The UN and racism

The United Nations has released a new draft declaration for the Durban II "anti-racism" conference. This declaration "Reaffirms the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA) as it was adopted at the World Conference against Racism ... in 2001." That earlier declaration says that Palestinians are victims of Israeli racism—with Israel the only U.N. state found guilty of racism. And though today’s draft divides provisions into the negotiable and non-negotiable, it announces that reaffirming Durban I is text which does not "remain to be negotiated."

You can read more about the UN's previous Durban conference and the planning for this one in my articles here, here and here. These reports will inform you that as well as Libya as Chair of the group "a meeting yesterday by the Human Rights Council’s five regional groups also named Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Russia as among the 15 bureau members who will oversee preparatory deliberations for a 2009 gathering".

Libya is a country that is

"a racist regime that gave its highest award in 2002 to convicted French Holocaust-denier Roger Garaudy, brutalizes black African migrants, and tortures Bulgarian and Palestinian medics for the crime of being foreigners."

according to Prof. Gerald Steinberg, executive director of NGO Monitor.

Then there is Iran which under the vehemently anti-semitic President Ahmadinejad is bent on acquiring nuclear weapons while calling for Israel to be wiped off the map. President Ahmadinejad is expected to attempt to use the opportunity to further foment anti-semitism on a global scale. The Organization of the Islamic Conference has already given indications that it will seek to drive through an agenda that would create international rules which would greatly expand concepts of Islamophobia while severely limiting freedom of speech, diminish concern over anti-semitism, and seek to cast Israel as another apartheid South Africa.


The final document of the first NGO conference which led into the government forum declared Zionism was racism and the government declaration found Israel to be the one and only racist state in the world today. That's Israel, the only real democracy in the Middle East where Muslims have the vote, sit in Parliament, have served as Ministers, have freedom to practice their religion etc. etc. Not Saudi Arabia which is a country where you may not bring a Christian (let alone Jewish) Bible, where it is forbidden to practice Christianity (let alone Judaism), where non Muslims are forbidden from accessing areas of the country reserved for Muslims only. Nor any of the other Muslim countries in the Middle East where Jews have been persecuted and expelled over the last century and this one and where you may not enter if you have an Israeli stamp in your passport. This really gets to me, I am a generally calm person but the injustice of this sort of thing really makes my blood boil.