Canada joins outrage over Richard Falk's Boston Marathon comments

UN Human Rights Council's Palestine monitor, Richard Falk, gives a speech in Istanbul in 2005. He is at the centre of a controversy over a blog on the Boston Marathon bombings. (Cem Turkel /AFP/Getty Images)

Now it’s Canada’s turn.

As Britain, the U.S. and numerous media bloggers swiped UN special rapporteur Richard Falk for his “anti-Semitic” remarks following the Boston Marathon bombings, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird issued his own statement Wednesday.

“Once again, United Nations official Richard Falk has spewed more mean-spirited, anti-Semitic rhetoric, this time blaming the attacks in Boston on President (Barack) Obama and the state of Israel,” Baird said. “There is a dangerous pattern to Mr. Falk’s…comments. The United Nations should be ashamed to even be associated with such an individual.”

The offending comments -- which steamed up the social media -- came from a lengthy blog written by the 83-year-old Falk, an emeritus professor of Princeton University and international law expert. In a rambling discourse on the aftermath of the bombings, he mused that they might be laid at the feet of the “American global domination project,” which was “bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world.”

This, of course, was not what a grieving and fearful nation wanted to hear. And Falk, who is Jewish, added that America’s closeness to Israel and policy on Iran’s nuclear program could spark more attacks, “if there is no disposition to rethink U.S. relations to others in the world, starting with the Middle East.”

Cue the calls for his ouster as special rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

But from there things get more complicated. And the solution, for his critics, is unclear.

A Wall Street Journal blogger took UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to task for “shirking” his responsibility for “(doing) anything about his Falk problem.” 

Another, at undispatch.com, blamed the Bush administration for allowing Falk to be appointed in the first place.

It’s not the first time the prickly Falk has raised international hackles and brought down calls for his removal. Geneva-based UN Watch, one of his fiercest critics, called on Western countries to repudiate “Falk’s recidivist pattern of indicting America for the acts of jihadi terrorists.”

In a 2011 blog, Falk questioned the “official version” of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and was sharply reprimanded by Ban and Washington’s UN ambassador Susan Rice. He wrote earlier pieces maintaining that the U.S. government’s lack of investigation of the event “subtly taints” its legitimacy. Meanwhile his blistering condemnations of Israel’s policies in Gaza outraged its supporters and brought more calls to roll up his rapporteur’s role.

So, you may wonder, with such powerful opposition why is he still serving the last of a six-year term at the UN?

 The answer lies in the complex structure of UN bodies and appointments.

“The key fact is that rapporteurs and experts are appointed in their personal capacities and emphatically do not represent their governments,” says Jeffrey Laurenti of the Century Foundation in New York, an expert in UN machinations. “They are intended to be insulated from political pressures; the political responsibility is that of the states on the council when they decide how to respond to the rapporteur’s reports.”

The 47-member council is made up of country representatives from regional blocs that do not take direction from the West.  Falk was elected by consensus, and can’t be fired by the UN chief or the U.S. government.

Will he be retired at the end of his term next year?

Stay tuned.

Olivia Ward has covered the UN since the early 1990s, as well as international conflicts, human rights and politics, winning national and international awards. She is still struggling to understand how the World Body works.  

Why would bombers target Israel's 'Miami'?

Israeli security investigates the scene of a rocket attack in Eilat, Wednesday. (AP Photo/Ran Shauli)

At about 9 a.m. local time this morning, two Grad rockets fired from the Sinai peninsula landed in the outskirts of Eilat, at the southern tip of Israel on the Red Sea.

The news hit me with a thunk. “But I was just there!” I thought.

Eilat is a beach town, a vacation town, Israel's answer to Miami or Las Vegas. It has a string of large, posh hotels on the sea and a couple malls. Teenagers in bikinis and oversized sunglasses sashay along the boardwalks, and wealthy Russian tourists flock to boutiques and restaurants where the signs are written in cyrillic script. If it wasn't for the metal detectors at the mall entrances, you wouldn't know you were in a country with security concerns.

