Not Just Isreal...

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>The draft declarations coming out of the racism
>conference mentions no country other than Israel,
>and alludes to no others but Serbia (once).  There are
>a number of references to Palestine, but nothing
>beyond generalities for everything else (i.e.,
>statements against racism pertaining to Asians,
>Africans, and denunciation of anti-semitism
>and anti-Roma feeling by nobody in particular.
>This includes an exceedingly murky discussion
>of slavery in the Western Hemisphere.
>
>In this particular respect, if not others,
>the statement of the Jewish caucus is very
>much on target.  The only pointed references
>to racist policy by states are to Israel.
>I'm not against any such references, but in
>a document purporting to reflect a world view
>of racism, such narrowness confirms the conference
>as a total farce.  Not least important, it will
>do nothing for the Palestinian cause.  A more
>even-handed and wide-ranging survey would put
>anti-Arab/Muslim/Palestinian policy by Israel
>and others in a harsher light, in my view.
>
>There's a good piece by Earl Ofari Hutchinson
>in Salon along similar lines.
>
>mbs

I doubt that Israel will get much sympathies (outside the USA) for 
being "picked on."  No one likes the teacher's pet, you see.  :->

As Bob Herbert wrote in the New York Times, "If absolutely everything 
had gone well at the heroically named conference -- which is still 
under way in Durban, on the east coast of South Africa -- all that 
could have emerged would be a paper telling us that racism, 
anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance are bad.  In its 
essence, the paper's theme would be, 'Now, now, you stop that'" (6 
September 2001)!  Conferences of this kind are by nature farcical. 
The only difference this time is that the USA and Israel were made to 
walk out in a huff, unable to play the roles of anti-racist leaders 
of the free world, which made the conference a far more politically 
provocative spectacle than otherwise.

Yoshie