Behind BlogCentral: JPost Bloggers at Durban II

JPost BlogCentral is fortunate to have two of its bloggers - Center Field's Dr. Gil Troy who is there as an observer and new-comer Zach Novetsky who was sent as part of a EUJS student delegation - currently in Geneva covering the UN's World Anti-Racism Conference, dubbed Durban II after the first such conference held in Durban, South Africa in 2001.

As is widely known, Durban I descended into a vitriolic, vicious anti-Israel bashfest denounced by Jewish organizations, NGOs and some countries alike. In an effort to prevent such an atrocity from happening again, several behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforst have been made to alter the Durban II draft which singled out Israel. In addition, several important countries - namely Israel, Canada, Italy, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Holland and Poland - decided to boycott the event altogether.

Following Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's opening speech in which he called Israel a most 'cruel and racist regime' and said that the Jewish State was founded under the 'pretext of the Holocaust', 23 EU delegates staged a walk-out. Ahmadinejad was heckled throughout his speech and especially at the beginning when two 'clowns' wearing rainbox-colored wigs got up from the audience and chanted 'racist, racist' at Ahmadinejad even as one of them threw a soft, red, clown-nose ball at him. They were escorted out.

There two bloggers give an eye-witness account of the events at Geneva even as they blog about behind-the-scenes activities at the conference.

Here are their entries so far:

At Durban II by Zach Novetsky

• A shift is needed on American campuses
• Jewish students in solidarity with Darfurian refugees
• Yom HaShoah in Geneva
• A brief encounter with three clowns
• Preparing for the conference

Center Field's Durban Diary by Gil Troy:

• Message at Durban: I am a Zionist and proud of it
• Remembering the Holocaust after Ahmadinejad denied it
• Ahmadinejad's antics, the UN's perversity
• The anti-Racism Conference as it should have been