At least we can blame the Jews for one thing. Most of them voted for Obama. Here is Melanie’s critical analysis of the Durban conference. I do not know if she wrote and published this before the USA pulled out or if she knows yet. But her article has a lot of calid points about the damage done merely by examining the possibility of going. Fortunately I believe there is still time for the Czech’s and the UK to pull out of Durban. In any case here is the article:
February 27, 2009
Silent in the face of antisemitism
National Review Online, 27 February 2009
In a letter to the Jerusalem Post, David Harris, director of the American Jewish Committee [AJC], has defended his organization’s decision to participate in the preparatory meeting for Durban II — the follow-up to the 2001 U.N. World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, which took place in Durban, South Africa.
Two weeks ago, AJC senior official Felice Gaer was part of the delegation America sent to try to improve the draft of the declaration, the final version of which will ultimately be approved at Durban II itself. The U.S. vowed that if its attempts to improve the draft failed, it would not participate in the final conference.
Israel and the United States walked out of the 2001 conference in protest against the anti-Semitism on display there. Israel and Canada have already announced that they do not intend to participate in the Durban II conference in Geneva this April, fearing a re-run. The Jerusalem Post’s Caroline Glick raised similar concerns, which is what compelled Harris to respond.
Harris wrote that although “under the present circumstances” the United States should not attend the April conference, “this leaves two options: to throw up our hands, or work to change those circumstances.”
The AJC, he explains, believed it should “work with our government to assess whether Durban is beyond salvaging. . . . If Durban can be fixed, everybody wins — not least, the global struggle against racism, to which AJC has been committed for more than a century. If it can’t, we will absolutely seek to hold the administration to its promise to withdraw.”
This is, to put it mildly, a serious misjudgment. Durban II is intrinsically a disgrace, and no civilized country should have anything to do with it. Since it is being run by the U.N. Human Rights Council — whose Durban Preparatory Committee is chaired by Libya, with Iran and Cuba as vice-chairs — the idea that such a meeting can assist in “the global struggle against racism” is absurd.
The key point, moreover, is that Durban II has been set up specifically to “reaffirm” and “foster the implementation” of the original Durban Declaration, which singled out Israel for censure and libeled it as a racist state.
Even if some of the more egregious aspects were to be removed from the final declaration at Geneva, there is no way in which it can be anything less than obnoxious. If Libya and Iran have any sense, they will offer at the last minute some cosmetic changes to allow America to trumpet its great victory — a victory that would merely sanitize and legitimize a declaration that would remain odious.
Moreover, so far, the American delegation has singularly failed to draw the poison from this process. U.N. watcher and NRO contributor Anne Bayefsky has reported that when Iran and Syria blocked an attempt to include a provision that would “condemn without reservation any denial of the Holocaust,” the American delegation remained silent.
Worse, the delegation similarly kept mum when the Palestinian delegation slipped in a demand that all U.N. states provide Palestinians protection from Israel. Worse still, the Palestinian passage also called for implementation of the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice against Israel’s security fence, which would effectively strip “racist” Israel of the means of defending itself against mass murder.
Not only has the American delegation failed to stop the draft declaration from actually getting even worse: just by taking part, it has done immense damage. It has whipped the rug out from under the U.K., which was apparently on the verge of announcing it would have nothing to do with Durban II, and from other smaller states, like the Czech Republic, that were waiting on America’s decision and feel they can’t pull out as long as America is involved.
It’s bad enough for a delegation representing America as a whole to be involved in this, and to stay silent in the face of anti-Semitism. But for an organization representing the interests of American Jews to be part of such a delegation is worse, and it reflects a broader contradiction within the Jewish community.
Some 80 percent of Jewish voters cast their ballots for Obama — despite the very substantial evidence from his own writings, and from the people he has associated with, that he would be no friend to Israel, and no effective defender of the West against the Islamic jihad.
Now we are seeing precisely what these Jewish voters have helped bring about — an American foreign-policy and intelligence administration stacked with Israel-bashers, new-realist appeasers, and Oslo-process retreads — the last category having apparently learned nothing from the debacles of the Second Intifada, the Gaza disengagement, and the new reality of Iranian power and Islamism spreading throughout the region.
As Israel faces, from Iran, the most serious threat to its existence in its history, it now also faces an American president who has given Iran the supreme gift of time to realize its nuclear goal, while he “engages” Iran and Syria and undermines their more moderate opponents.
And in the wake of Israel’s latest military actions, he has promised $900 million to rebuild Gaza — the home turf of Hamas, which is sure to benefit from this largesse funded by the American taxpayer, even if the money is routed through non-governmental organizations and the U.N.
This is a grim prospect for Israel. How can American Jews have helped bring it about? The answer is that, contrary to the canard that “the Jewish lobby” has hijacked American foreign policy in the interests of Israel, for most American Jews Israel is not a high priority. Of much greater concern are their liberal social attitudes and their reluctance to believe that a black Democratic president could pose a threat to Jewish interests.
The danger is that they may find themselves being used to camouflage and legitimize such a threat. The AJC’s participation in the run-up to Durban II is a terrible portent of what is to come.
