By Josh Basson, , Seattle
Michael J. Jordan’s insightful front page column was quite informative (“Was Durban II a success or failure?” May 1.)
It is apparent by the boycotts, walkouts and the hateful attacks on Israel by Iran’s president, Durban II must be remembered by Jews and non-Jews alike as nothing but a sickening failure.
Iran does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and backs Hamas and Hizballah, terrorist groups sworn to the Jewish state’s destruction. How ridiculous to give a Holocaust-denying fruitcake Ahmadinejad a platform to lecture the world about racism? It is like inviting Bernie Madoff to headline a global conference on business ethics.
Those countries that staged a walkout during Ahmadinejad’s vitriol are to be commended. Also those countries that joined Israel in boycotting the conference were courageous and wise in boycotting this failed conference.
The United Nations conference can never have credibility, or value, if it is used to attack one country — Israel — especially when so many other countries have truly abysmal human rights records, including China, Sudan and Iran. The homosexuals being persecuted in Iran, the oppressed people of Tibet, and those brutually murdered in Darfur will be left once more without a mandate for their protection.
The obsessive focus on the Jewish state meant that the real problems of racism and genocide were largely ignored at the U.N. It was encouraging to know that only outside the official U.N. anti-racism conference at well-attended “counter-conferences” organized by NGOs such as U.N. Watch did the real victims of racism and mass murder get the attention they deserved. Only at those counter-conferences could one witness moving presentations by victims of Iranian oppression, survivors of the Rwandan genocide, and the continuing slaughter in Darfur.
Before any similar conference occurs again, the world’s most barbaric leaders must be marginalized and prevented from hijacking our human rights agenda at the U.N.