Chicago Indymedia : http://chicago.indymedia.org/archive
Chicago Indymedia

News :: International Relations

U.S. is Wrong for Boycotting Geneva Conf. on Racism

The U.S. leadership is once again wrong for refusing to talk about issues of racism at the recent Geneva conference, specifically with their repeated support of U.S. ally Israel, with their apartheid policies against occupied Palestinians.
Remember the 2001 racism conference in Durban, South Africa when GW bush & Co. walked out and refused to talk?

This is a deja vue of the previous racism conference in Durban, South Africa only days prior to 9/11, when Bush and Co. walked out of the conference when the apartheid actions of Zionist Israel were brought up. Not talking or ignoring the problem of apartheid NEVER makes the problem go away, it only gets worse as people grow angry from being ignored and repeatedly rejected..

If there is one sure way to encourage more suicide bombers, Hamas rocket attackts, etc..., the U.S. and their allies walking out on racism conferences is a great way to accomplish this goal, thus ensuring the continued cycles of violence and eventually more funding for military weapons contracters to keep civilians "safe" from the suicide bombers that these leaders have created through their insistance on sweeping problems under the rug..

from Huffington post;

"President Obama got it right and terribly wrong on the UN Racism Conference in Geneva. He rightly demanded that the conference conveners drop the stock Zionism is racism plank from the draft resolution of the conference. The Israel knock was the same sticking point that former President Bush used to dodge going to the anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa in 2001. The conveners complied and sanitized the objectionable language from the resolution. That should have been enough to get a U.S. delegation on a plane to Geneva.

For a brief moment it looked like it would be enough. An Obama spokesperson went so far as to publicly praise the move and say that the administration was deeply grateful for the change. The Obama administration wasn't grateful enough though to attend.

This is where President Obama gets it terribly wrong. The 20 nations that initially put the anti-Israel language in the resolution as well as certain other rhetorical points that the U.S. can't stomach can't be challenged in absentia. There is still too much bitter racial and ethnic hate and turmoil in too many places in the world that have nothing to do with Israel and Middle East problems that scream for attention. Attention that President Obama can't duck. The United States has the money, muscle, and political clout to take the lead in the continuing fight against racism, repression, genocide, state sponsored ethnic war and cleansing in every part of the globe. That's all state or group sponsored racial and human rights abuses and that includes abuses by some of the nations that ritually target Israel for its human rights abuses."

article @;
www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/president-obama-repeats-b_b_189046.html

What about Iran's Pres. Ahmadinejad and his comments on Israel's "misuse of the Holocaust" to justify their continued occupation of Palestinian land by Zionist settlements? Maybe we should listen to his entire speech instead of taking certain statements out of context, and what if Israel is misusing the Holocaust to justify their illegal occupation of Palestine? Sounds like Pres. Ahmadinejad has read Norman Finkelstein's book with the similar title;

"Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-Semitism and the abuse of history" (University of California Press)

September 12, 2006

The Dream Philosophy of Paranoids
Kill Arabs, Cry Anti-Semitism
By NORMAN FINKELSTEIN

"A central thesis of my book Beyond Chutzpah is that whenever Israel faces a public relations debacle its apologists sound the alarm that a "new anti-Semitism" is upon us. So, predictably, just after Israel faced another image problem due to its murderous destruction of Lebanon, a British all-party parliamentary group led by notorious Israel-firster Denis MacShane MP (Labor) released yet another report alleging a resurgence of anti-Semitism (Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry Into Antisemitism, September 2006). To judge by the witnesses (David Cesarani, Lord Janner, Oona King, Emanuele Ottolenghi, Melanie Phillips) and sources (MEMRI, Holocaust Education Trust) cited in the body of the report, much time and money could have been saved had it just been contracted out to the Israel Foreign Ministry. (The report's statement that "we received no evidence of the accusation of anti-Semitism being misused by mainstream British Jewish community organizations and leaders" perhaps speaks more to the selection of the witnesses than the reality.)

The single novelty of the report, which mostly rehashes fatuous allegations already disposed of in Beyond Chutzpah, is the new thresholds in idiocy it breaks. Consider the methodology deployed for demonstrating a new anti-Semitism. The report defines an anti-Semitic incident as any occasion "perceived" to be anti-Semitic by the "Jewish community." This is the school of thought according to which it's raining even in the absence of any precipitation because I feel it's raining. It is the dream philosophy of paranoids, especially rational paranoids, for whom alleged victimhood is politically serviceable. The report includes under the rubric of anti-Semitic incidents not just violent acts and incendiary speech but "conversations, discussions, or pronouncements made in public or private, which cross the line of acceptability," as well as "the mood and tone when Jews are discussed." The wonder is that it didn't also tabulate repressed anti-Semitic libidinal fantasies. In the category of inherently anti-Semitic pronouncements the report includes "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis" (only comparisons of contemporary Arab policy to that of the Nazis are permissible) and "theories about Jewish or Zionist influence on American foreign policy" (even if Jewish and Zionist organizations boast about this influence)."

