Delegitimizing the delegitimizers
November 10 marked the 34th anniversary of the UN General Assembly's passage of the infamous "Zionism is racism" resolution. That day, noting that it was the 37th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazis' countrywide pogrom on "the night of broken glass," UN ambassador Chaim Herzog denounced the resolution. "I stand here not as a supplicant... For the issue is neither Israel nor Zionism," Herzog said. "The issue is the continued existence of this organization, which has been dragged to its lowest point of discredit by a As he concluded, remembering how his father, Palestine's chief rabbi in the 1930s, protested the British White Paper restricting Jewish immigration, Herzog ripped up his copy of the resolution. Herzog could tear the resolution to tatters. The UN could rescind it in 1991. Yet 34 years later this new Big Lie, the Soviet and Nazi roots of which historian Bernard Lewis uncovered, sitll persists. Jews, long victimized by racists and disgusted by racism, have been tagged as racists. Israel, the Jewish people's collective entity, has been compared to apartheid South Africa, with the Palestinian-Israeli national conflict cast falsely as a racial conflict. And just as anti-apartheid activists once BDS sounds like a new communicable disease - in many ways it is. It is viral and pathological; we ignore it at our peril. 'Queers against Israel' - are gays blinded by hypocrisy?
How could hatred of Israel be so intense that it blinds people to what they usually perceive as their most basic self-interest? This past Sunday in Montreal, a few dozen marchers in the 2009 Montreal LGBTA Gay Pride parade marched against what they called "Israeli Apartheid." Witnesses reported that many onlookers cheered these anti-Israel ideologues as they paraded by. Similarly, in late June in Toronto 180 protesters from "Queers Against Israeli Apartheid" (QuAIA) marched in an attempt to "reignite Toronto's queer community in the fight against apartheid," which is the latest trendy accusation against Israel. These antics take anti-Zionism to an absurd extreme. As I argued in a Montreal Gazette op-ed the day of the parade, identifying as "Queers Against Israeli Apartheid" defies logic, perverts history and distorts priorities. It reflects such hatred against Israel that maligning Zionism overrides all other causes, including gay liberation; it eclipses all identities, including one's sexual identity. The dirty little secret QuAIA must suppress is that Israel is the safest refuge in the Middle East for persecuted homosexuals, including Palestinians. Honoring Mary Robinson, Obama honors appeasement of anti-Semitism
In the latest example of President Barack Obama's utter and complete tone-deafness regarding Jewish sensibilities, the White House has announced that Mary Robinson will be one of sixteen recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. While Robinson has had a distinguished career as the President of Ireland and a human rights activist, she has also displayed a consistent anti-Israel animus. Most disturbing, she was one of the people most responsible for the great debacle at Durban, 2001, when a conference convened to fight racism became a UN-sponsored hate-fest against Jews. At a time when Barack Obama should be honoring Winston Churchills in the fight against anti-Semitism, he has chosen a Neville Chamberlain, someone who appeased the haters at Durban and in the UN again and again, until it was too late. Israeli 6th graders learn hope, not hate
On Monday, just before Yom Hazikaron, Israel's Remembrance Day, and shortly after I returned from the Durban Review Conference in Geneva, I was invited to talk about Durban to my son's 6th grade class in Jerusalem. He attends a Dati-Mamlachti, religious public school, Efrata, in Baka. I have spoken to elementary school classes at various Jewish day schools in Montreal over the years, so I have some sense of what kids this age know and don't know about current events, and about Israel. What shocked me - and then in many ways impressed me - (beyond their excellent, polite behavior throughout the class) was how shocked so many of the sixth graders in Jerusalem were by the depth of anti-Israel hatred on display at the Durban II conference. The Anti-Racism Conference As It Should Have Been
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. Geneva is awash in the light green of early spring, nestled amid snowcapped mountains. Arriving from Israel, I found the city's tranquility surprising, until I remembered this was Sunday morning, not Monday. Still, the quiet set the tone for this first day, on the eve of what promises to be a tumultuous United Nations Review Conference on Racism, Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance beginning Monday (the UN shifted from Durban to Geneva hoping to avoid the riotous anti-Semitic atmosphere of Durban, 2001). Entering the city, I passed the Intercontinental Hotel, where Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is staying before addressing the conference Monday. Many Swiss citizens are urging their president not to shake Ahmadinejad's hand. "But," my taxi driver shrugged, "protocols must be followed." Open Letter to our Diaspora Affairs Minister
Dear Minister Yuli Edelstein, On April 5, Anshel Pfeffer welcomed you as Diaspora Affairs Minister with a bleak open letter in Ha'aretz, lamenting: "What a pity you've been given the emptiest brief of all in Netanyahu's mammoth cabinet." Pfeffer called your portfolio useless and toothless, with no budget, status, or clear mandate. I disagree. Of course I wish you had a huge war chest and a clear mission. But there is such a vacuum of leadership in this area, and such a pressing need for visionary statesmanship, you can accomplish much as a public leader. Jews in Israel and the Diaspora are thirsting for inspiration. The Minister of Israel-Diaspora Affairs is essentially responsible for promoting, fulfilling - and at this historical juncture - reviving Zionism. You have what American President Theodore Roosevelt called a "bully pulpit" to complete this important task. Good luck with it. A pledge to fight anti-SemitismI have considered myself a "Daniel Pearl Jew." Like that Wall Street Journal reporter Islamist terrorists kidnapped then beheaded in Pakistan - whom I never met - I was born in the early 1960s into the post-Auschwitz covenant. The world had sinned against our people, but now condemned anti-Semitism. We felt especially protected as Americans. Welcomed by America's meritocratic openness, we were lucky enough to attend elite schools, I went to Harvard; he went to Stanford. Our final layer of protection came from working as professionals for world-class institutions, me at McGill University, him at the Wall Street Journal. |
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