Big boys in conspiracy on racism

Tajudeen's Thursday Post Card I HAD planned to write only two post cards on the UN-sponsored World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia and Genocide scheduled for the end of this month in Durban. The first was to be the week before, and the second the week after. Two related events have conspired to change that plan. One, less than three weeks to such a major global conference that has been planned for two years there is still no agreement on the agenda. Two, the escalation in the David-and-Goliath war between the divided children of Abraham (Jews and Palestinians). Israel continues to inflict death and destruction on key Palestinian defence and security infrastructure and leaders of the PLO that are engaged in the peace process. The Palestinian resistance continues to express itself through suicide bombings, stone throwing and defiant statements. You do not have to be a sympathiser of the Palestinian cause to conclude that the Israelis are using caterpillars to kill flies. Israel claims it is engaged in “active defence” and “the policy of pinpoint prevention” through missile attacks. What is the link between the two events and the world conference against racism? One of the reasons why there is a stalemate on the agenda of the conference is the mentioning of Zionism in the conference. Arab states backed by the majority of Latin American, Asian and African participants want Zionism to be put on the agenda as a racist policy. The other controversies (which I will comment on in subsequent Postcards) concern slavery, colonialism and the demands for reparations. The government of the USA, backed by its European cousins, has been threatening either boycott or low-level delegation (i.e. official snubbing) of the conference if these issues are part of the agenda. The US has been more forceful over Zionism arguing that placing it on the agenda will derail the conference into “unnecessary controversies”. The Europeans are prepared for some “compromise wording” on slavery and colonialism that would not make reparation mandatory. By a conspiracy of guilty parties both European liberals and American conservatives are determined to make Durban another expensive business. If Zionism is not racism, what is it? For how long must Israel be allowed to get away with policies of extermination of a people whose land it is forcefully occupying and killing at will? So dominant is the Zionist lobby that it is getting away with daily impunity right in front of global multi media. If any other country pursues a policy of “active defence” that means the assassination of leaders of another country on suspicion that they are responsible for planning attacks on your country would the same Europeans and American governments not be threatening sanctions, contriving moral outrage and commanding the UN to act decisively? Why is nobody calling for a no-fly-zone for defenceless Palestinians? Why are there no sanctions against Israel for flouting every known rules of international human rights law? When the usually venerated Nelson Mandela recently compared Zionism and the state of Israel to apartheid the western media descended on him like tones of bricks. Were the situation different Ariel Sharon, the hawkish Prime Minister of Israel, along with many of his Cabinet ministers and Military commanders should have been hauled before a war crimes tribunal for crimes against humanity. But because they have big backers in the West but most especially the lone super power, the United States, their crimes can be made respectable, given different names and crowded in semantics and duplicitous diplomatic and political maneuvers. All these do not lessen the enormity of the atrocities. What Israel is doing in the occupied territories is wrong and that wrong remains a wrong whatever the powers that may be aiding and abetting it. A global conference even if it cannot do anything should at least express its moral outrage. The matter will not be decided in any conference room but fought out by successive generations of Israelis and Palestinians until there is a will for peace, with justice, on both sides. The effect of Ariel Sharon's bull in China shop diplomacy is to make the voice of moderation in Palestine irrelevant to the younger and impatient forces of Intifada. In the words of Marwan Barghouti, leader of the Al Fatah in the West Bank and member of the Palestinian legislative council, who recently escaped being assassinated: "With whom will Israel negotiate in the future? With whom will they sit down? Who will be their partners for peace if they kill everyone?" It is not just a question for Israel but for those powers that continue to guarantee its impunity. It will no longer be just racism but complete genocide. Is that the agenda from the same people who said: “Never again”?