February 23rd 2009
A Durban II Cover-Up
Plans are underway for Durban II – a follow-up to the UN-sponsored “anti-racism” conference in 2001 that quickly morphed into an ugly, racist anti-Israel conference … as if Israel were racist, as if its accusers weren’t some of the most racist country on the planet.
The Bush admin famously washed its hands of Durban I, but Obama’s team is participating in the set-up meetings for the follow-up show - a controversial decision that led the State Department to release a statement positioning its participation as an effort to make Durban II less of a racist fiasco than Durban I:
We sent this delegation to work with countries that want to achieve a successful review conference that focuses on combating racism, racial discrimination and other forms of intolerance and to explore whether it is going to be possible to focus the Durban Review Conference on these serious issues.
Trouble is, says Forbes columnist Anne Bayefsky, the Obamaites did no such thing, and worse, is actively covering up its true actions at the prelims.
The reality, however, was nothing of the sort. Instead, Obama’s Durban II team slipped easily into the U.N.’s anti-Israel and anti-Jewish environs, taking the approach that “fitting in” was best accomplished by staying silent.
She points to two critical junctures when the Americans sat on their hands. The first occurred when the U.S. delegation refused to comment when the Palestinian delegation worked to insert language that called for “the international protection of the Palestinian people throughout the occupied Palestinian territory,” and
Furthermore, the new Palestinian provision “Calls for … implementation of international legal obligations, including the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the wall …” This is a dramatic attempt to change an “advisory opinion” into a “legal obligation”–a status which attaches to no advisory opinion.
More troubling was the U.S. response to an Iranian effort at Holocaust denial:
Negotiators from the European Union suggested on Wednesday a new provision to “condemn without reservation any denial of the Holocaust and urges all states to reject denial of the Holocaust as an historical event, either in full, or in part, or any activities to this end.” Iran–whose president is a Holocaust-denier–immediately objected and insisted that the proposal be “bracketed” or put in dispute. The move blocked the adoption of the proposal and ensured another battle over the reality of the Holocaust in April–at these supposedly “anti-racism” meetings. After Iran objected, the chair looked around the room, expecting a response. He said: “Is there any delegation wishing to comment on this new proposal by the European Union? It doesn’t seem the case. We move on.” U.S. delegates said nothing, even after the prompt.
Obama’s State Department may call this working “to achieve a successful … conference,” but it falls far short of the Bush admin’s adamant refusal to allow America to get caught up in Arab Jew-hatred.
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