Dershowitz: U.N. Denies Holocaust

Anne Bayefsky, the noted scholar and Senior Fellow of the Hudson Institute and a chronicler of U.N. history and the Holocaust, moderated a panel Tuesday in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day at the same U.N. hall in Geneva that is home to the Durban II "anti-racism"conference. The panel included law professor and Jimmy Carter antagonist Alan Dershowitz, actor/activist Jon Voight, human rights icons Elie Wiesel and Natan Sharansky and author Shelby Steele.

According to writer Roger L. Simon, founder of Pajamas Media, the panel was "electric," not surprising given the brain power and eloquence of the assembled panelists and Ms. Bayefsky. PJTV will have video of the panel in the days ahead.

In the meantime PJTV has some fascinating video of a conversation moderated by Mr. Simon today in which Professors Bayefsky and Dershowitz skewer the U.N. over its hypocritical and cynical obsession with Palestinian rights and Israeli "oppression." Click here--the video gets interesting at 4 minutes in.

While I don't share Prof. Dershowitz's generally liberal politics, I am forever grateful for his unflinching advocacy on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people and his willingness to take on those who would wish to do them harm. In a world of puny and shallow figures he is a giant.

A Truly Appalling Day at the U.N.

Today marked the opening of the U.N.'s Durban Review Conference in Geneva, whose ostensible purpose is to "evaluate progress toward the goals" enunciated at the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in 2001. As any sentient being knows, that was the famous U.N.-sponsored hatefest in which Israel was vilified as a racist and criminal regime, after which the U.S. delegation left the conference at the behest of then State Secretary Colin Powell. This time around the U.S. toyed with the idea of attending if it only could get the conference to tamp down its anti-Israel rhetoric. But the conference organizers couldn't produce an agenda which met even the low standards set by the Obama administration, and so the U.S. finally withdrew, along with Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Italy, Poland, Germany and the Netherlands. There is intelligent life in Europe after all.

On its best days the U.N. is an extravagant, inefficient and ineffective disgrace. But today its reputation and prestige hit its nadir. For the U.N. gave center stage at this human rights conference to one of the world's biggest human rights abusers, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, and predictably he used the occasion to rip the Holocaust and delegitimize the Jewish State:

“Following the World War Two, they [the West? Security Council members?] resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless, on the pretext of Jewish sufferings and the ambiguous and the dubious question of holocaust. [sic] They sent migrants from Europe, the United States and from other parts of the world to establish a totally racist government in the occupied Palestine…”

This was immediately followed by the dramatic departure from the assembly hall of the representatives of those Western nations who failed to boycott the conference in the first place
(France, Belgium, the Czech Republic, the UK, etc.), and who apparently have their "redlines" even when it comes to bashing Israel. It remains to be seen whether they will return to the conference tomorrow, now that the Iranians are gone.

All this caused the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights to issue a statement expressing shock and disgust at Ahmadinejad's speech. Said Navi Pillay:"I utterly deplore the speech of the President of Iran delivered this afternoon at the Durban Review Conference against racism...I find this totally objectionable. Much of his speech was clearly beyond the scope of the Conference. It also clearly went against the long-standing UN position adopted by the General Assembly with respect to equating Zionism with racism."

This fake outrage is all rather confusing on a few levels. First, Israel-bashing is not beyond the scope of the Durban II conference, it is its heart and soul. Second, the U.N. General Assembly practically accused Israel of perpetrating war crimes during the Gaza defensive operation a few months ago, which certainly is akin to equating Zionism with racism. Finally, it was the U.N. who invited Ahmadinejad to speak to the conference on its opening day; if they wanted contrition they should have invited Barack Obama.

The U.N. is now completely discredited as a force for good in the world. In fact it can safely be said that the institution has become a safe haven for killers, thugs and despots who get from the U.N. legitimacy and a chance to strut their stuff in front of a world that should shun them instead. If there would be no U.N. there is a good chance that these two-bit
tinhorns wouldn't be given the time of day outside of their rotten little countries and failed states.

For a blow-by-blow of the Durban II conference, visit Roger L. Simon's blog and check out the video at PJTV. Note the heroic efforts of Alan Dershowitz, Shelby Steele and Jon Voight in Geneva to call attention to the freakshow that the U.N. has become.