http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/africa/09/03/racism.conference/index.html
I don’t have a strong opinion either way, so convince me of your point of view.
It’s amazing to see so much racism pouring forth from a council on racism.
First let’s clarify my position.
Yes Zionism is racism.
Yes Patriotism racism
Yes Relgious zeal is racism.
Any of these things have the potential to seperate one race from another on some sort of line. People who belong to any of these groups, obviously do so because of some feeling that it is superior to whatever the other options are. For us to label Israel as a racist state, we would have to label any other state with strong religious leanings, as racist.
Israel, during times of peace employs many Arabs and many Arabs are Israeli citizens and even serve on the Knesset. There is not a single Israeli, to my knowledge serving in a power position under Arafat. To label the Israeli position as racist, we must then of course label the Palestinian position as racist, or claim that Iran is a racist state, which they both are. Israel is getting singled out for the most part, because the UN has MANY MANY arab constituent countries and many countries have it in for Israel as anti-semitism is still VERY prevalent in Europe and even in North America.
I think that the US and Israel were right to withdraw from that conference, though I do agree that Zionism is racism. It is however, acceptable racism, as it would be racist of us to tell them NOT to be Zionist. This is a slippery slope. Either we single one party out and enjoy our wallow in hypocrisy, or else we look into the idea that claiming a race, which is the fundamental part of racism, should be considered a human rights violation. I for one am not willing to claim that as it would mean that any country that is not truly pluralistic would be considered a racist state. Ironically, the United States and Israel are two of the most pluralistic nations in the world as far as having a varied racial makeup.
The UN makes me mad. I wish it would be dissolved.
Erek
Being proud of your country is not racism. I believe you were thinking of nationalism.
Otherwise I agree with you except over dissolving the UN. I simply think it needs a damn good spring cleaning.
Since Jews in Israel include everyone from East European Ashkenazim and Middle Eastern Sephardim to black Ethiopian Falashas, it seems odd to say that Zionism is a form of racism. Zionism is a form of nationalism. Like nationalism in most places, it has frequently come into conflict with the nationalist aspirations of other peoples, specifically Arab or Palestinian nationalism. Similarly, Spanish nationalism has conflicted with Catalan and Basque nationalism, French nationalism has conflicted with Corsican and German and (once upon a time) Breton or Provencal nationalism, Italian nationalism has conflicted with Lombard nationalism, Arab and Turkish nationalism have both conflicted with Kurdish nationalism, Syrian nationalism has conflicted with Lebanese nationalism, Canadian nationalism has conflicted with Quebecois nationalism, American nationalism has conflicted with American Indian and Canadian and Mexican and Confederate and (for a time) Filipino nationalism, etc., etc., etc. Sometimes these nationalistic conflicts are expressed in terms of “race”, and sometimes they aren’t. Admittedly, the conflicts of Jewish nationalism have been something of an extreme case, since all of the territory claimed as the basis of the Jewish nation-state is also subject to the nationalist claims of a different group, but all in all it strikes me as just one more case of the general principle that if you added up all the territorial claims of all the different national or ethnic groups, you would wind up accounting for something like 1,000% of the Earth’s land surface.
AFAICT (as far as I can tell) Zionism is one of those code words which usually signals the writers’ stance vis a vis Israel/Jews. Being someone who studies World War Two a good deal, I’m tempted to give Jews some slack regarding defending themselves.
Also, my uneducated guess is that most Arab countries tend to stick together in their critisms of Israel, and since Israel is only one state, the U.N. tends to be flooded by anti-“Zionist” (read anti-Israel) sentiments.
Or at least that’s my take on it all.
I should clarify: Nationalism by a non-pluralistic nation is racism. Therefore it is not ok for China, Japan, Iran, Iraq, Spain, France, England to be patriots by the logic presented by the UN.
Good idea, I bet I could find a demolitions expert by March. First we should get that guy to rewrap the UN while the delegations are in it.
