Word: zionism
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That the U.S. is pulling out of a major international conference comes as no surprise these days. It's the reason offered for Secretary of State Colin Powell's boycott of the U.N. conference on racism that's cause for alarm - concern that Israel and its ideology, Zionism, would be subjected to harsh criticism at the conference. Or as President Bush put it last week, the delegates were going to be "picking on Israel...
...Israel, of course. A number of European countries actually share Washington's concern that an event designed to tackle racism and intolerance on a global scale is in danger of being dominated by the Mideast conflict, and they plan to resist efforts to give disproportionate attention to Israel and Zionism. Not that they will exempt Israel from legitimate criticism, but instead will insist that the focus remains global, and that there's an acknowledgement that culpability for racism is widely shared among the nations of both the industrialized and the developing world. Few governments attending the conference are really...
...political cost, too, in being seen to duck a discussion of racism. Instead, the U.S. and some of its European allies are looking to make the menu more palatable. They want to expunge the two most controversial items: discussions of reparations for slavery and colonialism, and of Zionism as racism. Washington has warned that if those topics are still on the agenda come conference time, the U.S. seats will be empty...
...Zionism...
...Zionism is racism" is different. It's something of a red herring, coming as it does a decade after the repeal of the U.N. resolution condemning the Jewish nationalist ideology that drove the creation of modern Israel. The issue has been revived for the racism conference in order to build diplomatic support for the plight of the Palestinians, and even a number of human rights groups fiercely critical of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians under occupation have warned that it's an inappropriate discussion that could derail the conference's objectives. Of course, that doesn't get Israel...