Diplomats have walked out of a speech by the Iranian president at a UN anti-racism conference after he described Israel as a “racist government”.
BBC NEWS
April 20, 2009
Two protesters, wearing coloured wigs, briefly disrupted the beginning of the speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but he continued speaking.
Shortly afterwards a stream of Western delegates walked out when he attacked the creation of the state of Israel.
Some of those who stayed clapped as Mr Ahmadinejad continued his speech.
The walk-out is a public relations disaster for the United Nations, which had hoped the conference would be a shining example of what the UN is good at – uniting to combat injustice in the world, says the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Geneva.
UN dismay
The walk-out happened within minutes of the speech starting on Monday.
Moments earlier security guards escorted two protesters from the conference hall after one threw an object at the Iranian president and they yelled “racist, racist” as he stood at the podium. …
History of Israel and Palestine:
1947 UN Partition Proposal
… In practice, Zionists did not accept the UN Partition Plan. Zionists seized areas beyond the proposed Jewish State and did not recognize the International Zone. Using force and terrorism months before May 1948, Jews seized land beyond the UN proposed borders. The UN Plan was used as a pretense for taking over most of Palestine.
NOTE: This is a critical fact often omitted when the history is presented and this leads to a very distorted view of what happened in 1948. The misleading story often told is that “Jews declared Israel and then they were attacked.” The fact is from November 1947 to May 1948 the Zionists were already on the offensive and had already attacked Arabs. In the months before Israel was declared, the Zionists had driven 300,000 non-Jews off their land. In the months before Israel was declared, the Zionists had seized land beyond the proposed Jewish State. SEE Sources or this blog entry: Sources for the Israeli/Palestinian situation 1947-1948 …
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
March 1990
Reclaiming History
Israeli Terror Tactics Drive Out Palestinians in 1948 and 1967
By Andrew I. Killgore
“We shall spirit the penniless population (Palestinians) across the border… the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”
— Theodor Herzl, father of Political Zionism (Diary, Vol. II, page 24, 1898)
“Palestine will be as Jewish as England is English.”
— Chaim Weizmann, first President of Israel (From Trial and Error, his autobiography)
The high-ranking UN official could hardly believe his eyes. At least 35,000 Palestinian residents of the huge West Bank refugee camps of Aqabat Jabr and Fin Sultan near Jericho were missing. As he drove by the just-destroyed camps, he could see only a handful of people picking through the rubble.
Dr. Laurence Michelmore, the American Commissioner General of the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), knew that refugees had poured from the West Bank into Jordan after the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli war on June 5, 1967. Still, it was bewildering only a week later, on June 12, to see the normally bustling camps silent and empty in the hot Jericho sun.
A Second Exodus
Michelmore already realized that UNRWA faced the staggering task of caring for more than 200,000 “new” refugees who comprised 1967’s “second exodus” from Palestine. More than one-fifth of the inhabitants had fled when Israeli soldiers seized East Jerusalem and the West Bank during six days of fighting. They joined the 750,000 refugees from the first exodus of 1948-1949, who were already overtaxing available UNRWA resources.
The brutal Israeli Army tactics which triggered the little-known “second exodus” from Palestine, emptying such camps as Aqabat Jabr and Ein Sultan, may be repeated in further mass expulsions in the 1990s. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has said publicly that Israel needs the West Bank for Soviet Jews. Does a third exodus to “cleanse” the West Bank and Gaza Strip entirely of Palestinians lie ahead? And then will Israeli extremists like Rabbi Meir Kahane have their way and set off a fourth exodus to “clean” 800,000 Palestinians from Israel proper, and finally realize the dream of Dr. Chaim Weizmann?
Israel’s tactics in expelling or terrorizing 750,000 Palestinians into fleeing their homes in the “first exodus” of 1948 and 1949 are by now fairly well known. The deliberate brutality employed to drive away another 200,000 Palestinians in 1967 is known to hardly anyone except the Palestinians themselves.
After 60 Years, Arabs in Israel Are Outsiders
The New York Times
Published: May 7, 2008
JERUSALEM — As Israel toasts its 60th anniversary in the coming weeks, rejoicing in Jewish national rebirth and democratic values, the Arabs who make up 20 percent of its citizens will not be celebrating. Better off and better integrated than ever in their history, freer than a vast majority of other Arabs, Israel’s 1.3 million Arab citizens are still far less well off than Israeli Jews and feel increasingly unwanted.
On Thursday, which is Independence Day, thousands will gather in their former villages to protest what they have come to call the “nakba,” or catastrophe, meaning Israel’s birth. For most Israelis, Jewish identity is central to the nation, the reason they are proud to live here, the link they feel with history. But Israeli Arabs, including the most successfully integrated ones, say a new identity must be found for the country’s long-term survival.
“I am not a Jew,” protested Eman Kassem-Sliman, an Arab radio journalist with impeccable Hebrew, whose children attend a predominantly Jewish school in Jerusalem. “How can I belong to a Jewish state? If they define this as a Jewish state, they deny that I am here.”…
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/world/middleeast/07israel.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin
The idea of Adolf Hitler’s Aryan nation was reprehensible to Jews. But the idea of a Jewish nation, reprehensible to Arabs, fits the Jews just fine. And to “rub salt into the Arab’s wound”, the Zionist nation of Israel sits – courtesy of the United Nations, on Palestinian land. And the Palestinians are made out to be the bad guys.
Why is a Zionist nation more acceptable to the “WEST” than Adolf Hitler’s Aryan nation? It is true that the Zionist nation confines its “activities” to the Middle East rather than to Europe. The Zionist nation idea would certainly be foreign to Europe but the WHITE HAT wearers of the WEST may take more kindly to a racist nation “side-kick” in the Middle East.
But it is refreshing to see the United Nations attempt to live up to its motto:
The sons of Adam are limbs of each other, Having been created of one essence.
When the calamity of time affects one limb The other limbs cannot remain at rest.
If thou hast no sympathy for the troubles of others
Thou art unworthy to be called by the name of a human.
That effort of trying to get “diplomats” to talk might lend credence to the idea that the Palestinian family is just as human as the Jewish family. And the suffering of the Palestinian family in the Gaza Strip is just as horrible as the suffering of the Jewish family in the Nazi concentration camp.
It is extremely easy to understand why Iran and likely other Arab leaders put little trust in the leaders of the West. But, prior to the neocons, those Arab leaders tried to cope with the West’s attitude.
The latter-day neocons wore their Middle East bias on their shirt sleeves. If anybody didn’t like it, they could try to “WHUP” the neocons. And that put the Middle East leaders on alert. Nobody came close to expecting that Mr. Bush’s Middle East trip would bring peace to the Middle East. All Hades broke loose after Mr. Bush left.
No one should expect all Middle East Arab leaders to “lie down, roll over and raise their legs”. Some testosterone bearers don’t do that. The United Nations was designed to get testosterone bearers together, so they could talk. But not much talking can be done when “diplomats” walk.
