UNHRC rapporteur denied entry to Israel By HERB KEINON

Richard Falk, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, was barred from entering the country on Sunday after the Foreign Ministry charged him with "legitimizing Hamas terrorism" and "drawing shameful comparisons to the Holocaust."

Falk, an American Jew, arrived at Ben Gurion Airport with his entourage Sunday to compile a report on the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territories, although he'd been informed by Israel that he would not be allowed into the country.

He plans to submit the report to the UN in March.

Simona Halperin, the director of the Foreign Ministry's International Organization and Human Rights department, called Falk "completely unobjective," citing his comparisons of Israelis to Nazis and Israel's actions against the Palestinians to the Holocaust.

Last year Falk penned an article called "Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust," in which he wrote that it was not an "irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians" with the "criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity." A few months after that article was written, the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council appointed Falk, a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, to the rapporteur position....