More seriously, the UN is almost completely impotent. There is no better example of Tyranny of the Majority. It almost never accomplishes anything without the support of the US. I mean, how ridiculous is it that a UN peacekeeping force can be kidnapped by rebels in Sierra Leone? Let’s get rid of the UN except UNICEF, I like UNICEF. Not to mention many countries won’t throw their weight behind the UN unless the United States does. How effective can a global governing body be if it can’t get proper support for initiatives that don’t strike the fancy of the big kid? Desert Storm, was it a UN initiative or was it a UN sanctioned action performed by the US and Britain with some outside help?
Erek
This is true. The UN has a very very large contingent of Arab nations. Even though Islam is far from the majority, each country gets the same delegation as say, China, or the United States. It’s kind of like the US Senate, North and South Dakota get the same amount of votes as California and New York. So if all the small rural states in the west voted as a block even though they are not a majority they can still single out Rhode Island pretty effectively despite the fact that New York will walk out with Rhode Island if they do.
(I know that monetary contributions have a lot to do with it in both cases)
Erek
I didn’t know that, thanks. I wouldn’t have used the word in the OP or the subject of the thread if I had realized that it showed bias towards any particular stance.
“Is Zionism = racism?”
No, but the UN has become an anti-Semitic organizaiton. Let’s carve out the World Health Organization and dump the rest. It’s become counter-productive.
And, as a Jew, I hate the fact that my tax money went to support what amounted to a Worldwide Conference to Promote Anti-Semitism.
I don’t think “Zionism” is an anti-Semitic code word if you’re talking about the establishment of the State of Israel as a national home for the Jewish people. It’s a perfectly respectable word meaning
It only becomes an anti-Semitic code word if you don’t distinguish between the political idea of Zionism or Jewish nationalism and other aspects of Jewish identity. Thus, if your opposition to Zionism leads you to distribute copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion–and such things unfortunately happen all too often–you’re a bigot. Conversely, if you habitually identify Jewish citizens of your country (the U.S. or France or wherever it may be) as “Zionists”, when you’re discussing things that don’t have anything to do with the question of support for Israel (e.g., “the Zionists won’t allow us to have Christian prayers in our classrooms” or “the Zionists have betrayed themselves as the enemies of the Black people because many of them are now oppose affirmative action”) that would also indicate you’re a bigot.
MEBuckner, you more or less just said what I meant more clearly than I did.
In the pure sense of the word, I don’t see how “racism” can apply - as the Jews trace their origin to the same West Semitic peoples that the Arabs do. I think a careful person would avoid characterizing the Arab’s stance as “anti-Semitic” for that reason alone. Also, a great deal of Israeli Jews are “Sephardic” and “Oriental” Jews who are natives of Arabic sppeaking nations. There is no real “racial” difference between say a Yemeni Jew and an Arab Muslim.
Since the very idea of “race” is questionable at best - and the use of “race” in determining any sort of public policy on racial criteria is suspect - I am rather surprised that the United Nations would be so fool hardy as to call a conference on something as illdefined as “racism”. Whose idea was this?
I’m not saying that racialistic thinking isn’t an important aspect of the modern world. But so far I have heard everything from the Israeli-Arab conflict, the caste system in India, even the Protestant-Catholic Troubles in Northern Ireland introduced in this debate. It is no longer a “race” conference so much as it is a human conflict conference.
Hmmm…don’t you think it odd that a group which wants to have a specific plot of land granted to them due to them belonging to a certain people (Palestinians) is condemning another group which wants to have a specific plot of land granted to them due to them belonging to a certain people (Zion)?
How did we miss this?
I thought that the original partition plan for Palestine called for the creation of two states. The surrounding Arab nations attacked Israel, Israel defeated them and the Palestinians fled the area they were assigned to.
Of course this was all the fault of the Balfour Declaration, which was all the fault of the Ottomans which was all the fault of the crusades which was all the fault of Pope Urban II who was all the fault of Christianity which was all the fault of the Romans who were (according to The Aeneid, at least) all the fault of the Trojan War which was all the fault of Helen who was all the fault of Zeus’s lustful habits, which were all the fault of Uranus or some such thing.
