Word: racism
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Last week, the Durban Review Conference, also known as the World Conference Against Racism or Durban II, was convened in Geneva. The conference was the sequel to the 2001 meeting held in Durban, South Africa, which originally aimed to eliminate racism and xenophobia. Eight years ago, the proceedings rapidly descended into a “hate fest” as Muslim-majority states hijacked the stage as an opportunity to berate Israel and the West. While Durban II was not the same sort of vitriolic, one-sided attack that many had expected, it was nonetheless far from constructive. As such...
...conference in protest of Ahmadinejad’s antics, the fact that the conference’s leadership did not stop him from acting out and even gave Ahmadinejad the floor in the first place is disgraceful and damaging to the conference’s purported goal of combating racism...
...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. "Whatever decision...
...seem to have a history of ridiculous attempts to exert influence by not being present, as in our refusal to join the League of Nations and our boycott of the 1980 Olympic games in Moscow. And, in 2001, the U.S. and Israel walked out on the 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...
...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...