The U.N.’s Wansee Conference

The United States and Israel pulled out of the Durban Conference on Racism over the weekend, primarily because it had degenerated into a conference of racists. I’ve been watching this unfold with a mixture of bemusement and horror, with levels of each rising and falling with each absurdity.

And “absurd” is an understatement. Where does one begin to describe a conference designed to combat racism that ultimately proved to be the most concentrated group of overtly racist thought collected in a single place in the history of mankind?

Both the United States and Israel walked out of the conference, prompting many of the most racist members of the conference to proclaim their objection to the overt racism of the conference agenda was proof of how racist they really were. Hard to follow the logic, but here goes.

Consider Act One in the Theatre of the Bizarre

Some of what has been produced so far defies description. We have the Reverend Jesse Jackson castigating the United States for pulling out before addressing the issue of compensation to former slaves by the slave-takers of old. Jackson took to the airwaves to complain that, “We have worked diligently to raise the human-rights agenda, to fight the racism and intolerance, and the U.S. should be engaged in that process and it chose to disengage.”

Although slavery has existed for centuries in many directions, the conference sought to penalize only the trans-Atlantic slave trade. But that trans-Atlantic slave trade began with African slave-takers raiding other African villages. The captured slaves were then taken to the Ivory Coast and other areas along Africa’s western shoreline where they were then sold to British slave traders.

The African slave issue was the first of many efforts to eliminate racism by employing the principles that define “racism” in the first place. Although efforts were made to single out Europe and America and exclude all other slavers, you can’t get there from here. The trans-Atlantic slave trade didn’t begin with British slavers, it began with the capture of the slaves themselves by other black Africans.

I am trying to picture some poverty stricken African nation, say Sierra Leone, cutting reparations checks to send to a black American doctor in Manhattan. Or the Ivory Coast having to come up with the money to settle accounts with a middle class black autoworker in Detroit. Secretary of State Colin Powell underscored the stupidity of it all: Paraphrasing his question, he asked, in essence, “Will I be the one getting a check, or the one writing it?”

Even the Wansee Conference was less anti-Semitic

At the Nazi Wansee Conference in 1942, the leaders of the Third Reich met to discuss how to implement the destruction of the world’s Jewish population. But even the Nazis couched their plans in less-open terms than did the Arab nations who hijacked the conference. Once the plan was drawn up, it was called the “Final Solution.” Terms like “killing,” “extermination” and so forth were never again used in public or committed to paper.

The Arab states were far more explicit in their language describing their ultimate plan for Israel, but nobody seemed to really mind. Except Israel and the United States. The Nazis spoke behind closed doors of a “final solution” whereas Arab government-organized rallies outside the conference chanted “Death to Israel” or “Death to the Jews.”

Anti Semitic literature, including the infamous “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was distributed to delegates, who apparently viewed the literature as works of investigative journalism.

“The U.N.’s Mein Kampf”

The U.N.’s 3,000 delegates from the Non-Governmental Organizations immediately embraced the Arab contention that Israel was a genocidal practitioner of ethnic cleansing based on its contentions of its own racial superiority and approved a resolution to that effect.

Said Shimon Samuels of the Wiesenthal Center: “We saw an NGO document that would have made Goebbels happy. And now it is clear we are going to see, at the end of the government conference, resolutions that can be called the U.N.’s ‘Mein Kampf.'”

The Arabs that fought five wars of extermination against the Jews tapped into the mother lode of global anti-Semitic sentiment – a vein richer than I would have believed existed in modern times, had this conference not taken place.

Most of the world bought in, at least in part, to the blatantly obvious lies that equated Zionism with racism while giving in to their own blind hatred of Israel. The “Israel is racist” argument is based entirely on the fact that Israel is a Jewish state (or a state full of Jews). But radical Islam got a pass on its own racist anti-Jewish philosophy that demands the destruction of the Jews for the offense of being Jewish.

“They are lying”

As Michael Melchior, Israeli deputy Foreign Minister told the conference in Israel’s official statement, “Those uncomfortable recognizing the existence of anti-Semitism not only try to redefine the term, they try to deny that it is different from any other form of discrimination.”

“But,” he observed, “It is a unique form of hatred. It is directed at those of particular birth, irrespective of their faith, and those of particular faith, irrespective of their birth. It is the oldest and most persistent form of group hatred.”

One would think that to be a dictionary definition of the word “racist” but apparently only if you consider Jews to be human beings in the first place.

Egypt’s delegate stormed out in anger, questioning Israel’s “right to moralize to the world.”

The PA’s envoy to the conference, Salman Harfy, said, “It is very easy to blame Arabs and Palestinians. They are lying.”

In the end, Melchoir’s impassioned speech fell on deaf ears. The U.N. Wansee Conference had already undertaken their decision – and no amount of logic is about to sway them from their course.