Is it all clear now?
Well, that is more or less what I meant in my post. Thank you for summing it up succinctly.
Erek
I think the US should withdraw funding from the UN completely.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by mswas *
**
I used to associate the “UN is antichrist” crowd with the nutcase right- people who believe in black helicopters and secret UN invasion route codes on street sign stickers. Now I think even moderates and liberals such as myself have lost their patience with the UN. The UN is starting to resemble the pre-WWII League of Nations. A conference gets held, several orators make some inspired speaches, draft declaration this and resolution that gets voted on, and a bunch of fat cat dipolomats pat each other on the back over a latte. And what gets done in the end?
Nothing.
I’ve been waiting for this thread. This whole UN Racism conference does nothing but make me, a knee-jerk bleeding-heart left-wing old-school fat-cat liberal, want to side with Jesse Helms about dismantling the UN. Apart from WHO and UNICEF, I feel the UN hasn’t done anything worthwhile for at least 5 years, possibly 10.
To understand what makes me mad, look back to MEBuckner’s definition of Zionism. All that Zionism is is the movement to establish a homeland for the Jewish population in Palestine. Jews have always been in Israel. Their increasing numbers there in the past century has by-and-large been lawful and peaceful. Anywhere else on the planet, when a people which constitute a significant proportion of the population seek the right of self-determination, it is a cause widely supported by human rights groups and by the world community.
That is what happened in 1917 with the Balfour Declaration and again in 1948 with the UN resolution of partition. It happened when Israel fought wars in 1967 and 1973 to ensure their existence. This has been turned on its ear in the past 25 years, though.
All that Zionism embraces is the right of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. The Jewish homeland is the most democratic, most fair, and most free state of all of its neighbors. It should be allowed to exist, just as a Palestinian homeland in the territories should be allowed to exist. I firmly believe that a vast majority of Israelis would happily embrace a plan that ensured peaceful coexistence, as Israeli society (despite what the current media blitz may have you believe) is one that is very concerned with human rights. Jewish society in general has been like this since Talmudic times, and the pro-human rights view has only increased since the Holocaust. The fact that peaceful coexistence is not at the moment possible does not mean that Israel should be condemned for protecting its right to exist.
Hundreds of thousands of Jews in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon were displaced in 1948. Slavery is practiced in the Sudan. The Arab traders formed a large part of the slave trade. Women are basically enslaved in Afghanistan under a fundamentalist Muslim regime. Palestinians were brutally slaughtered in the Black October raids in Jordan. Christian and Jewish sites are routinely destroyed or Islamified throughout the Middle East. Islamic fundamentalism is brutally suppressed in Egypt. I could go on. We don’t see condemnation or even acknowledgement of these wrongs in this conference. The whole thing is a farce, fought as a propoganda battle.
I just hope that this causes not only more Americans, but also more Europeans and Asians to open their eyes to the Islamic/African/nonaligned block that is being formed in the world. For the first time, American, Israeli, Japanese, Eastern European and Western European, Indian, Russian, and Chinese delegations all voted together to prevent this farce from occuring. It makes me angry enough to spit.
It did. But what the Palestinians want now is to have all of what’s now Israel granted to them.
Regarding the double-speak of Palestinians claiming that Zionism is racism – let’s face it, double-speak is the order of the day. I saw a very to-the-point editorial cartoon the other day. It showed Arafat complaining that the Israeli’s assassinations of higher-ups in terrorist organizations was terrible. He went on to say that they would never do that. They just kill innocent bystanders instead…
Same thing here. Zionism is racism because the Israelis are in charge. You can bet that if the roles were reversed, Palestinianism (or whatever you’d call it) would be perfectly acceptable.
I have to dissent. Israel only acknowledged and accepted The lost Tribe sone the late 1980’s-early 1990’s, the ones coming from Ethiopia. The vast majority were from Eastern Europe or Russia, whose decendancy from the original 12, or now 2, is in dispute.