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Israel responds harshly to Ahmadinejad’s Durban rhetoric

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Message: If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/37863/full/37863/israel-responds-harshly-to-ahmadinejads-durban-rhetoric/ Israel responds harshly to Ahmadinejad’s Durban rhetoric Thursday, April 23, 2009 | by leslie susser The timing of the Iranian president’s latest fulmination against Israel was particularly auspicious. Speaking from the podium of the Durban II conference in Geneva on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Israel a “racist” state, prompting sharp rebukes from around the world and a not-so-veiled threat from Jerusalem. “We will not allow Holocaust deniers to perpetrate another Holocaust against the Jewish people,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said several hours later in his speech at Israel’s main Holocaust memorial ceremony in Jerusalem on April 20. “This is the supreme duty of the State of Israel and my supreme duty as prime minister.” Netanyahu’s remarks were a reminder of the seriousness with which Israel views Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons: Many Israelis see Ahmadinejad as a modern-day Hitler. <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 360px;"><img alt="MEjta susser" class="left" height="285" src="http://dev.jweekly.com/images/uploads/z_photos_2009/zh_04_24_09/MEjta susser.jpg" title="Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gives his speech at the Durban Review Conference on April 20 in Geneva. photo/jta/michael j. jordan" width="360" /> <div class="caption">Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gives his speech at the Durban Review Conference on April 20 in Geneva. photo/jta/michael j. jordan</div> </div> “Seventy-three years after the Berlin Olympiad, yesterday the world saw the return of Adolf Hitler,” Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin said April 21. “This time he is bearded and he talks Persian. But the words are the same words, the goals the same goals and the resolve to use effective means to achieve them is the same threatening resolve.” The Israeli government says it cannot allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons capable of obliterating the Jewish state, and the comments from Israeli officials on Holocaust Memorial Day were a reminder that Israel could resort to military action to enforce that view. In response, Iran’s parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, warned this week that if Israel dared to attack his country, its retaliation would be “beyond imagination.” The tough Israeli stance against Ahmadinejad’s verbal assault — the Iranian leader said that after World War II, “on the pretext of Jewish suffering,” they “sent migrants from Europe, the United States and the rest of the world to set up a totally racist government in occupied Palestine” — was part of a calculated response to Durban II that has been two years in the making. If the main conference organizers — Libya, Iran, Egypt, Cuba and Pakistan — had hoped to carry on the Israel-bashing spree they launched at the first U.N. conference against racism in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, they would be disappointed. This was not a repeat of 2001, when Israel walked into a diplomatic ambush. Eight years after that humiliating public relations beating it took in Durban, Israel adopted a two-pronged strategy to prevent a repetition at the follow-up parley in Geneva. To deny the conference legitimacy and moral authority, it decided to press for a high-profile boycott. To prevent untrammeled Israel-bashing outside the main conference building, it backed a strong pro-Israel street presence. Both aspects of the strategy seemed to work. Israel also recalled its ambassador to Switzerland to protest Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz’s meeting with Ahmadinejad. During Ahmadinejad’s speech, a curious moment occurred. The Iranian leader dropped language describing the Holocaust as “ambiguous and dubious,” the U.N. said. Ahmadinejad said in Farsi, “Following World War II, they resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless, on the pretext of Jewish sufferings and the ....” At that point, the translator began to say “and the am- ...” but then he seemed to get stuck. He picked up the translation at the beginning of the next sentence. The original text, provided by the Iranians before the speech, said, “Following World War Two, they resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless on the pretext of Jewish sufferings and the ambiguous and dubious question of holocaust [sic].” The U.N. and the Iranian Mission in Geneva did not comment on why the change was made, but U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that he had met with Ahmadinejad before his speech and reminded him that the U.N. had adopted resolutions “to revoke the equation of Zionism with racism and to reaffirm the historical facts of the Holocaust.” After the speech, Ban, who had remained seated throughout Ahmadinejad’s address, issued a strong and unusual condemnatory statement: “I deplore the use of this platform by the Iranian president to accuse, divide and even incite.” Muslim and African countries in December 2006 had insisted on a review of the first U.N. World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. Western nations objected because of the fiasco at Durban, but they were outvoted. When Libya, Iran, Egypt, Cuba and Pakistan met to help set the agenda, Israel again was made the main target, and the West’s response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks was characterized as “Islamophobia.” There was no mention of the genocide in Darfur. In early 2007, as soon as it realized the way the wind was blowing, Israel began pressing for a boycott. At the same time, pro-Israeli nongovernmental organizations highlighted the bias and funding of NGOs that had played a prominent role in vilifying Israel at Durban. As a result, the Canadian government and the Ford Foundation, which had made large contributions to NGO activities at the 2001 conference, decided not to fund anything related to Durban II. Thus, what was meant to be a major anti-Israel NGO event in Geneva on April 18 attracted only about 200 people. On the street, pro-Israel advocacy groups were helped by heavy hitters such as Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, attorney Alan Dershowitz, actor Jon Voigt and former Prisoner of Zion Natan Sharansky. So despite the efforts of some, Durban II was not a reprise of Durban I. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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