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Jamie
Weinstein
Read Jamie's bio and previous columns
April 21, 2009
Durban II: Send
in the Clowns
GENEVA – “For months we said that this conference is a circus, this
conference is a masquerade,” President of the French Union of Jewish
Students Raphael Haddad told me at the UN Durban II conference against
racism in Geneva, Switzerland on Monday. “When you see that there is
someone who is racist with xenophobe, with anti-Semite, with negationist,
with homophobe, and he is speaking at a conference against racism, it
just means that this conference is a masquerade.”
The someone Haddad was referring to was petite Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad who had just given a bigoted speech attacking Israel as “the
most cruel and repressive racist regime.” For good measure, Ahmadinejad
excoriated the West for the entire world’s problems (both currently and
in history) and for propping up that wicked Zionist regime.
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t find time during his 40-minute speech to make
any comments about his own country’s brutal treatment of gays and people
of the Baha’i faith, among others.
Ahmadinejad’s speech prompted some European delegations to walk out in
protest, but Raphael Haddad didn’t even make it that far. He was thrown
out as Ahmadinejad uttered his first words. As soon as Ahmadinejad began
to speak, Haddad and his friends stormed the stage donning red clown
noses and rainbow colored clown wigs. All of the clowns were naturally
thrown out of the hall except the biggest clown of all. He was given 40
minutes to spew absurdities and hate. But there couldn’t be a more
appropriate symbol for the UN anti-racism conference. Yes, send in the
clowns because the conference is a joke. It makes masquerades look like
serious affairs.
Before the conference even began, the United States, Canada and several
other Western countries declared that they would not be attending for
fear it would turn into an anti-Israel, anti-Western forum instead of a
conference seriously interested in addressing discrimination. Eight
years ago, just days before the Sept. 11th attacks, the first
Durban anti-racism conference (which, incidentally, was actually in
Durban, South Africa) turned into little more. So far, this conference
is looking like more of the same.
The draft outcome document for this year’s conference has gone through
many revisions and many of the most egregious and outrageous attacks on
Israel have been taken out. Still, code words for Israel can be found.
For instance, the document states that “foreign occupation” is “closely
associated with racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related
intolerance . . .” You can read “foreign occupation” for Israel and
possibly the United States and, of course, neither of those cases came
due to racism. I would also point out that Israel’s “occupation” is more
of a case of disputed territory, but this is the subject for another
column. Anyway, one can only expect that this draft document will become
even more anti-Israel and anti-Western as the conference drags on for
four more long days.
And yet, at its root, this is not even really an anti-racism conference.
It is an anti-Western conference. It is a forum for third-world
countries to lash out against more developed ones. Look no farther than
the issue of slavery to understand this dynamic. One of the exhibits at
the conference that focuses on slavery only focuses on slavery in the
Americas. Ahmadinejad mentioned America and Europe’s history of slavery
in his diatribe. The draft outcome document only specifically mentions
the transatlantic slave trade.
This is all fine and good. The history of slavery in the Americas and in
Europe is a horrific chapter of Western history that should be
remembered. But so should the Arab slave trade, which was probably
larger in pure numbers than the transatlantic slave trade. Why is there
no mention of that slave trade? And why is there no mention of
specific countries that still tolerate slavery (I’m looking at you Sudan
and Haiti)?
The answer is obvious. This conference isn’t about fighting racism. It
is about castigating the West. This is ironic because for all the West’s
problems, it is Western-oriented countries, including Israel, that are
the most respectful of human rights, which developed the ideas of human
rights.
In
Western countries, dozens upon dozens of domestic human rights
organizations exist to fight for particular human rights causes within
their own country, or at least what they perceive as human rights
issues. This does not exist in the totalitarian countries that have
dominated the conference. I would even argue that the United States, in
particular, is arguably the least racist country in the entire world.
Our history is scarred, like most societies, with cruel and twisted
tales of racial discrimination and of slavery. But in no other country
is a story like Barack Obama’s possible. This doesn’t mean that racism
is totally eliminated from America, but we have come pretty far to have
elected an African American the president of the United States. This
doesn’t happen anywhere else and it certainly doesn’t happen anywhere
where Western ideas and values have not been incorporated.
Yet, the world has turned upside down. Up is down and down is up. Right
is wrong and wrong is right. And at the United Nations in Geneva, gross
human rights violators lecture human rights champions.
Welcome to the circus. Welcome to the masquerade.
© 2009
North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
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