What's Wrong with Durban II

In conversation with Judea Pearl about the the famous "World Conference Against Racism, Racial Intolerance, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance", Jeffrey Goldberg asks and gets an answer:

JD: They [the US] should try to discredit it because of its essential ridiculousness. It's a focused hatefest. It's a hatefest against one entity, the Jewish national movement. Iran and Libya are organizers, after all. I think the whole negotiating text is meant to exclude the kind of hatred that took Danny's life. The hatred was directed at the U.S., Israel, and the Jewish people. Durban protects this kind of hatred. Durban wants to criminalize any criticism of groups that say they are acting on behalf of Islam. Religions do not have a monopoly on human sensitivity. There are other symbols, other aspects of people's lives that deserve respect, such as the belief in Jewish national quality, the belief that Jews are entitled to sovereignty in the country where they were born. There should be sensitivity to the issue of burning the Israeli flag, which contains a national and religious symbol. I feel pained when people burn the Israeli flag, the same way a Muslim feels abused when the Koran is mistreated.

JG: Do you think we've reached some sort of point of no return in the questioning of Israel's legitimacy?

JD: There is latent anti-Semitic pressure in the world and Gaza took the lid off. That's one way to look at it. Group hysteria is catching. Gaza gives people the chance to feel morally superior. I mean, look at the Libyan government. Are they saying they're morally superior to Israel? For the Libyan people it's very important that there's one speck, one human area, where you're worth something - you're morally superior to the Jews. It's a confirmation of worthiness. The average Libyan is not having a very good time most days. So it's good to have a scapegoat. This is what Durban is about."

I'd like to recapitulate:

What are the aims of the April Geneva Conference (Durban II)?

1. To exclude from our global moral consciousness the hatred that took Danny Pearl's life, the hatred that was directed at the U.S., Israel, and the Jewish people. by excluding this hatred, they seek to protect it.

2. To criminalize any criticism of Islam. Again, by way of protecting the most radical interpretations of the most egregious beliefs that can be found in Islam.

In other words, DurbanII strives to impose the discriminatory ethos that is the fabric of life under Islam, where it is a moral imperative to treat non-Muslims with exhibited and legislated contempt, where it is mandatory to kill homosexuals, where a girl who is raped by men gets to be stoned to death on the grounds of adultery.

No decent human being should be associated with such a conference, and with such aims.

Those who maintain that involvement in the process may mitigate the damage delude themselves. How can you reduce the damage planned for Israel in that nest of vipers? What's there to negotiate? How are you even going to make yourself heard above the din and noise that these champions of human rights are going to create?

There was a famous British series "The prisoner" which I happened to watch again a few years ago. It is about a man who is taken to a penal island without him ever understanding why exactly. In the last episode, he is allowed to come before a parliament-like gathering where he is told he can plead his innocence. He stands before hundreds of people whose faces are covered, seated behind small desks. Every time he opens his mouth to say something, they start banging on the desks, drowning anything he says. At the end he is told by the speaker that he has failed to convince the forum of his innocence, and must be punished.

I think that's an apt visual for the circus that Durban II will be.And it is a scene we already seen repeatedly enacted in some form, when Hillel Neuer, of the Canadian NGO "UN Watch" tries to confront the UNHU assembly with their duplicitous record.