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Quote by Richard A. Falk

“As Gandhi famously responded when asked about "Western civilization," "I wish they had one," the same applies to "international community": "I wish there was one."”

Quote by Richard A. Falk

Author

Richard A. Falk

Richard A. Falk is a renowned international law scholar, born on November 13, 1930. He has extensive research and teaching experience in the fields of international law and international relations. more

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“We live in a state-centric world faced with global-scale problems that cannot be met by the actions of single states, no matter how powerful, if assessed from the perspective of military capabilities.”

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“I think it is less the limited amount of information than the filters that information about the Middle East must pass through before being fairly addressed in the mainstream media. In more intellectual and geopolitical terms, the perceptions of the region are distorted by a combination of Orientalism and the priorities of the state of Israel, including the refusal to discuss the relevance of Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal in the context of addressing Iran on its nuclear program.”

“There is no doubt that this fusion of terrorist and Muslim feeds virulent forms of Islamophobia, which is also encouraged by such incidents as the Westgate Mall massacre in Nairobi and the Anglican Church bombing in Pakistan. 9/11 greatly intensified this tendency toward fusion, but it had also been nurtured by Israeli propaganda that portrayed their Palestinian and Arab adversaries as "terrorists." In fact, the US government approach after 9/11 was modeled in many of its features on Israeli tactics developed during the long occupation of Palestine.”

“Most of the time, teachers who talk about the Middle East do not know the history, culture or present context of the problems they are discussing. So they go to the media, which quote government or academic "experts" (who often are no such thing) or journalists who, by virtue of working for the media, are supposed to know what they are talking about. In the end they know little or nothing beyond a standard line that reflects the perceptions of the US government and its special-interest supporters. That is what the students get. Indeed, that is what we all get.”

“The continual linking of the notions of terrorist and terrorism with Muslims and the Middle East is, essentially, an act of propaganda that cannot help but promote "Islamophobia."”

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“Unless this [Barack Obama] American administration is willing to diverge from the conventional American policy in the Middle East by changing its basic attitudes on crucial questions, foremost of them Palestine, and support genuinely the rights of people for independence, sovereignty and identity across the board, the only "resolve" one would hope from the USA is to stay out of the Middle East for a while.”

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“The worst crimes against humanity in the last half of the previous century and this century are carried out with conventional advanced weapons, upgraded daily by a greedy arms industry, super power's apathy and criminal ideologies. In the Middle East, Iran lags behind many other military powers in this respect.”

“While in the American academia the knowledge production on the Middle East in general and Syria in particular has been considerably transformed in recent years, the dissemination of these more updated views fails to reach the conventional educational system. For two main reasons: Politics can still subdue and censor views that are not endorsed ideologically, and academics have still not learned how to write openly, directly and, one should say, courageously about these issues.”

“Films, media, educational system and arts portray Muslims in a racist and negative way. The more interesting question is who is behind these images.”

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“In the United States, and to a certain extent in Canada, there's very little interest in what happens outside their borders.”

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