World
IRAN INTRIGUE
Loud Response
Publicly and privately, Jewish groups plan to press Iran issue at U.N.
Uriel Heilman
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
New York
W
ith hundreds of world
leaders, including Iranian
President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, coming to New York this
week for the annual opening of the U.N.
General Assembly, Jewish groups are
campaigning against the Iranian regime.
The centerpiece of the public effort
was a mass protest rally Monday at Dag
Hammarskjold Plaza, across from the
United Nations.
Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-
presidential nominee, was slated to be
among the featured speakers, according
to the Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations, which
organized the demonstration. But the
invitation was withdrawn last week as
being too political.
U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-
N.Y., had committed several weeks ago
to speaking, but canceled her planned
appearance upon learning that Palin
would be attending.
Meanwhile, behind closed doors, lead-
ers of a handful of Jewish groups will
take advantage of the opportunity to
meet with presidents, prime ministers
and top diplomats to press issues of
concern to Jews.
"It's an annual diplomatic marathon
with leaders who descend on New York
each year for the opening of the G.A.," said
David Harris, the executive director of the
American Jewish Committee. "We have 60
to 70 private individual meetings sched-
uled. At each meeting, the Iran question is
at the top of the agenda."
The efforts come as chances dim for a
fourth round of U.N. sanctions against
Iran, given that Russia and China, both
veto-wielding members of the Security
Council, oppose new sanctions.
Jewish groups will be lobbying world
leaders to enforce existing U.N. sanc-
tions and take further steps against
Iran wherever possible. They will urge
countries to cut trade with the Islamic
Republic, pass new laws against doing
business with Iran and strengthen the
coalition of nations actively trying
to keep Iran from developing nuclear
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September 25 • 2008
MI
weapons.
The effort already is under way in
Washington, where Jewish groups are
lobbying Congress to close legal loop-
holes that allow U.S. businesses to con-
duct some trade with Iran.
Concomitant with the behind-the-
scenes diplomacy, which is also con-
ducted throughout the year, in part with
visits by Jewish organizational leaders
to capitals around the world, Jewish
groups are going public, too.
They are trying to publicly shame
oil companies that do business with
Iran in a bid to cripple the oil trade
that helps sustain the Tehran regime,
highlight what Jewish groups say is
Ahmadinejad's genocidal threats,
and educate the general public about
Iranian-sponsored terrorism and the
threat of a nuclear Iran.
The Anti-Defamation League has
been waging a public campaign against
oil companies with business in Iran by
issuing a steady stream of news releases
highlighting their activities. Among the
companies are Shell and the Austrian
energy giant OMV, which are planning
to be part of a conference in Tehran in
October to promote gas export opportu-
nities with Iran. The Swiss government
also is actively increasing its oil trade
with Iran.
On the genocide issue, the Jerusalem
Center for Public Affairs hosted a half-day
conference in Washington on Tuesday
highlighting Tehran's abysmal human
rights record and the forecasts of Israel's
destruction by Ahmadinejad, who
addressed the Gneral Assembly that day.
Though attendance at the Washington
event, "Conference on State-Sanctioned
Incitement to Genocide: What Can Be
Done?" was limited to approximately
120 participants, organizers were hop-
ing the invitation-only crowd of mem-
bers of the U.S. Congress and their staff-
ers, the media and Washington's foreign
diplomatic corps will help sway those in
positions of power to join the coalition
of nations actively opposing the Iranian
leader's genocidal incitement.
"The idea is that Ahmadinejad is in
violation of the most important human
rights convention, the genocide conven-
tion, and as a result should be treated
accordingly:' said Dore Gold, the presi-
Jewish groups again are mobilizing to protest Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to the
United Nations.
dent of the Jerusalem Center for Public
Affairs. "There has been a growing
number of voices who accept this deter-
mination."
That same argument was made much
more publicly Monday when thousands of
people converged on midtown Manhattan
for a rally to protest Iran's policies.
The Jewish Community Relations
Council of New York organized the
event in conjunction with the Presidents
Conference, the United Jewish
Communities federation umbrella orga-
nization, the Jewish Council for Public
Affairs and UJA-Federation of New York.
Jewish groups held a similar demon-
stration last year during Ahmadinejad's
visit to New York for the 2007 General
Assembly. During the visit he also spoke
at a forum at Columbia University.
Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice
chairman of the Presidents Conference,
said the point of the rally was to send
a message to world leaders and to
Ahmadinejad himself.
"He knows all about it; last year in
every television interview he made
reference to it," Hoenlein said of last
year's protest. "It was covered pretty
widely in Iran, which is very important
for us. We're not going to be silent when
someone threatens to destroy the United
States and Israel, when his country
engages in the persecution of women,
minorities, human rights and children."
For all their efforts, Jewish groups'
ability to get governments around the
world to tighten the screws on Iran has
its limits.
"What leverages are there to apply
against these governments except moral
suasion?" said the secretary-general
of the World Jewish Congress, Michael
Schneider. "We don't have a big stick
that we can use."
Harris said the argument to make is not
that stopping Iran is a moral imperative
for Israel or the Jewish people, but that a
nuclear-armed Iran threatens the world.
"A key to diplomacy is to try to per-
suade someone else not that it's in your
interest, but why it's in their interest to
act:' Harris said.
"On Iran, we think there's an abun-
dance of evidence of why this is a
regional and global problem: A nuclear
Iran would create an entirely different
and more dangerous geo-strategic envi-
ronment generally, and a nuclear Iran
would surely trigger a collapse of the
nonproliferation treaty and a number
of other countries would go down the
nuclear road in response to Iran," he
said. "Those arguments are compelling
arguments whether you're Israel's clos-
est friend or not." 111