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| Christine Chinkin |
Commentary Magazine..
27 March '14..
Having 9/11 truther Richard Falk retire from his position as “United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories” might have been cause for celebration if it hadn’t been almost inevitable that Falk would simply be replaced by someone no less off the wall. That is what has now happened. Under pressure from the Arab League, the United Nations Human Rights Council’s president Remigiusz Hencze has rejected the candidacy of Georgetown Law lecturer Christina Cerna despite the fact that Cerna had the unanimous endorsement of the UNHRC’s five-member vetting committee. Although initial reports from diplomats suggested that the decision had been made to have Indonesia’s former UN envoy Makarim Wibisono as a replacement for Falk, it now emerges that the position will likely go to the equally dubious Christine Chinkin, one of the authors of the infamous Goldstone report.
What was it that got Christina Cerna disqualified? Well, going by the letters that the Arab League sent to the UNHRC’s president it would seem that what counted against Cerna was that she had no previous record of condemning Israel. Without a resume peppered with pro-Palestinian statements she just couldn’t be considered up to the job. Chinkin, on the other hand, has an impressive record of anti-Israel statements to recommend her.
Falk was always going to be a tough act to follow. This is the man who has accused the Jewish state of “slouching toward nothing less than a Palestinian Holocaust.” Yet, the monitoring group UN Watch has complied a rogues gallery of some of the other candidates. Many had their money on Falk’s friend and close associate Phyllis Bennis who assisted Falk in compiling a number of his reports, some of which were so pro-Hamas that the Palestinian Authority actually blocked Falk from presenting one of them.
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