article found @;
www.counterpunch.org/finkelstein09122006.html

There's other sites listing the problems of our pro-Zionist media outlets frequently misquoting or qouting Ahmadinejad out of context, with the intent to make him look like a madman, or more crazy than he actually may be. One good example is the oft misquoted phrase "wipe Israel off the map" (implies genocide) when he actually said "erase Israel from the pages of history", meaning the apartheid nation of Israel that is a moral blight to ethical Jews like Neturei Kartei and peace activist Norman Finkelstein would be replaced by a two state alternative that guarantees Palestinians self determination ans autonomy in actual reality, not just promises of peace with physical apartheid walls instead..

www.willtotruth.com/category/ahmadinejad/

IF Ahmadinijad is as anti-Semitic as his Zionist foes claim, than perhaps they could explain the presence of Iranian Jews who are in no apparent hurry to leave Iran for their "promised homeland" in Israel, nor are they being kept in Iran by force. Maybe they know something about Israel that other Zionist Jews ignore??


"What the reports leave out, of course, is that this isn't exactly the first time that some Iranian Jews have gone to Israel...

Some 200 Iranian Jews have immigrated to Israel in 2007, up from just 65 in 2006. But this is the first time that their arrival has been such a public occasion.

Can you guess why this particular even has been so publicized? Anyway, compared to this 40, thousands of Iranians Jews have left and now live in . . . Los Angeles. In fact, most Iranian Jews - like the rest of the Iranian immigrants - prefer to go to Los Angeles rather than Israel. Iranian Jews have a very rich culture of their own, and this has caused some conflict and resentment among American jews who are mostly of different sects (ironically, Iranian jews living in the US also get hassled for being Iranian!)

And the Iranian Jews who are in Israel seem to prefer to return to Iran rather than stay in Israel. Indeed, Jewish immigration to Israel as a whole is reportedly at a 20-year low.

Also, what's not being reported is WHY the Evangelical Christians are involved. Right-wing Christian evangelicals have funded their trip from Iran to Israel. They fund this sort of thing not because they care about freedom or the repression of Jews, but because they believe that once the Jews return to Israel then the Apocalypse will happen - and then all the Evangelical Christians will go to heaven (and not the Jews or the Muslims or other Christians.) Kooky stuff - Reverend Hagee would approve (he's probably involved.)

And, what they don't report is that despite the breathlessly-hyped report about "Jews escaping Iran" the Israelis and Evangelicals have actually had a hard time in convincing Iranian Jews to leave, as the Iranian Jews have mostly refused to move to Israel and have even turned down large bribes intended to convince them to move out of Iran.

However one thing concerns me: I think that intentionally putting the Iranian Jews in Iran in danger suits Israel. Back in the 1940's when the Zionist state of Israel was trying to convince more Jews to "flee" to Israel (thus creating population pressures to oust Palestinians from their lands) the Zionists resorted to bombing Jewish communities. They called this "Cruel Zionism"- the use of violent means to dislodge Jews from Exile and force them to come to Israel. Ben-Gurion's Scandals: How the Haganah and the Mossad Eliminated Jews, written by Naeim Giladi, is a first-hand witness to the Zionist abuse of Jews in Iraq.

I don't put it past them to do this again - so I predict that after all the hype about this group of 40 is over, we'll hear more dramatic stories about "Iranian Jews Flee to Freedom" and there may be some stories coming out soon about bombings or other incidents against Jews in Iran too.

Such a shame. The Iranian Jewish community is ancient and very much Iranian. Iranian culture and religion has greatly shaped Judaism, and through it, Christianity. This sort of thing may end up destroying the 2,700-year old Iranian Jewish community - and for what? To suit Israeli-Evangelical propaganda purposes."

article @;
www.iranaffairs.com/iran_affairs/2007/12/iranian-jews-co.html

For the U.S. and their allies to ignore and boycott this Geneva racism conference means that they are afraid of the truth, and that the collection of cover-ups and deceptions around Israel's apartheid policies may finally be made visible for the world to see, and this is unacceptable to hard line Zionist lobby groups AIPAC and CUFI that Obama remains beholden to..

In the meantime our media allows us to continue making fun of Ahmadinejad as a "madman" for daring to question Zionist Israel's monopoly on suffering and their misuse of the Holocaust as continued jusitifcation of apartheid and illegal occupation of Palestine, without looking at how our actions influence real anti-Semitism..
 
 

Donate

Views

Account Login

Media Centers

 

This site made manifest by dadaIMC software