are bound together. Neither are true.

Then he went on to frame knife stabbings as symbolic gestures and heroic desperate measures. He said, “So what has happened that has to some degree kept Palestinian, I wouldn’t say hopes, but prospects, alive, is a combination of two things: one is this recent spate of stabbings and resistance, that is without any organizational foundations, not connected with the Palestinian Authority, not connected with the PLO, not connected with Hamas, but what it represents is this sense of desperation that leads people who have lived under these conditions for so long to basically do something violent even though it’s clear that it will be suicidal—they’ve all been killed.”

The knife stabbing attacks that began in September were occasioned by rumors circulated on social media around control of the Temple Mount, rumors which when they have surfaced periodically since the 1920’s have caused riots. The Temple Mount area, perhaps the most contested real estate on earth, is considered the holiest site in Judaism and the third holiest site in Islam, and is the location of the Western Wall of the Second Temple, and the Dome of the Rock and Al-Asqa Mosque. Focusing on the frustrations of Arab youth, Falk went on to say, “So it’s not something you do as a posture of combat, and you’re not being sent by some organization. It represents this reaction to the sustained prolonged oppression, hopelessness and despair, and desperation and what it means is Israel is unlikely to find peace and security so long as it insists upon pursuing this one state solution in which it holds the land and denies Palestinian rights to self-determination.”

Falk went on to characterize the complex history of the area as Palestinian efforts at self-determination following WW I and the break up of the Ottoman Empire — but without any discussion of how Arab insistence on the destruction of Israel has endlessly thwarted opportunities for a Palestinian state. At times during his talk there were faint snickers in the audience that suggested that to them, Falk’s rhetoric was simply a veiled code to more violent actions.

Falk was brought to town by the Lannan Foundation, which hosts a conversation series. He would be appearing the following night at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe with Ali Abunimah, a co-founder of the pro-Palestinian website Electric Intifada. The hour-long lecture at UNM, which had been announced and circulated through university email by the American Studies department, was sparsely attended.

Following the talk, the majority of questions from the audience were disingenuously approving. One professor asked if the stance of the U.S. and Israel in support of a two-state solution is substantive, or only a cynical posture.

Falk didn’t mention that the Arab League has unsuccessfully been trying to get a U.S. boycott of Israel passed since 1948.

The only challenge to Falk came from Anti-Defamation League Regional Director Suki Halevi, who framed a question within the academic language of Falk’s talk and colonialist vocabulary and mirroring his linguistic diction so that he had to respond.

Falk responded briefly to her question and then followed with a rambling stream of consciousness that led the listeners far afield until all had quite forgotten what was just said.

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