Jewish students at antisemite’s lecture at LSE allegedly told “What happened to Jews in Germany was because Jews misbehaved”
Today, Richard Falk, the discredited and disgraced fringe antisemitic conspiracy theorist and the former UN envoy, has delivered a lecture at the London School of Economics (LSE) to launch his new book, “Palestine’s Horizon”.
Witnesses at today’s event have reported that the event descended into chaos. Jewish community members held up signs calling Falk an antisemite. University security tried to confiscate the signs and attempted to remove the protesters.
Also in attendance was the notorious antisemite, Gilad Atzmon, who told those around him that “the Jews were expelled from Germany for misbehaving.” Stunned audience members asked him to repeat what he had said and he did. Atzmon also was heard recommending the works of disgraced historian David Irving, who in 2000 was proven in court to be an antisemite, a Holocaust denier and an admirer of Hitler. It is also reported that Atzmon later said, “Jews are always expelled for a reason.”
Falk, the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights for the Palestinian Territories from 2008-2014, has been condemned repeatedly for making antisemitic remarks. He has been denounced by the United Kingdom on at least three separate occasions for antisemitism, as detailed by UN Watch in an open letter.
For example, in 2012 the Foreign and Commonwealth Office condemned Falk for providing the cover endorsement of a virulently antisemitic book that describes Jews as Nazis and which asks whether “Hitler might have been right after all”. In 2011, then Prime Minister David Cameron “strongly condemned” Falk’s publication of an antisemitic cartoon. The image posted by Falk on his blog showed a dog wearing a Jewish skullcap, urinating on a depiction of justice, and devouring a bloody skeleton.
Falk was publicly rebuked by former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2011 for suggesting the 9/11 terrorist attacks were orchestrated by the US government. He blamed the Boston bombings on “American global domination” and “Tel Aviv”. In fact, Falk’s glorification of the Hamas terrorist group, which calls for the genocide of all Jews worldwide in its Charter, was so severe that even the Palestinian Authority sought to expel him from the UN.
Falk’s invitation onto our campuses blatantly violates the government’s Prevent counter-extremism strategy. To make matters worse, LSE was warned in advance.
Campaign Against Antisemitism has written to the University of East London and Middlesex University to demand that Falk’s book launch events there on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively be cancelled immediately. We are also lodging a formal complaint with LSE and the Higher Education Funding Council for England.
