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Greenberg's View
Editorial
Geneva's Folly
y
et another Jew-bashing forum
held under the rubric of the
United Nations?
It's possible.
Talk about irony: A U.N. anti-racism
conference slated in Geneva for April
appears, at least in the planning stages, to
be mirroring the 2001 Durban gathering
that included an anti-Israel harangue in
its official document against racism.
Of concern is whether Geneva will be
another expression of hatred and intoler-
ance toward Israel and, by extension, the
Jewish people. We don't agree that anti-
Zionism is distinguished from anti-Jewish.
The Jewish people drive the Zionist bus.
At an October preparatory meeting for
Geneva, the Asian Group retrieved infa-
mous language from 2001. The hateful rhet-
oric urges any final document to declare the
Jewish state guilty of a "new kind of apart-
heid, a crime against humanity, a form of
genocide" and "acts of racism." The Middle
East member states bar Israel from joining
the group, according to the New York-based
Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Promoters describe the 2009 World
Conference Against Racism, set for
Geneva, as another milestone intended
to send a tough message to human rights
abusers. But expect the potential for
another round of Zionist abuse reminis-
cent of the South African outrage, JTA
reports.
It's a report the Jewish world can't dis-
miss. Our best defense against another
verbal onslaught is better tracking of
developments leading up to the confer-
ence. Israel and Canada already have
vowed not to go to Geneva. America is
still deciding whether to go. What the
European Union decides could dictate
the conference's direction; we know how
"open" the E.U. is toward Israel. An E.U.
snub would likely doom the conference.
The gist of the JTA report is a powerful
indictment of the U.N. Conferences such
as Durban and Geneva yield nonbinding
documents that have the wherewithal to
shape international law. At minimum, they
fuel anti-Israel propaganda that influences
world opinion.
Further, according to JTA, dozens of
nongovernmental organizations hostile
to Israel, despite their neutral veneer, are
seeking another NGO forum just before
or parallel to the Geneva event. The 2001
NGO forum unveiled especially harsh anti-
Israel language in its final document. That
forum also sparked the global boycott
and divestment campaign that likened
Israel to apartheid South Africa and which
many pro-Palestinian groups worldwide
embrace today.
The official state-sponsored final decla-
ration at Durban, as opposed to the NGO
YES WE CANTANKEROUS
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forum document, was more balanced
toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a
signal that the U.N. isn't hopeless when it
comes to understanding and fairness.
Neither Jews nor America can let down
their guard.
In Geneva last month, the new U.N. high
commissioner denounced "the virulent
anti-Semitic behavior" of some anti-Israel
groups at Durban, but not the inflamma-
tory NGO document itself. A 2009 NGO
forum sanctioned by the U.N. would say
a lot — all bad — about the U.N.'s real
intent at Geneva. By all accounts, extrem-
ists would dominate such a forum.
Beyond that slight, JTA cites the Islamic
bloc and its allies from the developing
world as key Geneva shapers who are tar-
geting not just Israel but the West. Their
agenda includes rising Islamophobia, post
9 11 profiling of suspected terrorists and
steps to ban defaming religions like Islam
— a form of global censorship derived
from Islamic sensitivities.
How the Obama administration handles
Geneva 2009 will go a long way toward
defining its relationship with Israel,
American Jewry and the Jewish diaspora.
A boycott seems shortsighted. America, as
a super power, can't defend Jewish inter-
ests, and those of the civilized world, from
the sidelines. El
I've been told that's a
generational thing. Younger
people, if they bother with a
paper at all, simply go to the
appropriate Web page, get the
information they want and
sign off.
But all ages wanted these
front pages. It makes me
think that maybe Gutenberg
was on to something, after
all. That nothing survives like
the printed word.
I spent the week before
Election Day on a driving
trip from Michigan to South Carolina and
Florida. At each stop, I made I was struck
by one thing.
Apparently, every candidate for pub-
lic office in the United States in 2008
was either a liar, a scoundrel, a bigot, an
ignoramus, a latent terrorist, a tax cheat,
a hater of animals, Godless, ruthless or
clueless.
How astonishing. What could have
driven such awful people to seek public
office?
Negative campaigning is really out of
control, at even the least level of govern-
ment. How can people have any confi-
dence in political leaders when they have
heard them slandered repeatedly for
weeks? In Delaware, they have a formal
bury the hatchet ceremony between vic-
torious and defeated candidates. That's
getting harder to do, though, when the
hatchet is still buried in your opponent's
forehead.
I don't know what the remedy is. But I'll
try to figure out in the next four years. L-2
-
Reality Check
Read All About It
T
he daily newspaper is passe.
Everybody knows that.
It is chained to yesterday's
technology. Its business model is broken,
crushed by the information pouring from
the Internet.
And yet....
On the day after this historic election,
people flocked to newspaper offices to
obtain a front page. It happened in Detroit,
in New York and in cities all across the
country.
Just as my mother saved the front page
of the Detroit Times from V-E day and kept
it for years in a bedroom dresser drawer.
Just as I saved the front page of the Detroit
Free Press with the "We Win" headline
when the Tigers won the 1968 World
Series and still keep it somewhere in the
garage.
People were so moved by the election
of Barack Obama that they needed some-
A36
November 13
2008
thing palpable to hold and save.
The news had been issuing for
hours from the television and
the computer screen. But they
needed more, a visible souvenir
of an event that most people
believed would never come.
It was the final, unalterable
proof that it had come indeed.
There it was in, if you'll excuse
the expression, black and white.
And when it begins to yellow
with age, it will still be a testa-
ment to a day that so moved
them emotionally that they
needed to hold it in their hands.
My day cannot start until I hold a news-
paper and a cup of coffee in my hands.
I read it front to back, scanning every
article, never knowing when an entirely
unanticipated nugget will meet my eye
and I will learn something new.
George Cantor's e-mail address is
gcantor614@aol.com.