So what are we to do with the upcoming disaster called Durban II – the so called Wold Conference against Racism. To be held in Geneva in 2009 and which is smartly looking to be even more of a bloody disgrace than the first one was. And the first one was a judephobic hate-fest. The next one is looking to be that too, added that certain theocratic dictatorships in the Middle East are pushing for criticism of religion to be put on par with racism that should be banned as a human rights violation. There goes half the threads on SDMB.
Should Western nations attend and perhaps be able to salvage it a bit but at the same time give some legitimacy to the conference, or is it a complete waste of time, like trying to reason with neo-Nazists, and should Western nations instead chose to boycott it from the start. Canada has already decided to boycott the meeting, since it believes the conference will promote rather than reduce racism. Israel – after having read the final draft for the conference - has just followed suit. The EU has threatened to withdraw unless the conference looks to be substantially improvement over Durban I, but has not yet made a final decision.
The argument that Israel is a pillar of racism ab initio is one that can reasonably be made and properly aired in a conference against racism. Such can be ventilated without a single intimation of a “a judephobic hate-fest.”
Perhaps. Although the preoccupation with Israel at the expense of a number of more pressing concerns seems more than a little obsessive and various material, such as Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders, distributed at the conference didn’t help much.
Of course if Israel was racist to the core – like for instance Saudi Arabia and Sudan – then all it had to do was claim that it is religious founded, and it would suddenly be perfectly fine for the UN, since the Wold Conference against Racism has specifically said it would not in any way deal with criticism of religion – in the specific case Islam, women and Sharia, but I guess that would count for extremist Judaism as well – and in fact the upcoming conference is set to protect religion from criticism. So criticism of a religious founded apartheid regime would be racism and a crime.
Anyway, the Danish Socialist opposition party has just come out with a call for Denmark to boycott the conference.
Perhaps. Properly airing it, of course, will dismiss the charge.
However, since the first such conferences was, indeed, nothing more than an anti-Israeli tirade, there is adequate reason to suspect that the second conference (bearing a very similar agenda) will be more of the same.
Even you should be able to see the when the EU passes up an opportunity to take a swipe at Israel over the Palestinian situation, the conference is probably going to be a worthless hatefest.