My friend Anne has been living in Eilat for the past five years. After she first moved there, I would get in touch whenever I heard about an attack in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Her response was usually the same: It was far away in the north, no big deal. Eilat is more than 300 kilometres south of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, on the other side of a desert. Practically a different world.

So when I finally decided to visit last month and friends asked me the same kind of questions -- Israel? Is it safe there? -- I echoed Anne's reassurances.

That's why this morning's news came as a bit of a shock, even after it became clear that there were no injuries or significant damage. Why would anyone bomb Miami?

But as Haaretz pointed out this morning, there have been signs Eilat could be a target:

“The defence establishment received unspecific intelligence warnings before the rocket fire Wednesday morning at Eilat from Sinai. An army situation assessment at the start of the month led to the decision to put an Iron Dome anti-missile battery in the area – the fifth deployed in Israel.”

 

Eilat's geography puts it at risk, the article continues: the Sinai peninsula next door is unstable and bringing it under control is a low priority for Egypt's relatively new Muslim Brotherhood government, and the government suspects Islamist groups are taking root there.

 

Aside from the security threat, it could be bad economic news for Eilat, a small town built around tourism. Anne works for a Finnish travel company and on busy weeks in the winter high season, about 350 tourists from Finland come to town, she told me over lunch last month. For them it's a relatively inexpensive, convenient holiday escape – kind of like Florida or Cuba for Canadians.

 

But numbers have been dropping the past couple years. It's partly because of the struggling European economy, she said. But also, after December's Gaza conflict and the Arab Spring, “people are afraid.”

 

I haven't heard back from her yet today (she's more likely to be hanging out on a beach than sitting at a computer), but I have a feeling that if anything drives her away from her laid-back adopted hometown, it will be economics, not fear.

 

Stephanie MacLellan is an editor on the Star's foreign desk. She just returned from her first trip to Israel. Follow her on Twitter: @smaclellan

Fayyad's exit leaves Palestinian future in limbo

Salam Fayad (L) stands alongside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as Abbas swears in the new government in June 2007 in the West Bank city of Ramallah.  (David Silverman/Getty Images)

Who killed Salam Fayyad?

For Fayyad, read “Fayyadism.” The departing Palestinian Authority Prime Minister is very much alive. But the economic and political development concept he created, with the backing and urging of the West, is now an ex-policy, as deceased as the Monty Python parrot.

Fayyad, economic mastermind and PM of the authority that controls the West Bank, quit in disgust on Saturday, to an echo-chamber of Western laments, including that of Foreign Minister John Baird, who was “saddened and deeply disappointed” to learn of his departure.

And he added, “Mr. Fayyad was a trusted and dedicated interlocutor and friend of Canada.”

The former IMF economist resigned after a long-running power struggle with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

But even as Baird met with Fayyad during his recent Mideast trip, Ottawa was pondering a cut-off of aid to the Palestinian Authority -- a shift that began during Fayyad’s term and was sparked by Abbas’s decision to upgrade Palestine’s UN status to non-member observer state.

Canada isn’t unique in its lacklustre support for Fayyad, who has been vociferously praised by Western leaders as a man they can do business with. Non-confrontational and pragmatic, he was charged with tackling the endemic corruption of the PA, and preparing the Palestinian Territories for the kind of peaceful and (relatively) prosperous state Israelis could live alongside without fear.

Some Western pundits have blamed Fayyad’s departure on Abbas’s refusal to clean house, and on the PA leader's move toward statehood without prior negotiation with Israel.

But New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, who talked with Fayyad in February, described it differently.

“The most progressive and innovative Palestinian thinker on a Middle East peace settlement has been steadily isolated over the past several years,” Cohen wrote. “Undercut by Israel, undermined by his own people’s factionalism, unable to meet even once with President Obama, this dynamic Palestinian leader is now close to the end of his rope.” Obama did meet with Fayyad last month, but too late to prevent his resignation.

