The international community's double standards and blind bias towards Israel is a classic fact of life that people in our part of the world know all too well. The world has always watched in fantastic silence while Israel commits massacre upon massacre against the Palestinians -- Palestine's indigenous population -- since 1947 in the name of Zionism and in cheap exploitation of the Jewish holocaust which Israeli leaders see no shame in turning into an industry. The world has watched in preposterous abeyance as Israel committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide in Palestine and Lebanon. The West saw no qualms in Tel Aviv's arrogant violations of international law and of nearly 100 UN Security Council resolutions that deplored and condemned Israeli attacks, occupations, and countless crimes, not only in Palestine but also in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq. Israel's history and actions have been painted in blood in our collective memory not because we, Arabs, are genetically anti-Semitic, as the exhausted Israeli claim likes to suggest. We fail to forget because Israel is so eager to remind us. Only three months ago it launched a deadly war on the besieged 1.5 million population of the Gaza Strip because its resistance fighters dared to fire primitive rockets on Israeli settlements in response to Israel's assassination of resistance members and the killing of innocent civilians. All this while Gaza suffered Israel's strict blockade of its land, sea and airspace for two years, resulting in mass malnourishment of Palestinian children as food and basic supplies became scarce and as the health sector collapsed, amongst other collective punishment practices that Tel Aviv ruthlessly implemented. Operation Cast Lead, which the "moderate" Labour-Kadima government proudly launched against Gaza on 27 December 2008 for 22 days, makes it extremely difficult for us to forget what Tel Aviv is capable of. Over 1,400 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli war machine that employed every possible weapon capable of causing utmost damage and pain for the Palestinians. White phosphorous shells were fired in abundance causing deformities and many deaths, flesh and bone melted in minutes as the chemical compound is exposed to oxygen. The haunting images of Louay, the seven-year-old Palestinian boy whose eyes were completely seared -- the boy blinded -- as a result of white phosphorous exposure and the smiling 10-year-old girl whose legs were amputated during the war are, simply, unforgettable and unforgivable. Knowing all this, as we do, how is it possible for the international community to ignore this reality at a conference that claims to review the international situation of racism? Iran's president had only to describe what Israel is -- racist -- for the developed and civilised Western world to arise in fury. The US, Canada and Israel, amongst other states, had already boycotted the world conference in Geneva because its draft final statement had included wording critical of Israel -- wording that even did not assure their presence. Israel's international PR machine had already exhausted every method possible to discredit the conference before it was held. It is no strike of chance that many appeared prepared to walk out the moment Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opened his mouth. Washington described the Iranian president's speech as "vile". Racist regimes have existed and South Africa's apartheid system pales in comparison to Israel's unique form of apartheid. Racism, a destructive practice emanating from hatred of the other, should be called by its name. But what the international community and the UN secretariat demonstrated in Geneva in response to Ahmadinejad's words were forms of admiring and protecting Israel's racism. This is what's truly vile.
