radio program of 9/11 truther Kevin Barrett in June 2013, Falk said: "questioning that deeply the official version of 9/11 does touch the third rail of American political sensitivities, and there is an attempt to discredit and destroy anyone that makes such a bold statement, and this has intimidated a lot of people." Israeli-Palestinian conflict In a 2002 op-ed in The Nation, Falk was highly critical of Operation Defensive Shield and described it as state-sponsored terrorism. He said the Palestinian demonstrations that followed Sharon’s "provocative visit to the Al Aqsa Mosque" were initially non-violent. The response of Israel, which Falk described as "excessive" and which involved "extrajudicial assassination of a range of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza", created a spiral of violence. Falk wrote the view of an "overwhelming majority" of the UN Security Council, and a UN Human Rights Commission inquiry of which he was a part, was that suicide bombings took place when "Palestinian resistance gradually ran out of military options" and suicide attacks appeared as the only way to inflict sufficient harm on Israel so that "the struggle could go on." The UN inquiries found that Israel was responsible for the escalation of violence and that its military response against the Palestinians was a violation of international law. Falk referred to the Passover massacre as "horrifying" and stated that Israel's response was "equally horrifying." In 2002, Falk wrote on Princeton Divestment's website that "to divest from companies profiting from business with Israel at this time is to express solidarity with victims of massive crimes against humanity and to call upon Israel to respect U.N. authority and the elemental rules of international law by withdrawing from occupied Palestinian territory." In a June 2007 article, "Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust," Falk compared some Israeli policies with regard to the Palestinians to the Nazi record of collective punishment. Identifying himself as a Jewish American, Falk stated that his use of the term Holocaust "represents a rather desperate appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to act urgently to prevent these current [Israeli] genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy [for the Palestinians]." Falk also stated that "the comparison should not be viewed as literal, but... that a pattern of criminality associated with Israeli policies in Gaza has actually been supported by the leading democracies of the 21st century." He wrote that