The Warped Mirror: Gaza grotesque

It was hardly surprising to read reports that, as the Arab League summit got under way in Damascus this weekend, Hamas was organizing a rally in Gaza to glorify their "resistance" and to call on Arab leaders to withdraw the Saudi-sponsored peace initiative that was re-launched at last year's Arab summit in Riyadh. For Hamas-leader Mushir al-Masri the Arab peace initiative was a "burden" on Palestinians because "Hamas is defending the honor and dignity of this nation on the [Arabs] behalf."

Some Arabs clearly beg to differ. "Hamas Must Stand Down" was the straightforward title of a recent article in the Saudi English-language daily Arab News, which argued:

An eminently reasonable view, and a completely justified demand: if Hamas wants to be considered as a legitimate political party and a responsible government, the group has to conduct itself accordingly.

However, consider this very different take on Hamas and the situation in Gaza, which is offered at the website of  "The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research": 

Supposedly, the foundation's "philosophy and credo" include the pledge to be "factual" and "always also constructive". But the take on Hamas offered here is hardly factual, and there is absolutely nothing even remotely constructive about it: the article from which this quote is taken is entitled "Slouching Towards a Palestinian Holocaust", and it contains not only a passionate plea in favor of comparing Israeli policies with those of the Nazis, but it also advances the truly grotesque claim that "Gaza is morally far worse" than the genocidal massacres in Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

According to estimates, in Rwanda, some 800,000 people were killed; some 200,000 were killed in Bosnia, and about half a million people have been killed in Darfur. "But Gaza is morally far worse, although mass death has not yet resulted" - that's at least what Richard Falk thinks. And Richard Falk is not only a long-time advisor to the foundation,  he is also Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton University and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. In addition, Richard Falk has just been appointed by the UN's Human Rights Council to become the next special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, which means he will be charged with investigating "Israel's violations of the principles and bases of international law" while ignoring whatever Palestinian extremists do.

Nobody could be better qualified for this position than a man who thinks that "Gaza is morally far worse" than massacres that have really taken place and claimed hundreds of thousands of victims - indeed, taken together, they have claimed as many victims as people living in Gaza. The UN's Human Rights Council surely has found the right man for the job of the special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories: a man whose "moral clarity" allows him to shrug off the death of 1.5 million people by claiming that "Gaza is morally far worse, although mass death has not yet resulted".

"Not yet" means of course that Professor Falk thinks that "mass death" is what Israel intends to inflict on Gaza. And indeed, he diagnoses "current genocidal tendencies" and therefore sees a "holocaust-in-the-making". As a professor of international law, he uses this terminology very deliberately; indeed, he himself asks: "Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity?" His answer is, of course: "I think not." In his work for the UN's Human Rights Council, he will have ample opportunity to legitimize this view and encourage others to compare Israel to Nazi Germany - all the while complaining how unfair it is when a group like Hamas that has an openly anti-Semitic charter is "castigated as a terrorist organization".