The racist conference on racism strikes again

The hypocrisy of the United Nations World Conference against Racism is befitting an Orwell novel and Mark III of this debauched spectacle is coming to New York City on September 22.

By ALEX RYVCHIN
durban I zionism is racism 311 (photo credit: REUTERS)
durban I zionism is racism 311
(photo credit: REUTERS)
You couldn’t make these things up. A conference to address global suffering due to racism and prejudice where the key note speaker is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It gets better. The conference is chaired by Libya. But that’s not all. Delegates and supporters at the first conference, wishing to indulge in some light reading, can readily get their hands on a copy of the Secret Protocols of the Elders of Zion – that’s the bogus text written by Russian ultra-nationalists in 1903 containing the supposed master plan for Jewish global domination.
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The first World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance was held in Durban, South Africa from 31 August to 7 September 2001 pursuant to resolution 52/111 of the United Nations General Assembly. The motivation behind the conference could not be faulted. Following the atrocities committed during World War II, a charter prescribing the basic rights of individuals to live free of racial persecution, prejudice and bias was adopted in the form of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948. “Durban” (as the conference came to be known) was to be a sort of ‘catch-up’ to see how the world was progressing in fulfilling its obligations under the Universal Declaration. 
But the original intention of mobilizing the international community to combat a great evil quickly descended into a hate-fest. The Australian delegation remarked that “far too much time had been consumed by bitter divisive exchanges on issues which have done nothing to advance the cause of combating racism”. Then-US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, noted that “hateful language singled out only one country in the world, Israel, for censure and abuse.”
In withdrawing its delegation on the grounds that the Conference on racism was overtly racist, the Canadians announced that the conference “degenerated into open and divisive expressions of intolerance and anti-Semitism.” The UN’s showpiece to combat global racism turned into an ugly racist spectacle with a predictable scapegoat. The juxtaposition of deeply rooted prejudice and the appearance of legitimacy imparted by official proceedings harked back to the days of the Dreyfus Affair. The entire event was a farce.
The mood of the masses outside the Conference was no less vitriolic. Soaring banners lamenting Hitler’s failure to fully solve the Jewish problem and endorsing the use of machine guns to liberate Jerusalem were frightful -both for the intensity of the hatred conveyed and for their flawless graphic designs which clearly bore the mark of cashed-up NGOs rather than lone kooks and malcontents.
The abject failure of the first Durban Conference should have signaled the end of the UN’s attempts to combat racism by committee. Sadly, that was not the case. In 2009, the Conference, which was “wrecked by Arab and Islamic extremists,” reconvened to continue its work. Only this time they meant business. This time they brought Ahmadinejad. The tone of “Durban II” was set and consequently many of the remaining sane nations of the world either sent low-level delegations to the Conference or boycotted it entirely – with the former option being virtually as insulting as the latter in diplomatic terms.
President Ahmadinejad did not disappoint. True to form, he referred to the Holocaust as being “ambiguous and dubious” and proclaimed that “the Zionists control an important part of the politics in the US and Europe and used this influence, especially in the media, to force their demands, which are nothing more than the plundering of nations, onto the world”. If you substitute the word “Zionists” for “Jews” you have a most eloquent executive summary of the aforementioned Secret Protocols.
The absurdity of these Conferences would be humorous if the stakes weren’t so high. The Durban Conferences are after all held under the auspices of the United Nations. They seek to give effect to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They are looked to by the suffering and the suppressed, the persecuted and the prejudged for some sort of hope, some sort of action to combat the daily injustices and moral outrages committed by racist regimes and institutions.
Instead, however, the Conferences spout nonsense of Holocaust denial and seek to isolate and delegitimize Israel, a State which has every right to exist. Worst of all, the Conferences give a platform to tyrants and corrupt NGOs who, far from protecting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, advocate the destruction of the very same people in the wake of whose near destruction the Declaration was made.
The writer is a London based lawyer and founder of The Jewish Thinker (www.jewishthinker.org) - a non-profit organization promoting the study, awareness and discussion of the Arab/Israeli conflict, the Holocaust and Nazi war crimes; and matters of Jewish interest.