I would define a moment of double respect as being when, say, the Pope addresses both Houses of Congress, or - as happened again last week - when that great institution the BBC quotes an expert from that even greater institution, the United Nations. The “official” in question was also the Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Richard Falk, and his chosen subject was Israel, so I bowed slightly, turned the tap off and put down my razor to hear what he had been saying.
The gist of it was this: whereas Professor Falk's outgoing predecessor as investigator into Israeli conduct, on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council, had only compared Israel to apartheid South Africa, the new man had gone one better, and compared it to Nazi Germany. Actually he'd done this some time ago, before being appointed, but now, of course, his view mattered more. “UN expert stands by Nazi comments” was the headline on the BBC News website.
For various reasons Israelis take badly to being compared to the people who attempted to eradicate Jewish life in Europe, and I understood Falk's remarks to have been provocative, as he himself admitted. He had made them, he explained, to wake America “from its torpor”. Speaking about Gaza, Falk said that only the sensitivity of Jewish people prevented the parallel being observed more widely.
“If this kind of situation had existed for instance in the manner in which China was dealing with Tibet or the Sudanese Government was dealing with Darfur,” he said, “I think there would be no reluctance to make that comparison.”
In international terms, this is odd. The body for whom Falk will soon begin work (work that is hardly necessary since he already knows exactly what he thinks before undertaking a moment's UN-authorised monitoring) is famous for its excoriation of Israel and its comparative silence over Tibet and Darfur. Kofi Annan criticised them for it before his departure, Ban Ki Moon criticised them for it on his arrival. All to no avail. The council's website begins with a page entitled “Highlights”, on which only one country's “human rights violations” are mentioned by name. And it isn't Andorra.
So, what did the 40-plus members of the Council see in the professor? As far as I can tell his attraction lies in the following. He is American; he is Jewish; and more deliciously in light of the first two, he blames Israel for just about everything - as opposed to those who (rightly, in my opinion) blame it for quite a lot. This, for example, is Falk in 2002, on the second intifada: “Palestinian resistance gradually ran out of military options, and suicide bombers appeared as the only means still available by which to inflict sufficient harm on Israel so that the struggle could go on.”
There are three problems with this analysis. The first is that suicide bombing began in Israel in 1994, when Hamas saw the Oslo peace process as threatening to succeed. Secondly, the suicide bombs were obviously utterly counterproductive in terms of procuring peace, and indeed helped to destroy the Israeli peace movement. And thirdly, other “resistances” (Tibet, Darfur?) seem to have avoided the “only means” of suicide bombing aimed at civilians - family restaurants, buses, schools, discos, and groups of teenagers, to be more specific.
For Falk “Israel was mainly responsible”. It was transparently this political position that led to him being appointed to his job, not his expertise, nor his open-mindedness. Nor, we now know, was it his common sense. In my library of conspiriana are several books by the American theologian David Ray Griffin, intellectual guru of the “Bush blew up the twin towers” movement. Griffin believes that no plane hit the Pentagon (despite hundreds of people seeing it) and that the World Trade Centre was brought down by a controlled demolition. There isn't a single point of alleged fact upon which Griffin's barking theory hasn't itself been demolished. And there isn't a single volume of Griffin that doesn't carry Falk's endorsement.
This journey reaches its depressing climax in a chapter written by Falk for Griffin's 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out. Following on from the pseudo- scientific blah about the heat at which steel bends (all of which stuff Falk describes as possessing “high credibility”) the UN expert-official opines that part of the evidence that there was conspiracy is the very fact that so many people say there wasn't. Or, in intellectualese: “Momentous suspicious events bearing on the legitimacy of the process of governance in the US have been consistently shielded from mainstream inquiry by being reinscribed as the wild fantasies of ‘conspiracy theorists'... The management of suspicion is itself suspicious.” As you can see, because I believe that Falk, like Griffin, has taken leave of what remained of his senses, this column is now itself part of the sinister plot.
Well, we'll have to cope, because there is something bigger at stake. It's this: let's say, for one moment, that the objective of the Human Rights Council was actually to improve human rights in, let's further say, the occupied territories. Would you employ someone who has made utterances that ensure that all of Israeli public opinion - including that part critical of its Government - would unite 100 per cent to resist him? Of course you wouldn't.
The implication of this logic is simple. The UN Human Rights Council doesn't give a toss about the human rights of the Palestinians in the sense of wanting them upheld. Its majority is far more interested in using Israel as a stick to beat the US with, or - in the case of Islamic states - as a bogeyman to dampen down domestic discontent.
But what is even more amazing is that some Western countries agree to play this game. Three weeks ago the Swiss, using a glossy brochure, persuaded the Council by 40 votes to 7 to elect a Jean Ziegler to its advisory committee. Professor Ziegler is an apologist for Fidel Castro and Colonel Gadaffi, a former associate of the Ethiopian dictator General Mengistu, a defender of Robert Mugabe (who, he said, had “history and morality with him”), a visitor to Saddam Hussein and Kim Il Jong, and an admirer of the French Holocaust denier, Roger Garaudy.
Do I need to add that he is also an outspoken critic of American imperialism and of Israel? I invite - and would enjoy reading - the Swiss Ambassador's defence of his country's nomination, but it's time to draw a conclusion.
I believe in the UN, but we all must stop regarding it as though it was some kind of moral arbiter, doing right in a world of wrong. Because, unfortunately, the term “UN expert” means neither good nor expert. It can mean warped and stupid.
David Aaronovitch