Back in November the Forward’s Naomi Zeveloff wrote a profile of Richard Falk the 80-year-old United Nations special rapporteur to the Palestinian territories and former Princeton University professor of international law. Written in the sympathetic faintly admiring tone that the paper reserves for those on the left it amounted to a whitewash of a prominent denizen of the political fringe. Understand that this is a fellow who has published a book critiquing the New York Times’ coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict — from the left — as well as an essay comparing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza with “the criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity.”

The piece opens with the controversy Falk sparked by posting a cartoon on his website that depicts a dog wearing a shirt labeled USA and a yarmulke with a Star of David and chewing on a pile of human bones while lifting his leg to relieve himself on Lady Justice. Falk later claimed he thought the yarmulke was a helmet. Writes Zeveloff:

[His 2008 appointment to his UN position] has heightened Falk‘s profile as a Jew who is highly critical of Israel and one … whose criticism carries the imprimatur of a UN legal fact-finding body. Falk is not as widely known as Richard Goldstone … [b]ut he is characterized in the same broad stroke by his online detractors many of whom refer to him as a “self-hating Jew.”

To call Falk a “self-hating Jew” however would imply that Falk harbors a deep discomfort with his Jewish identity and that this anguish manifests itself as anti-Semitism in his personal life and academic work. In reality Falk told the Forward his criticism of Israel is less a reflection of his Jewish identity than his posture as an American leftist perennially dedicated to history’s underdogs — in his eyes the Palestinians.…

In what may have been an attempt to clarify his earlier writing on the oncoming “Palestinian Holocaust” Falk recently penned a piece on Jewish identity and Palestinian suffering on his personal blog. In the posting Falk engages in a kind of mental tightrope walk embracing the idea that Judaism compels him to overcome injustice in the world while rejecting the notion that Jews are somehow “chosen” by God to do just that.

In other words he’s a nice well-meaning man just misunderstood by everyone except Ms. Zeveloff; not a self-hating Jew at all but to the contrary actually striving to fulfill Judaism’s mandate to defend the underdog — provided one supposes that the mutt’s not wearing a yarmulke.

The writer includes a fleeting reference to “a few essays [of Falk’s] delicately questioning the US government’s explanation of 9/11” — meaning he’s a partial or full-fledged “truther.” But she was apparently unaware of — or perhaps not brave enough to raise with him — his 1979 New York Times op-ed encouraging the Carter administration to embrace Ayatollah Khomeini‘s then-incipient revolution pronouncing confidently that the “depiction of him as fanatical reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false” and that his “close advisers are uniformly composed of moderate progressive individuals … who share a notable record of concern with human rights.”

Until this point there’s not much here to surprise; simply typical of Forward profiles which get progressively kinder and gentler the further their subject is from the religious and political right. But one presumes that even the Forward has red lines one of which Falk surely ought to have crossed with his latest outrage involving a new book by Gilad Atzmon entitled The Wandering Who? I’ll let Professor Alan Dershowitz introduce Atzmon and his book:

Lest there be any doubt about Atzmon’s anti-Semitic credentials listen to his self-description in the book itself. He boasts about “drawing many of my insights from a man who … was an anti-Semite as well as a radical misogynist” …. He declares himself a “proud self-hating Jew” [and his] writings … brim with classic anti-Semitic motifs that are borrowed from Nazi publications. Throughout his writings Atzmon argues that Jews seek to control the world … urges his readers to doubt the Holocaust and to reject Jewish history … argues that Jews are corrupt and responsible for “why” they are “hated” and declares that Israel is worse than the Nazis and has actually “apologized” to the Nazis for having earlier compared them to Israel.

Ten authors associated with the leftist publisher of Atzmon’s book have called upon it to distance itself from Atzmon’s views because the “thrust of Atzmon’s work is to normalize and legitimize anti-Semitism.” And Richard Falk? His endorsement of the book appears prominently on its cover:

Gilad Atzmon has written an absorbing and moving account of his journey from hard-core Israeli nationalist to a de-Zionized patriot of humanity and passionate advocate of justice for the Palestinian people. It is a transformative story told with unflinching integrity that all (especially Jews) who care about real peace as well as their own identity should not only read but reflect upon and discuss widely.

Is there nothing at all this man can say that might cause the Forward to decide it cannot let its past treatment of him stand? In the Forward’s current issue an op-ed writer insists that even harsh criticism of Israel “is not by definition anti-Semitism … Real anti-Semitism exists. Real ugly hatred of the Jewish people is all too easy to find.”

Indeed. Just ask Richard Falk for directions.

DO-IT-YOURSELF YIDDISHKEIT There was so much that was deeply troubling about the show that was put on in Yerushalayim last Motzaei Shabbos. Rather than just leave such feelings inchoate I tried to tap into them and bring them to the surface and this is what I found.

First one must consider what viewing or hearing about such antics must have done to survivors of that era those for whom such striped clothing such yellow stars were nebach nebach the farthest things from theatrical props. Was the actors’ cause worth the ona’as devarim of even a single such Yid? Next there is the aspersion they cast upon other Jews far from Torah though they might be as though they could be equated with the some of the vilest oppressors our nation has known. We know the Chofetz Chaim used the term “yemach shmo” regarding only one person in his lifetime; are the secular targets of this show somehow more deserving of it?

I might like to believe I know how to answer both of the above questions and perhaps the Kikar Shabbos troupe thought they too had the answers albeit different ones. But regardless of what I’d “like to believe ” I know that in truth such questions can only be answered by a gadol b’Torah. But none were consulted and that reveals a great irony: that whatever their outward appearance these “actors” and their “producers” suffer from the same deficit of emunas chachamim the same belief that Yiddishkeit is whatever they decide it is as the people against whom they rail. The external dress on each side may be radically different but they are two sides of one coin on which is engraved the words “b’shrirus libi eileich.”

And finally whatever the justice of the cause the very use of street theater touched a deep nerve. Kabuki theater with tinokos shel beis rabban as props? Whenever have Yidden used such means whose roots are in the sheker of the world at large of politics and entertainment?

CHARACTER CONTENT Within weeks when the smoke clears after the next three primaries Rick Santorum may already be an also-ran one among many in this zany campaign year. But for now he’s riding high so I want to share something I read years ago that first made me sit up and take note of Mr. Santorum. Peggy Noonan in a Wall Street Journal piece on the eve of the November 2006 senatorial election that Santorum lost so badly to Bob Casey wrote:

I end with a story too corny to be true but it’s true. A month ago Mr. Santorum and his wife were in the car driving to Washington for the debate with his opponent on “Meet the Press.” Their conversation turned to how brutal the campaign was how hurt they’d both felt at all the attacks. Karen Santorum said it must be the same for Bob Casey and his family; they must be suffering. Rick Santorum said yes it’s hard for them too. Then he said “Let’s say a [prayer] for them.” So they prayed for the Caseys as they hurtled south.

A friend of mine called them while they were praying. She told me about it later but didn’t want it repeated. “No one would believe it” she said. But I asked Mr. Santorum about it. Sure he said surprised at my surprise. “We pray for the Caseys every night. We know it’s as hard for them as it is for us.”

One lesson to be gleaned from our last two presidencies is that character counts and this anecdote certainly says something about Rick Santorum’s.