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.

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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.

Ahmadinejad's antics, the UN's perversity

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.

"The UN really is a beautiful thing," I thought as I waited to pass through security at UN headquarters in Geneva. I was standing in a living, breathing poster for multiculturalism, amid delegates of different colors, from different cultures, representing different countries. My reverie was interrupted when the security guards pulled aside one delegate just ahead of me from an Arab country. Emblazoned on the folder he used to carry his papers was the slogan ZIONISM IS RACISM, with a swastika added for good measure.

This, alas, is the reality of the modern UN. The great betrayal comes from hijacking noble ideals as a masquerade to obscure harsh hatred.

Casually walking around with a 'Zionism is Racism' folder reflects an identity of negation, built around hate, rather than around something positive. This is modern Palestinian nationalism's great tragedy - and crime.

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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."

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Tzipi: Don't do an Al Gore

In one of the few charming moments in Israel's bleak election campaign, an Israeli rocker who called himself "Tzipi Livni Boy" rapped a love song to Tzipi Livni. It was called "Tagidi Li Ken" - tell me "yes." Who knew so many others would echo that cry for the Kadima leader after the election?

Many Israelis from across the political spectrum - and many of us who care deeply about the future of Israel and the Jewish people - are begging Tzipi Livni to please say "yes" to joining a coalition with Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu and the Likud. There are, admittedly, many valid reasons for Livni to say "no." She has insisted on a rotating premiership, considering that her centrist Kadima party won one more seat than Bibi's right-wing Likud. She has demanded Netanyahu endorse a two-state solution, so that she does not find herself representing a government whose policies she rejects.

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Gaza war shows Israel's democratic resilience

After the Second Lebanon War, one former tank commander sighed, "when my kids were teenagers and stumbled, I reassured them that, fortunately, the lessons learned outweighed the damage done: so too with Israel's army." Two and a half years later, forced to confront Hamas's rocket barrages targeting Israeli civilians, Israel fulfilled this prophecy. Great democracies like Israel can transform citizens' grumblings into constructive self-criticism, turning officials' failures into redemptive improvements. 

Ironically, while applying many lessons learned, this war illustrated the Lebanon War's success. Hizbullah's inaction as Israel pummeled another Iranian proxy, Hamas, suggests Israel's message of deterrence worked. Still, despite this gain, the civilian Winograd commission and numerous internal IDF reviews proposed clever solutions to the logistical and strategic problems that plagued the battlefront and the homefront. 

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