JERUSALEM: Israel has expelled a United Nation's envoy on human rights, barring his entry into the country and send him back from the airport soon after his arrival, after he compared Jewish state to Nazi Germany.
Richard Falk, an American Jew and professor emeritus at Princeton University, was appointed by Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council as UN Special Rapporteur in the Palestinian territories in Marchto monitor the human rights situation for the next six years.
Falk was stopped at Ben-Gurion international airport after he landed on Sunday, at the recommendation of Israel's foreign ministry.
He spent the night in the airport and was put on a plane to the US on Monday, said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The Israeli foreign ministry had made it clear that it would not allow Falk to enter the country, after BBC quoted him as defending statements he made last year equating Israel's treatment of Palestinians with Nazi treatment of Jews during the Holocaust.
The American Professor told BBC that the Jewish state had been unfairly shielded from international criticism.
"Falk was not invited by Israel, nor did he coordinate the visit as UN regulations obligated him to do," said Simona Helprin, head of the Foreign Ministry's human rights department.
"It is indeed rare that Israel bars entry in this manner, but we cannot accept a situation in which an envoy arrives about whom it is known in advance that he will not carry out his role properly," Helprin said.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Israel_expels_Jewish_UN_official_over_Nazi_remarks/articleshow/3842399.cms