Thanks to Fayyad, Cohen points out, Israel enjoyed one of its calmest periods. In spite of the expansion of settlements, not one Israeli was killed by a Palestinian in 2012.

Nevertheless, since the UN upgrade, when Washington cut off  funding and  Palestinian tax and tariff money was withheld by Israel, Fayyad’s administration was broke. Striking public workers went to the streets, and widespread discontent is roiling. The two countries promised to unblock the funds last month, but not in time to restore public confidence in Fayyad. 

Score one for Fayyad’s domestic enemies -- including Hamas, which blames him for making Palestine safe for occupation. But where were his friends in need?

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, politics and human rights in the former Soviet Union, South Asia and the Middle East. She has collaborated on several documentary films, including Hamas: Behind the Mask.

Toronto NGO debuts online early warning alert for genocides

Photos of killed people donated by survivors are displayed on a wall inside the Gisozi memorial in Kigali, depicting the horros of Rwanda's genocide. (Radu Sigheti/Reuters)

In the years leading up to World War II, long before the construction of gas chambers, Nazi party leaders hardly kept their feelings about Jews a secret.

Six years before the outbreak of war, on Apr. 1, 1933, the Nazis organized a countrywide anti-Jewish boycott, using radio and newspapers, the main media outlets of the day, to spread their message.

Decades later, before any Tutsis had been killed with machetes, Hutu leaders in Rwanda in 1993 and 1994 used a local radio station, Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines, to spew venom attacks about Tutsis, comparing them to cockroaches.

Both examples are a reminder, Chris Tuckwood says, that genocides typically follow a host of early warning signals.

Tuckwood, 28, is one of the co-founders of a new Toronto-based non-profit called The Sentinel Project, which organizers say is dedicated to hate-speech detection and alerts.

Its 60 volunteers have begun monitoring hate speech in Kenya, Myanmar, Colombia, Azerbaijan, Indonesia and Iran.

“We’re watching Iran pretty closely,” Tuckwood said. “What we’re seeing with the Bahai religious minority is concerning. The discrimination they face is quite advanced. They’re excluded from public life, can’t get public-sector jobs, aren’t allowed education after high school, and their homes are frequent victims of vandalism.”

Some Iranians, who are followers of Shiite Islam believe Bahaism is tantamount to blasphemy because it promotes the belief in a 19th century prophet.

In Hungary and other parts of Europe, Roma claim to be victims of persecution, and hate speech is even visible in the U.S. So why isn't the upstart NGO monitoring those countries?

"It's a good point," Tuckwood said. "We would do more right away if we had the resources."

Among the tools offered by Sentinel is an Internet application called Hatebase, which combs social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook, and local language news sites and blogs in a search of words that may signal brewing ethnic conflict.

The interface, developer Timothy Quinn, allows users to refine hate speech terms by region and use mapping to document when and how hate speech is used.

For instance, the database includes a number of derogatory names and their definitions. Users can click “I have been called this” or “I have overheard someone else called this” and document where on a Google world map the slur occurred.

It’s a similar method to one being used by health researchers who map the outbreak of communicable diseases.

“People use Twitter to cite and follow Hollywood stars, so why not use the same tool to identify threats like this?” said Jack Chow, the U.S. ambassador on global HIV/AIDS from 2001-3 who is on Sentinel’s advisory board.

Tuckwood, a former Canadian soldier who has his masters degree in disaster management, said he's hoping Jewish and Armenian communities, both of which are sensitive to hate-speech issues, will offer funding to allow them to hire fulltime staff.

It’s not easy to set up a new NGO, Tuckwood concedes. But he says his group’s independence offers them a free voice.

“If you look at the UN adviser focused on genocide, there’s so much baggage that comes along with making a statement about the risk of genocide in a particular country,” Tuckwood said. “When they do say something, it’s always in the typical, bland, diplomatic language. But we can say what we see and don’t have to worry about conversations happening only behind closed doors.”

