Barbara Crossette, United Nations correspondent for The Nation, is a former New York Times correspondent and bureau chief in Asia and at the UN.
Writing in The Nation in "America's UN Boycott Backfires" she says:
"The Obama administration and the United States as a whole will be haunted for a long time by the decision to boycott a United Nations international conference on racism and intolerance starting today in Geneva.
A brief five-paragraph statement announcing the decision was released by the State Department on Saturday evening while everyone was focused elsewhere: this time on the summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago. There, paradoxically, White House officials were happy to stress to reporters the importance the president placed on racial diversity and multiculturalism."
Down in Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald editorialises in "Surrendering the Floor" on the same subject:
"Far better for Western and Israeli diplomats to have gritted their teeth, argued against Mr Ahmadinejad's Holocaust-denying views if repeated, and lobbied for further changes in the draft. As indeed happened in Durban: despite poisonous anti-Israel diatribes on the conference floor (and even more in a simultaneous NGO forum), the final declaration said the Holocaust must never be forgotten, and while calling for a Palestinian state, also backed Israel's right to security. Much of the campaign by Israel and Jewish diaspora groups against the Durban Review has been jumping at the shadows of what might happen. As is the reasoning of the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, for Australia's pull-out. If his $35 million campaign to win a UN Security Council seat is to get anywhere, his diplomats will have to get on the floor and wrestle in talkfests like this."
Blogger Antony Loewenstein's take on the Conference [as reproduced on Muzzlewatch and Mondoweiss] in "Durban II, the how, why and who" is:
"As a Jew who writes extensively about Israel/Palestine, I have no desire for Iran to speak for me on human rights (and my recent book, The Blogging Revolution, details the woeful record of the Islamic Republic.) But the fierce resistence to even examine the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and its well documented recent abuses in Gaza is shameful. These are not actions of a civilised nation. It is the behaviour that we would condemn if done by a relatively unknown Third World nation, but Israel is seemingly untouchable.
Well, it’s not anymore. Any number of activists, journalists, human rights workers and lawyers are increasingly speaking out about Palestine. Until the Western political and elite understand this, resistance will continue. Self-appointed Jewish leaders and their Western backers are trying to stop the inevitable; Israel is the new South Africa and will soon be viewed in exactly the same way that that apartheid regime was seen.
It’s already happening.
I don’t write this with glee but the madness of Durban II won’t change anything, other than convince a handful of smug Jews that the world hates Israel and Jews. A handful do, most do not."
Writing in The Nation in "America's UN Boycott Backfires" she says:
"The Obama administration and the United States as a whole will be haunted for a long time by the decision to boycott a United Nations international conference on racism and intolerance starting today in Geneva.
A brief five-paragraph statement announcing the decision was released by the State Department on Saturday evening while everyone was focused elsewhere: this time on the summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago. There, paradoxically, White House officials were happy to stress to reporters the importance the president placed on racial diversity and multiculturalism."
Down in Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald editorialises in "Surrendering the Floor" on the same subject:
"Far better for Western and Israeli diplomats to have gritted their teeth, argued against Mr Ahmadinejad's Holocaust-denying views if repeated, and lobbied for further changes in the draft. As indeed happened in Durban: despite poisonous anti-Israel diatribes on the conference floor (and even more in a simultaneous NGO forum), the final declaration said the Holocaust must never be forgotten, and while calling for a Palestinian state, also backed Israel's right to security. Much of the campaign by Israel and Jewish diaspora groups against the Durban Review has been jumping at the shadows of what might happen. As is the reasoning of the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, for Australia's pull-out. If his $35 million campaign to win a UN Security Council seat is to get anywhere, his diplomats will have to get on the floor and wrestle in talkfests like this."
Blogger Antony Loewenstein's take on the Conference [as reproduced on Muzzlewatch and Mondoweiss] in "Durban II, the how, why and who" is:
"As a Jew who writes extensively about Israel/Palestine, I have no desire for Iran to speak for me on human rights (and my recent book, The Blogging Revolution, details the woeful record of the Islamic Republic.) But the fierce resistence to even examine the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and its well documented recent abuses in Gaza is shameful. These are not actions of a civilised nation. It is the behaviour that we would condemn if done by a relatively unknown Third World nation, but Israel is seemingly untouchable.
Well, it’s not anymore. Any number of activists, journalists, human rights workers and lawyers are increasingly speaking out about Palestine. Until the Western political and elite understand this, resistance will continue. Self-appointed Jewish leaders and their Western backers are trying to stop the inevitable; Israel is the new South Africa and will soon be viewed in exactly the same way that that apartheid regime was seen.
It’s already happening.
I don’t write this with glee but the madness of Durban II won’t change anything, other than convince a handful of smug Jews that the world hates Israel and Jews. A handful do, most do not."
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