Walkout at UN conference after Iran president calls Israel 'racist'

22:59 by Editor · 0 Post a comment on AAWR

British delegates joined a dramatic diplomatic walkout today when President Ahmadinejad of Iran told a major UN conference against racism that the state of Israel had been founded "on the pretext of Jewish suffering" during the Second World War.

Around 20 delegates, including envoys from the UK, France, and Finland stood up and left the room at what was considered an anti-Semitic remark by the Iranian leader, who has repeatedly called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Nine Western countries including Israel and the United States had already decided to boycott the conference entirely because its draft declaration endorsed the conclusions of an anti-racism conference in South Africa eight years ago in which Islamic nations pushed through a text equating Zionism with racism.

Even before the walkout, Mr Ahmadinejad's speech had been interrupted by three protesters dressed as clowns who where quickly bundled from the vast conference room at the Palais des Nations by guards.

Later, other protesters shouted down from the balcony as the Iranian president carried on his address.

Earlier today, Israel recalled its ambassador to Switzerland in protest at a brief meeting yesterday between Mr Ahmadinejad and his Swiss counterpart, Hans-Rudolf Merz.

The conference opened as Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day - which falls this year on the 120th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth. This morning the Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told his Cabinet that while Israel commemorates the six million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis, "in Switzerland, the guest of honour is a racist and a Holocaust-denier who doesn’t conceal his intention to wipe Israel off the face of this earth".

An Israeli Government official said that Ilan Elgar, the ambassador in Berne, had been "recalled for consultations" after the start of the Durban II conference and the meeting between Mr Ahmadinejad and Mr Merz, who holds Switzerland's rotating presidency.

"This is not a break in relations, but an expression of Israel’s discontent for the lax Swiss attitude towards Iran," the official said.

The Obama administration announced at the weekend that it would boycott the meeting because its draft declaration makes reference to the text agreed in 2001 at the UN's first anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa. That document was agreed after the United States and Israel walked out over attempts to liken Zionism - the movement to establish a Jewish state in the Holy Land - to racism.

Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Poland joined the boycott.

Opening the conference this morning, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon urged the world to rally against the threat of intolerance.

"I fear that today’s economic crisis, if not handled properly, could evolve into a full-scale political crisis marked by social unrest, weakened governments and angry publics who have lost faith in their leaders and their own future," Mr Ban said.

"In such circumstances, the consequences for communities already victimised by prejudice or exclusion could be frightening."

The UN chief said that he regretted the absence of the United States and the other boycotting member states.

"There comes a time to reaffirm our faith in fundamental human rights and the dignity and worth of us all," Mr Ban said.

The major sticking points in the draft final declaration prepared for the current meeting concern its implied criticism of Israel and an attempt by Muslim governments to remove all criticism of Islam, Sharia law, the Prophet Muhammad and other tenets of their faith.

The American decision to boycott the meeting has been given extra weight by the fact that it was taken by the country's first black president. continues here

Some people just don’t like things do they? You see for some political judo takes precedence over fact and for others actions are predetermined, I’ve just got home, somewhat tired and so I haven’t read other opinions, haven’t had the time. Waiting for me though was a video, one of two actually the first addressing the race issue and of course Mr Ahmadinejads speech. What an astoundingly brave man to speak the truth, even as the most powerful countries in the world seek your blood, seek to silence by fable or force the voice of truth.

Of course many new nationalists will sing from a different hymnbook and I don’t care, have no need to, I know my direction and they travel a different path, perhaps we will meet and fight together but it would surprise me, they directed by puppeteers and I by my heart. Still if we do not hold fast to truth whilst all around us lie, then are we not as bad, can we with any justification, ever tag ourselves strivers for our people, as upholders of truth in a world gone mad, as the very last of other times.

Mr Ahmadinejad, is entirely correct, Israel is racist in every sense of the word and to see our supposed representatives, walking out on the behest of an alien nation, saddens the heart, augments comprehension and brings home both our plight and the global difficulty. You see, so much power should never rest in their hands, should never be exercised in their name, I am sick of them, sick of them all, such scurrying rats, rushing out at pipers tune, it is there now for all to see but who really watches, who today observes.

Oh but who cares, today’s nationalist is a strange beast, almost another species to me, to mine, to nationalism, oh I have heard the argument, go with the flow, the people are now anti-Islamic so to must we be, forget fairness, forget truth, just go with the flow of the river, never stopping to realise whom directs the flow. Yet I cannot, will not, I am at least to my knowledge directed by truth by what I perceive, by what I witness, by what I correlate, not for me the simple, if rather brutal anti-islamic nationalism of today, the easy route, the route to fortune and infamy, for me I plod, I know that, direction is hard but it is correct, it is true.

You see racism, true unadulterated racism is terrible, it permits those in power to demonise a people, permits them to create law against them, it permits them to crush dissent, silence opposition and to commit finally genocide, all of this happens against the Palestinians and indeed to ourselves, In Palestine it is savage, there, the barbarity, the casual violence and the torment, not hidden, slow, as here but out there, blatant and almost unremarked upon. The common stance now of this new nationalism is at best to say nothing, to if you like, ignore, why its none of our business, not our concern and evil grows, what of the day they come for us, when the state sends in its henchmen, who then to hear us scream.

It is our duty, our absolute duty to contest evil, to support any sovereign nation against an aggressor, for if nationalism does not support nation, then what do it, are we now nationalist in name only, tagged, monikered but pawns of the greater evil. Much of our problems stem from our silence, our unwillingness to approach, voice and contest truths, Israel by its existence, its actions and its savagery causes problems for the whole world. Yet we rush to them, rush to aid evil, even as children die and tyranny struts, so what our we men or mice, do we have no conscience, no morality, is it because they are brown that we must watch evil make its play, even as we whites suffer to.

You see they use racism against nationalists, they batter our keep and we fold, run, flee, screaming and we should not, racism exists in its truest form within the ideologies of socialism and capitalism, nationalism on the other hand recognises difference, seeks to preserve such difference be that territorially, genetically or culturally and so we must support sovereign nations against the bully, the coward and the thug.



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