Europe

Holland and Australia Boycott Durban 2

According to today’s Jerusalem Post, Holland and Australia have announced that they will boycott Durban 2:

Hours after the US said it would boycott a UN conference on racism starting Monday in Geneva over objectionable language in the meeting’s final document that could single out Israel for criticism, Australia and Holland followed suit on Sunday morning, saying they were concerned the conference would be derailed by some countries to issues other than human rights.

So let’s see,  that makes the US, Israel, Canada, Italy, Holland and Australia the only countries officially willing to admit that tomorow’s conference actually has nothing to do with racism or human rights? Where is the EU? According to JPost,

The European Union was still weighing its own participation.

Well, they still a few hours left to save themselves from embarrassment.

Durban 2: An Imminent Fiasco

Days away from the Durban 2 conference in Geneva, and the only major coverage seems to be in the Israeli media. Which isn’t a big surprise, seeing as they have more to lose from the backlash than anyone. Today’s Jerusalem Post explains why Israelis are worried:

Already in advance of Durban II, a two-day anti-Israel NGO conference is scheduled to meet on April 18 and 19th, called “The Israel Review Conference.” An anti-Israel rally is also scheduled in Geneva for April 18.

Israel Review Conference can only mean one thing:

United Against Apartheid, Colonialism and Occupation, Dignity & Justice for the Palestinian People

So this is the secret meaning of the Durban conference. It’s a kind of primer for the real event, when the hevyweights show up to do the big Israel-bashing.

Is there still anyone out there who cannot see this facade for what it is? It is thinly disguised Jew-hatred (oh, but there will be anti-Zionist Jews there doing the bashing–so don’t call them anti-Semites!) sanctioned by the UN–an organization which has completely lost its bearings. And everyone will be there–everyone except Israel, the US, Canada and–I never get tired of repeating this–Italy. The EU will be there “in good faith”, which is how things are officially done these days in Europe.

The UN High Commissionerfor Human Rights,  Navanethem Pillay, had this to say:

“The goals set out in the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action have not been achieved. This reality should prompt us to seek common grounds to move the struggle against racism forward. The tools and capacity for achieving the goals outlined in the Declaration and Programme of Action are within reach if we remain committed to those objectives.”

I take this to mean that Israel still exists, and it takes another doleful “conference” of racists, xenophobes, Holocaust deniers and their appeasers to strike another blow at the Jewish State and its supporters.

Tell me, a week from now, if I was wrong.



Hannah Arendt on Caryl Churchill

“One can hardly overestimate the disastrous effects of this exaggerated goodwill on  the newly Westernized, educated Jews and the impact it had on their social and psychological position. Not only were they faced with the demoralizing demand that they be an exception to their own people, recognize “the sharp difference between them and others” and ask that such “separation…be also legalized” by the governments, they were expected to become exceptional specimens of humanity. And since this, and not Heine’s conversion, constitutes the ticket of admission into cultured European society, what else could these and future generations of Jews do but try desperately not to disappoint anybody?”

This is Hannah Arendt writing about the illusion of Jewish emancipation in Europe. Of course, in those days the difference was between Jewish Jews (you know, the ones with the full beards and yarmulkas) and cultured, Europeanized Jews. The latter, Arendt is saying, in order to be admitted into the bosom of European society, were expected to distance themselves from their brethren in the East (Russia, Poland), i.e. to become non-Jewish Jews.

I bookmark this page from The Origins of Totalitarianism in order to draw a quick parallel. In today’s Europe, “good Jews” are still asked–perhaps more than ever–to distance themselves from their brethren in the East, namely Israel. Of course, not only in Old-New Europe, but even in brand new North America this is true. Jews everywhere are told that they must choose between their troublemaking brethren in the East or the goodwill of their non-Jewish neighbors.