Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

Richard Falk

Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law and practice at Princeton University, is a visiting professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara.

MER Article

International Law at the Vanishing Point

In the summer of 2006, two border incidents were invoked by Israel, with strong US diplomatic support and material assistance, to justify a prolonged military offensive in Gaza and a crushing “shock and awe” assault on Lebanon. The main international response, effectively orchestrated by Washington,

Richard Falk, Aslı Bâli • 23 min read

MER Article

Reviving Global Justice, Addressing Legitimate Grievances

Since its founding moments, the United States has been bedeviled by a morally self-congratulatory image of American exceptionalism, despite engaging in practices that violate the most fundamental precepts of human decency. This dualism, constituted by dynamics of denial and myth-making, has achieved a public posture of innocence throughout a national

Richard Falk • 7 min read

MER Article

International Law and the al-Aqsa Intifada

Though the Israeli government and the US media persist in describing the second Palestinian intifada as a security crisis or a disruption to the "peace process," in international law, Palestinian resistance to occupation is a legally protected right. For 33 years, Israel has administered a military occupation of

Richard Falk • 8 min read

MER Article

The Kahan Report: Banishing the Palestinian Ordeal

If politics is the art of the possible, then the impact of the Kahan Commission Report has to be understood as “beyond politics,” Israel’s final victory in the Lebanon war is not the expulsion of the PLO or even the extension of its sovereign reach to challenge Lebanese territorial and political ind

Richard Falk • 14 min read