Word: ahmadinejad
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Iran's President is notorious for his tirades against Israel. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, running for re-election in June, first made international headlines four years ago by calling for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map." Last week at a U.N. gathering, he denounced Zionism as a manifestation of racism. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon publicly reprimanded Ahmadinejad for that outburst. So it came as a surprise Sunday when Ahmadinejad told ABC's George Stephanopoulos, in effect, that the Islamic republic would recognize the state of Israel - if the Palestinians signed a two-state peace deal with Israel...
...Ahmadinejad's uncharacteristic nod to Israel's existence may herald an important change in Iranian foreign policy. Iran watchers believe that Ahmadinejad's shift on Israel, subtle and tentative as it was, could be an attempt to send a positive signal to the U.S., in response to the olive branch President Barack Obama extended during the Persian New Year. Ahmadinejad's statement may be particularly important now, if seen as a prelude to next month's talks on Iran's nuclear program that will include U.S. diplomats for the first time. Breaking with the Bush Administration's open hostility...
...Certainly, President Obama and his administration are justified in their concerns over anti-Semitism and efforts to single Israel out for its actions. But, if the U.S. boycott was supposed to function as a protest, it was a misguided one. It did not prevent Ahmadinejad from making his speech and sending his message to the world; with those nations who did stay presumably supportive or neutral toward Ahmedinejad, the applause drawn by the Iranian leader seemed all the louder, coming as it did from these remaining delegations. What it did do instead was to allow the controversy surrounding his disparagement...
...first conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, because certain parts of its final resolution explicitly alluded to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as being driven by racism. Though these references were actually removed from later drafts of the Geneva declaration, the U.S. cited concerns over Ahmadinejad as reason enough to stay away from the conference...
...boycotts rarely address root political problem and often actually aggravate a situation by drawing attention to what is being reacted against. Ignoring and avoiding Ahmadinejad will never make him go away or blunt his rhetoric. Instead of boycotting, the U.S. and other Western nations should have attended the conference and expressed their own thoughts on problems of racism and ways of combating them...