Editorials are posted and archived on JNonline.us. 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 ir ielarOV. W 2008, dd 1,1 oteve@greenberg-art.corn 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.