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

 

PHOTO: Passover preparations

Two boys watch as ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, not pictured, burn leavened items in final preparations for Passover in the town of Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, Israel, March. 25. Jews are forbidden to eat leavened foodstuffs during the holiday that celebrates the biblical story of the Israelites' escape from slavery and exodus from Egypt. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

Obama gets 'rock star' welcome from Israeli students

President Barack Obama, delivering a keynote speech to Israeli students, was given a 'rock star' welcome. (REUTERS/Jason Reed)

EILAT–U.S. President Barack Obama said he wanted to speak directly to young Israelis when he gave his speech in Jerusalem on Thursday night in front of a crowd of university students.

The non-Israelis watching might not have picked up how far he went to do that. Just a minute or so into the speech, he told the crowd: “Any drama between me and my friend Bibi over the years was just a plot to create material for Eretz Nehederet.” That's Israel's answer to Saturday Night Live or The Daily Show (English translation, “What a wonderful country”), must-watch TV for political satire.

Then there was the reference to Facebook campaigns to get Obama to speak at different locations in Israel, notably Rabin Square in Tel Aviv.

“I guarantee you, 95 per cent of university students knew what he was talking about . . . but I bet 95 per cent of our parents had no idea,” says Elad Erdan, vice-chairman of the student union at Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, a private university, who was there for the speech.

Pop-culture pandering? Maybe, but Erdan said it went over well with the crowd. Those inside jokes made him seem “very Israeli, in a way,” and they cheered him “like a rock star.”

Erdat, 26, had high praise for Obama and his insistence that Israelis and Palestinians need to start talking about peace, even if it isn't easy or politically popular to do. “He was very honest, very straightforward, very direct,” Erdan said. “It was like listening to your father. . . . Your father will tell you what to do even if you don't want to hear it because he wants what's best for you.”

He was also grateful that Obama visited Israel in the first place, even if it took more than four years as president to get here.

“He's important for us,” Erdan said. “Israel felt, after his Cairo speech, almost like he was betraying us.”

It was the second remark to Obama's tardiness I'd heard today. When I told my cab driver I arrived in the country around the same time as the U.S. president, he joked: “Maybe he's following you. Maybe that's why he finally came.”

Stephanie MacLellan is an editor on the Star's foreign desk who has worked as a reporter and editor in Slovakia. Follow her on Twitter at @smaclellan

Israel’s coalition: game, set, mismatch

 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canvasses potential voters ahead of Israel's January 2013 elections.   (Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

Argentina has a pope, Israel has a government.

Like pope-picking, Israel's coalition-cobbling is a back room event, but without the isolation, costumes or formality. Or, for that matter, the massive spotlight of publicity that fell on the Vatican.

However, after nearly two months of lobbying, arm-wrestling and horse trading an oddly assorted clutch of party leaders has cut a deal – several deals in fact – with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose own right wing Likud-Beiteinu faction couldn’t go at it alone after a disappointing election.

The result? One of the oddest ensembles since Lady Gaga’s wardrobe. 

Until now, Netanyahu has been able to pull together a more homogeneous government with far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties that encouraged the swelling of settlements in the West Bank, condoned the privileges of extreme religious groups and maintained that Israel had no viable Palestinian partner for peace talks.
 
This time around Yair Lapid – Israel’s new power broker and surprise runner-up in the elections – made ending ultra-Orthodox privileges a condition for joining the coalition, and squelched the ultras’ chances of serving alongside him. His centrist Yesh Atid Party also supports a two-state solution, but with substantial reservations.

Software mogul Naftali Bennett, who heads the other rising party, Jewish Home, speaks for settlers and vowed to “fight against a Palestinian state being founded in the land of Israel.” Ever.

Meanwhile, Tzipi Livni of the small, centrist Hatnua party, is one of the few, if weak, voices for re-launching peace talks with the Palestinians.

