Saturday, November 20, 2004

remember.. copetence is not nessecary but sexual harrasment is bad

Your Tax Dollars at Work

The U.N. discovers the cause of anti-Semitism: Jews.

BY ANNE BAYEFSKY
Thursday, November 18, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
Yesterday the House International Relations Committee revealed that money
from the United Nations Oil for Food program, which was supposed to provide
humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, helped pay the families of
Palestinian suicide bombers. This shouldn't come as a surprise. The U.N. has
a problem with anti-Semitism: It doesn't know what it is.
In order to figure it out, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for
Human Rights and Unesco invited a group of experts to Barcelona last week.
Their mission: to provide the U.N. special rapporteur on contemporary forms
of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Doudou
Diéne, with advice on anti-Semitism as well as "Christianophobia and
Islamophobia."
>From whom did the U.N. get advice? There was Tariq Ramadan of Switzerland's
Fribourg University, who was denied entry to the U.S. in August on the basis
of a law concerning aliens who have used a "position of prominence within
any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity" or are considered a
"public safety risk or a national security threat." But apparently the U.N.
thought it was worth listening to the views on racism of someone who said on
Sept. 25, 2001, that "[Osama] Bin Laden is perhaps a useful straw man, like
Saddam Hussein, whose diabolical representation perhaps serves other
geo-strategic, economic or political designs."
Then there was anti-Semitism expert Esther Benbassa from the Sorbonne. She
wrote in September 2000, "Today, especially in the United States, Jewish
philanthropy is exerted in the name of the perennization of the memory of
the Shoah [Holocaust]. The money flows to create pulpits on anti-Semitism
and the genocide, to finance museums, and research. As if nothing else were
significant or had ever existed."
In her written contribution to the meeting, she artfully refers to "merging
the image of the extermination with the might of Israel against the
Palestinians, the one image reducing the significance of the other, and the
Jew as both victim and executioner." Maybe the U.N. tapped her for her
expertise at encouraging anti-Semitism?
Also in Barcelona were two Israelis who sit on the board of the same
nongovernmental organization, the Alternative Information Center, a
perennial U.N. favorite though it is on the fringes of Israeli society. The
Center's co-chairman Michael Warshawski wrote in a 1996 newsletter: "Ethnic
cleansing is a basic Zionist principle and policy." Fellow board member and
Tel Aviv University professor Yossi Schwartz presented a paper at the
center's workshop this past May "with the support of the Basque Government"
entitled "Anti-Zionism Not Anti-Semitism." Calling for the elimination of
the Jewish state is not new to Mr. Schwartz, who has written--after quoting
from Trotsky's "epoch": "The solution of the working class to the national
question in Israel/Palestine is not one or two or three capitalist states
but a socialist federation of the Middle East."
Some invited Jews canceled their participation in the Barcelona conference,
though some did attend, including another Israeli. They were compelled to
spend their time taking exception to contributions from experts such as
"superimposing the Jewish symbol of the Magen David on the Nazi swastika is
not anti-Semitism."
<<...OLE_Obj...>>
At the end of the meeting a draft report, prepared with the assistance of
U.N. staffers, was shared with participants, who now have a few days to
confirm the outcome. The report will become a U.N. document, and it will be
disseminated around the world. Here are some excerpts from the U.N.'s
contribution to combating anti-Semitsm:
In practice, it is often difficult for an anti-Zionist type of
expression not to be seen as simultaneously anti-Semitic. Nevertheless,
several participants maintain that it is necessary to conserve the
distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, whilst defending the
right to be anti-Zionist without being branded an anti-Semite and also
bearing in mind that most Jews were anti-Zionists before 1935. . . .
The genuine Zionism of many Jews helps to explain the fact that many
people wrongly feel that most Jews lend their unconditional support to
Israeli policies. That is why we have seen attacks on synagogues, arson
attacks on schools, desecration of cemeteries, for reasons that have nothing
to do either with religion, or education, or the peaceful rest of the
deceased, but that have a great deal to do with a political and a
territorial conflict. . . .
In the past, anti-Semitism as a phenomenon was absent from the
Arab-Muslim world. Here, the Arab-Israeli conflict plays an essential role,
but another important element is the perception of the State of Israel as
the "Trojan horse" of the West in the Middle East. Anti-Semitism would
therefore be a particular manifestation of the hatred felt for the West,
partly for financial reasons. . . .
Recommentations:
. . . The leaders of Jewish communities should also act to
distinguish defence of the State of Israel from the fight against
anti-Semitism. . . .
Contextualising the memory of the Holocaust with that of other
genocides and serious events in contemporary history in order to make sure
that at the end of the day everyone can feel the Holocaust as their own
tragedy, both Jews and non-Jews.
In other words, according to the U.N. experts' draft report, discrimination
against individual Jews is bad, while "anti-Zionism"--the denial to the
Jewish people of an equal right to self-determination--is not. Since it is
the perception of unconditional Jewish support for Israel that leads people
to attack a Jewish cemetery, and anti-Semitism was absent from the Muslim
world prior to the Arab-Israeli conflict (the mufti of Jerusalem and his
friend Hitler notwithstanding), the way to defeat anti-Semitism is for Jews
to cut loose defense of the state of Israel. And by the way, anti-Semitism
will diminish if only we stop emphasizing the unique horror of the
Holocaust.
<<...OLE_Obj...>>
It may not be surprising to learn that Mr. Diéne seems to have had pretty
fixed ideas about anti-Semitism before the meeting even began. In his
October 2004 report to the General Assembly, he wrote: "The cycle of extreme
violence triggered by the dynamics of occupation . . . has fuelled profound
ethnic antagonism and hatred. . . . The Palestinian population . . . is . .
. suffering discrimination. Even if Israel has the right to defend itself .
. . a security wall . . . constitutes a jarring symbol of seclusion, erected
by a people . . . marked by the rejection of the ghetto. One . . . effect of
this conflict is its . . . contribution to the rise of . . . anti-Semitism."

Simply put, Jews are responsible for anti-Semitism. Or, if it weren't for
Israel's annoying insistence on defending itself, on the same terms as would
be applied to any other state faced with five decades of wars and terrorism
aimed at its obliteration, Jews would be better off.
It is interesting to compare the U.N. expert's incisive analysis of the
underlying hatred in Sudan. After noting in the same report that two million
Sudanese have died and four million have been displaced, he muses that
"massacres, allegedly ethnically motivated, are continuing to claim victims
in the Darfur region. . . . The Special Rapporteur therefore proposes to
give greater priority to this region with a view to conducting . . . an
investigation . . . of the ethnic dimension of the conflicts ravaging it."
Another day, another U.N. meeting, another UN report, and another serious
step backward in combating anti-Semitism.
And don't forget, another American taxpayer dollar.
Ms. Bayefsky is an international lawyer and a senior fellow at the Hudson
Institute.

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