A prominent professor of international law at Princeton University in the US has been placed under police protection after saying that Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon was indictable for war crimes, according to a report in the London Independent.
The Independent article said that since the broadcast, Professor Richard Falk, who is Jewish, had received threatening telephone calls including a specific physical threat to him and his wife, he said.
In the program, which was re-broadcast on BBC World television this weekend, Falk asserted that Sharon could be charged under international law. "There is absolutely no question in my mind that he is indictable for the knowledge he had or should have had," he told the BBC.
The professor was invited to appear on the program, called The Accused, as a former member of an international commission that looked into the massacre of the Palestinian refugees after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. An Israeli commission of inquiry at the time found Sharon, who was defense minister and in charge of overseeing the entire invasion, indirectly responsible for the killings.
The massacre was not carried out by Israeli soldiers but by Lebanese Christian militia fighters allied with Israel.
As Professor Falk said on the program: "Sharon's specific command responsibility arises from the fact that he was minister of defense in touch with the field commanders, that he actually was present there in Beirut, that he met with the Phalange leadership, and it was he that gave the directions and orders that resulted in the Phalange entering the camps in September."
Princeton police confirmed that the professor had contacted them since the broadcast asking for help.
"This has been rather unpleasant, as you can imagine," he told the Independent on Sunday. "My participation in the program was rather restrained and I am surprised that it should have provoked such a reaction."
He said it had been especially distressing for his wife. "She is nervous every time the phone rings now."
Investigators would not speculate as to the origin of the calls, but Professor Falk suggested they had come from "disturbed individuals" rather than militant groups, such as the Jewish Defense League.
The JDL has been investigated by FBI in past terrorist attacks, including the unsolved murder in 1985 of Alex Odeh, an Arab-American activist. "My impression [of extremist Jewish groups] is that if they are serious about trying to
assassinate or injure somebody then they don't do these kind of harassing defamatory type preparations. They just do it," said the professor.
But he does not regret appearing: "I would diminish my sense of self-respect if I didn't participate in a reasonable program of the sort the BBC put together because I was scared of the consequences," he told the Independent.
The broadcast caused a furor in Israel, despite the broadcasting authority's decision not show it. The issue became still more sensitive when 28 survivors of the Sabra and Shatila camps launched legal proceedings against Sharon in a Belgian court on Monday – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
