The first sentence of the 63rd paragraph of the Durban 1 conference was too much for Israel and the US and they went down in history as the only countries to refuse to sign the declaration. This is the real back story to the Israeli campaign to prevent any mention of its oppression of the Palestinian people.
President Obama, do you really believe that an oppressed people denied their rights - affirmed and re-affirmed by international law - for 60 years, do not have the right to be heard or to defend themselves when they are being massacred?
The US indicated as recently as last week that it would be attending the Durban II conference, to the consternation of Israel.
Obama, coming out of the Summit of the Americas conference in Trinidad, has tried to explain US objections to the language of the draft declaration for the conference:
“raised a whole set of objectionable provisions” and raised the risk of a repeat of the 2001 Durban Conference, “which became a session through which folks expressed antagonism toward Israel in ways that were often times completely hypocritical and counterproductive.” “We expressed in the run-up to this conference our concerns that if you adopted all of the language from 2001, that’s not something we can sign up for. Our participation would have involved putting our imprimatur on something we just didn’t believe in,”
The US State Department said that even though the US did succeed in forcing the removal of all mentions of Israel, the draft was still unacceptable because it endorsed the Durban 1 conference of 2001.
President Obama, do you really believe that an oppressed people denied their rights - affirmed and re-affirmed by international law - for 60 years, do not have the right to be heard or to defend themselves when they are being massacred?
The US indicated as recently as last week that it would be attending the Durban II conference, to the consternation of Israel.
Obama, coming out of the Summit of the Americas conference in Trinidad, has tried to explain US objections to the language of the draft declaration for the conference:
“raised a whole set of objectionable provisions” and raised the risk of a repeat of the 2001 Durban Conference, “which became a session through which folks expressed antagonism toward Israel in ways that were often times completely hypocritical and counterproductive.” “We expressed in the run-up to this conference our concerns that if you adopted all of the language from 2001, that’s not something we can sign up for. Our participation would have involved putting our imprimatur on something we just didn’t believe in,”
The US State Department said that even though the US did succeed in forcing the removal of all mentions of Israel, the draft was still unacceptable because it endorsed the Durban 1 conference of 2001.
From New York based writer and filmmaker Parvez Sharma in Geneva, a Muslim who happens to be gay, invited to speak at the Durban 2 conference - and was spat at by two Israelis. Huffington Post (thanks ibi)World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related IntoleranceDeclarationHaving met in Durban, South Africa, from 31 August to 8 September 2001
63. We are concerned about the plight of the Palestinian people under foreign occupation. We recognize the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to the establishment of an independent State and we recognize the right to security for all States in the region, including Israel, and call upon all States to support the peace process and bring it to an early conclusion;
The full declaration is available at the UN site
Poor Israel? Sure, and I am Barack Obama!
...Cleary Ahmadinejad made provocative comments which were in poor taste. But the complete lack of discussion of Israel's continuing genocide of the Palestinian people, its use of banned weapons of mass destruction like white phosporous on Palestinian civilians, the shameful loss of Palestinian life and its skewed ratio with the loss of a few Israelis are not topics of discussion here.
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