We received the following email from UN Watch:

I want to share good news: thanks to our advocacy, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has just expelled U.N. official Richard Falk — the notorious Hamas supporter, 9/11 conspiracist and antisemite — from one of its prestigious committees, where he helped played a key role in the organization’s global work.




After UN Watch’s open letter (see below) was published and went viral on the Internet, HRW did the right thing and finally fired Falk, deleting his name from their website listing of committee members.

I received confirmation this morning from an HRW representative, who informed me that Falk “no longer” holds the position, and that the HRW website “has now been updated to reflect that fact.”

The timing and specifics were provided today by none other than Richard Falk himself, who admitted on his blog that, fo

llowing UN Watch’s protest yesterday, he was “asked to resign.”

Falk said he was told that it was “because of my connection with the UN, which is contrary to HRW policy.”

If that were the real reason, of course, he would have been removed long ago.

I want to thank you for all your support of our work, which allows UN Watch to continue winning victories for the genuine cause of human rights. You can count on us to keep fighting for what is right.

Sincerely,

Hillel C. Neuer Executive Director

The following UN Watch letter was sent to HRW director Kenneth Roth:

Kenneth Roth Executive Director Human Rights Watch 350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor New York, NY 10118-3299 United States of America

December 17, 2012

Dear Mr. Roth, We are shocked to discover that Richard Falk—the U.N. official whose antisemitic remarks and 9/11 conspiracy theories have been condemned by British Prime Minister David Cameron, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay—is a board member of your organization.

By legitimizing this racist and enemy of human rights, your organization undermines its own founding principles. We urge you to remove him immediately.

According to your website, Mr. Falk is a member of Human Rights Watch’s prestigious Santa Barbara Committee, composed of prominent citizens who play a key role in your organization’s global work.

We find it astonishing that Mr. Falk would be rewarded by such a prestigious position with Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s largest human rights organizations.

As a keen follower of the U.N. and its Human Rights Council, you surely know the following:

• That Falk is so extreme in his support for the Hamas terrorist organization that even the Palestinian Authority—as revealed in a Wikleaks cable, and which Falk himself admits—has sought to remove him, on grounds that he is a “partisan of Hamas“;

• That Falk last week published an article attempting to downplay, reinterpret and justify the latest call by Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal to destroy Israel;

• That Falk last year published on his website an antisemitic cartoon showing a dog wearing a Jewish head covering, and with “USA” written on its body, urinating on a depiction of justice and devouring a bloody skeleton;

• That Falk was condemned for this antisemitic act by British Prime Minister Cameron;

• That UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay also condemned Falk’s cartoon as “antisemitic”;

• That Falk now provides the cover endorsement of a virulently antisemitic book, “The Wandering Who,” whose author, as documented by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz in The New Republic, boasts about drawing “insights from a man who… was an anti-Semite as well as a radical misogynist,” a hater of “almost everything that fails to be Aryan masculinity,” declares himself a “proud, self-hating Jew,” writes with “contempt” of “the Jew in me,” and describes himself as “a strong opponent” of “Jewish-ness”;

• That, only two months ago, Falk was condemned for endorsing this antisemitic book by the British Foreign Office, which protested to the U.N. and expressed its “serious concerns”;