Center Field: Remembering the Holocaust after Ahmadinejad denied it

DURBAN DIARY

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and the author of Why I Am A Zionist: Israel Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. He is attending the Durban Review conference as an observer.

Thanks to tremendous prep work by the Jewish community along with human rights organizations and democracies ashamed by Durban I, Durban II has been mild. Despite the undercurrent of hostility - and the occasional security threat -- the UN's move from Durban to Geneva worked. The NGO delegates' lounge has the festive schmoozy air of any conference. The streets have been relatively quiet.

In fact, pro-Israel forces have dominated the street. On Monday, members of the European Union of Jewish Students taped their mouths shut - and were joined spontaneously by two Darfur refugees - to protest the UN's silence on Sudan's crimes and other human rights violations. Last night, a moving Yom HaShoah commemoration in front of the United Nations featured Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, Canadian parliamentarian Irwin Cotler, Father Patrick Desbois and the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy.

Cotler recalled his parents' lesson that some events "in Jewish history, in world history, are too terrible to imagine, but not too terrible to have happened." Cotler's words and his denunciation of Ahmadinejad's genocidal designs on Israel linked the traumas of the past that Elie Wiesel described so eloquently with the threats of the present. Mourning the Holocaust in Europe, with six elderly survivors lighting candles in front of the UN, hours  after Ahmadinejad's Durban Review conference appearance, also linked the world's failures yesterday with the world’s failures today.

Still, with so many eloquent supporters of Israel assembled, this conference often feels like a Jewish fringe festival - and a gathering of my mentors and heroes - but with a profound message.

Today (Tuesday), after hearing predictably anti-Israel speeches from the Palestinian and Syrian conference delegates, I attended a side NGO session on modern anti-Semitism. The capacity crowd heard Professor Wiesel, visibly anguished by Ahmadinejad's appearance, denounce the Iranian's speech as "an insult to our intelligence, an insult to our sensitivity, an insult to our memory."

Wiesel received a standing ovation by demanding the UN apologize for inviting Ahmadinejad at all. The actor Jon Voight followed with a heartfelt tribute to Israel and the Jews, mystified by the hatred such a "sacred" people endure. Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz then drew "the unbroken line" linking Hitler, his Palestinian ally Haj Amin el Husseini, Yasser Arafat who called Husseini a hero, Ahmadinejad and his terrorist proxies Hizbullah and Hamas.

"Woe unto any of you out there who support Hamas," Dershowitz thundered. "You are supporting Hitler's heirs - you are complicit in the great evil of the twentieth century." Natan Sharansky linked the Soviet Union's "Orwellian world" with the modern UN's Orwellianism. Sharansky offered a simple test for "a real conference against racism." Countries that grant free speech should be given free speech; countries that fight against racism should be allowed to join the conference combating racism. Father Desbois, who uncovers mass graves of Jews in Eastern Europe by speaking to elderly parishioners, demonstrated the importance of challenging people to do the right thing. When he approaches, many ask "Father, why are you coming so late."

While each of these speakers testified eloquently against the Durban distortions, the fifth speaker, Professor Shelby Steele, tried explaining the continuing appeal of modern anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism. Steele, a leading black American intellectual, analyzed the wave of revolutions after World War II which eliminated white supremacy. Unfortunately, for many Africans, Arabs, and African-Americans, ending racism, achieving freedom, did not improve their lives as much as they expected. The result was an obsession with racism, and a scapegoating of Israel and Jews, as an act of "bad faith." It is easier, Steele said, to denounce someone else than to take responsibility for your own misery - or to work hard to improve. Anti-Semitism, is a way of "changing the subject."

On this Yom HaShoah, in the unlikeliest of places, some of Israel's most thoughtful defenders helped change the subject in Geneva constructively, away from the Durban obsession with "changing the subject" destructively. Professor Cotler's warnings that the unimaginable can become the historical haunt me, even as the words of Father Desbois comfort me. We cannot be complacent. And we cannot wait for others to recognize the justice of our cause. We must challenge our friends, our neighbors, seeking out allies. We must make sure that in the future, no one looks back on a preventable historical tragedy and wonders "why are you coming so late" to ask for help.