I agree, we should withdraw from the conference because it will by, its virulent anti Israeli stance combined with total silence over all the terrible things that are happening elsewhere, make things worse. It would be interesting to hear a Rudd Minister explaining why Australia should take part. Come to that it would be interesting to hear anybody at all explaining our attendence. Perhaps Forum is the one place where we might hear an explanation. I wait with curiosity.

As soon as I saw the title of the article I knew it would just be another weary rendition of "all criticism of Israel is anti-semitism".

File it with the others, under "labelling opponents as racist to suppress debate".

"Human rights activists and their selective condemnations" is an unfair title. It condemns human rights activists as a group.

I agree that singling out Israel for condemnation is probably antisemitism while human rights abuses of other nations when the abuses are of equal or greater magnitude are not condemned. However, all human rights activists do not single out Israel for condemnation, and all human rights activists are not antisemitic. The article is concerned with Durban 2, and the title of the article should reflect its contents.

I also question the boycott of the conference. It is a United Nations conference, and all members should attend, if for nothing else, to participate. It is analogous to the counterproductive US policy of not recognising governments of which they disapprove or on not on friendly terms with. Cuba, communist China, the USSR were not recognised by the US government for years even though those governments controlled their territory and functioned. The US still does not recognise Cuba. Recognition should not be equated with approval, and attending a conference under the auspices of an organisation which one belongs to should not be equated with approving the makeup or the conclusions of the conference. I think the US and Australia should attend and make their position known.

Manny Waks has his own double standards. When he was with the B'Nai Brithm he wrote a letter to the Canberra Times claiming that most terrorists were Muslims and defending the racist assertions of Rafael Israeli.

Waks repeats the kinds of libels against Muslims that were used in the West decades ago against Jews in the years leading upto the Holocaust.

Just about every anti-apartheid activist (including Desmond Tutu) who has visited Israel has said that it is wrong to compare Israel to apartheir South Africa. Why? Because Israel's treatment of Palestinians is much worse. It's a message Waks and his ilk wishes to drown out. But Israel's phosphorus bombs speak louder than the words of its apologists.

“Fair minded Australians should resent the language of these attacks against Israel, and the disreputable comparisons to other countries.”

It would be nice to think that fair-minded Australians did object to the anti-Israeli attitudes of people who are always mouthing off publicly. However, we don’t know what they think. The only opinions we hear made public are those of politicians (whose ‘opinion’s’ are whatever is safe for them to voice, and what is best for them electorally), and those of people who write letters to the editor, or share their views on OLO and other sites.

The majority of people are not politicians, letter writers or posters, so we will never know what they think.

As for the ones who are openly anti-Israel, a recent article by William Rubinstein, ‘The Biases of Genocide Studies’, covers them quite well. While most Israel’s detractors do not usually accuse that besieged little country of ‘genocide’ (some do, of course) the verbal attacks on Israel are similar to those of people calling themselves ‘human rights activist’ who babble on about Western genocide as though it were a particularly Western penchant, while totally ignoring the tribe-annihilating activities of Shaka Zula, the Mongol Genghis Khan, the Aztecs (who ‘sacrificed’ their own people at the rate of 10-20,000 annually) and the infanticide of our own indigenes, stopped, incidentally, by we dreadful white settlers, as happened with the equally dreadful Europeans, the Spaniards who have always been defamed for ‘wiping out’ the Aztecs. Add Rawanda, Uganda, Congo and other tin pot African countries still at it today.

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...continued

The connection between the two areas is the attitude of Leftist, self-hating whites, and non-whites in the UN, who have much to say about the bad side of white Westerners, but carefully ignore the atrocities of non-Westerners.

Israel is populated and run by Europeans, whereas Gaza and the rest of the Middle East is people by dark-skinned Arabs.

Ergo, Israel is the villain!

I agree totally with the authors that Australia should not have a bar of another charade such as 2001. The UN has shown itself time and time again to be a despicable and anti-Western organisation, riddled with despots from non-Western countries who are still getting away with atrocities the Western world dropped a long, long time ago.

There is no excuse for what we did in the dim past; but there is even less excuse for those doing the same things now; especially those poncing around the UN, trying to curtail free-speech in democratic countries, but all too willing to take anything they can get from the West.

Irfan,

Come on, now. We all know that most Muslims are NOT terrorists, but isn't it a fact that MOST terrorists are Muslims. It's only a libel if Waks is wrong. Perhaps it has been heard so often that we now all believe it; or, do you have proof that the generally agreed claim is wrong?

I can't think of any other terrorist organisations currently active who are bigger than those operated by Muslims.