By Stuart Littlewood – London
The truth never suits Israel’s flag-wavers and stooges. They have to twist it or strangulate it.
When Mr. Ahmadjinedad got up to speak at the UN racism conference the British Ambassador, Peter Gooderham, was among those who walked out in the worst show of diplomatic bad manners this century. Gooderham is reported to have said that "such inflammatory rhetoric has no place whatsoever in a United Nations conference addressing the whole issue of racism and how to address it.
"As soon as President Ahmadinejad, started talking about Israel, that was the cue for us to walk out. We agreed in advance that if there was any such rhetoric there would be no tolerance for it." Referring to the Iranian leader’s accusation of Israeli racism he added: "That is a charge we unreservedly condemn and so we had no hesitation at that point in leaving the conference hall."
TV inquisitor Jeremy Paxman asked Gooderham the difference between Zionism and racism, to which he replied that Zionism is a political movement and racism is something else – we recognize it when we see it.
The trouble is, these characters don’t recognize it at all. Nor are they daily on the receiving end, as the Palestinians are, of Israel’s brutal racist policies. Nor were they under Israel’s genocidal blitzkrieg on Gaza that vaporized and incinerated women and children in their hundreds and blew their body-parts to kingdom-come.
Everyone knows that the Zionist project aims to create a Jewish state from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea and from the Euphrates to the Nile by ethnically cleansing the Arab population from their homeland, stealing their lands and resources at gunpoint, and effectively wiping Palestine off the map. If that isn’t naked racism, what is it? Haven’t Mr. Gooderham and his colleagues read the manifestoes of the Likud and Kadima parties?
The question is, why do supposedly moral and civilized people support it and seek to perpetuate it?
Right on cue David Miliband, Britain’s foreign secretary, condemned President Ahmadinejad’s remarks about Israel being a ‘racist government’ as “offensive, inflammatory and utterly unacceptable." He didn’t say why.
Indeed, nobody has explained what was offensive about the Iranian president’s speech. He presented the unvarnished truth. The offence was refusing to listen. But truth has been a major casualty at the UN for 60 years. It doesn’t help when its Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, whines about "this august platform" being used "to accuse, divide and even incite. This is the opposite of what this conference seeks to achieve." And what exactly are the powers-that-be seeking to achieve, if not to whitewash the truth as usual?
Last November’s Bulletin Board of the Board of Deputies of British Jews – the equivalent in Britain of AIPAC – announced that Elizabeth Harris, their Director of Public Affairs, attended the “preparatory committee” meeting in Geneva for the Anti-racism Conference and used the opportunity to have "constructive" meetings with the British Ambassador and representatives of other European countries. No doubt that’s when the stooges received their orders.
So the walkout at the UN had long been premeditated and pre-planned. It was a stupid stunt.
The biggest disgrace is that racist thugs in Tel Aviv are able orchestrate such a thing. It is now self-evident that Zionists have infiltrated and embedded themselves in the political, financial, economic and social fabric of the western world to everyone else’s detriment.
– Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