Livni will be justice minister, leading any possible talks. But Bennett’s party, expected to head the ministry of construction and housing, will play a key role in building the settlements that are the biggest impediment to peace. Adding to the mix, one of Likud’s hardest line members, former army chief of staff Moshe Yaalon, will almost certainly be defence minister, and the crucial foreign affairs portfolio will remain in the party’s hands.

Those who hoped that a new government would be a renewed chance to build bridges to peace have little to cheer for here.  If there’s smoke coming up from the hill at Givat Ram, it could be the whiff of bridges burning.

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to the Balkans, Northern Ireland, the Middle East and South Asia. She has won both national and international awards, and collaborated on two Emmy-winning films based on her work.

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Brother of Adolf Hitler's second-in-command being considered for top award by Jewish museum

Hermann Goring was Adolf Hitler's trusted second-in-command, charged with overseeing the mass murder of Jews during World War II. He is among the 20th century's most infamous household names.

More than 60 years after Goring was convicted as a war criminal and killed himself with cyanide to avoid his execution, his brother Albert is poised to rise to prominence--as a purported saviour of some of those whom the Nazis had marked for death.

Albert Goring is being considered for a rare honour by Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial museum, for his efforts to save the lives of Jews during the war.

"There's been a lot of discussion about him in recent years because there has been more stories about him," Estee Yaari, a Yad Vashem spokesperson, told the Star. Yaari said a sub-commission of about 11 or 12 Yad Vashem officials may soon consider whether Goring should be declared "Righteous Among the Nations."

"I can't say if it will happen or when it will happen," Yaari said. Yad Vashem bestows the honour on non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews, she said. More than 24,000 people have received the honour since 1953, which is given to some 4oo to 500 new recipients each year.

Yad Vashem officials are now exploring whether Albert Goring -- at about the same time as his brother Herman was giving the order in 1941 to "make all necessary preparations for a final solution of the Jewish question in Europe" -- really did risk his life to save doomed Jewish prisoners.

Yad Vashem officials are considering various documents and eyewitness testimonies, including a German magazine article written in 1962 by Austrian screenwriter Ernst Neubach titled "My Friend Goring".

In one instance, Neubach describes how Goring helped escort an elderly Jewish woman to safety after Nazi stormtroopers had forced her to sit in a shop window with a derogatory sign around her neck.

Goring, who died in 1966 and was buried in Munich, rescued his doctor from being sent to the Dachau concentration camp, Neubach wrote, got exit permits for other Jews, and transferred the confiscated assets of some Jews to Zurich.

In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Yad Vashem official Irene Steinfeldt said she has spoken with the son of someone rescued by Goring and that she will eventually present Goring to a commission that will decide if he is to be honoured.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at The Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

Israelis chow down on locusts after plague crosses over from Egypt

A swarm of locusts arrives over the Negev desert near the Egyptian border on Wednesday in Kmehin, Israel. (Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

On Monday, a swarm of locusts spread into Israel from Egypt. Coming as it did just before Passover, reactions ran from amused to irritated.

Now Haaretz, Israel's oldest daily newspaper, reports that local chefs are bringing another attitude to the plague entirely: opportunism.

Moshe Basson is the chef of the popular Jerusalem restaurant Eucalyptus. He is also a food historian specializing in Biblical food traditions, and an expert on wild edibles native to the Holy Land.

So naturally, Basson has appeared on TV serving locusts with dipping sauce, according to Haaretz.

Many types of insects are perfectly edible, and many cultures consume them; silkworms and crickets are both popular in various parts of the world. 

In fact, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has programs attempting to boost the farming and production of edible insects.

Not everyone is on board, however. Some Israeli rabbis are warning that insects are not in fact kosher, and should not be consumed.

Whether that is really going to be a huge problem remains to be seen.

Kate Allen is the Star's science and technology reporter. Find her on Twitter at @katecallen.

PHOTO: Purim in the West Bank

A Jewish settler plays with his baby as they celebrate the Jewish festival of Purim Feb. 24 at the settlement outpost of Havat Gilad, West Bank. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)