You have to give it to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - he really knows how to create controversy. At the Geneva conference on racism yesterday, he questioned the manner in which the State of Israel was created, blaming the ensemble guilt of European anti-Semitism as the locomotive behind the seeding of a racist entity in the heart of the Middle East. He lambasted the far-right government recently voted into power in Israel and said the Israeli military s attack on the civilian population of Gaza was tantamount to genocide. Several EU delegates walked out in unison protest, much akin to the uniform gallantry of the Hitler Youth marching in Berlin. It seems racism, perceptions of racism, xenophobia, and the legacy of slavery upon which America itself was founded, cannot be debated, let alone approached without someone shoving his head in the sand and refusing to listen. Eight years ago, the US delegation walked out of the Durban conference on racism after a heated exchange with many Arab states and Third World countries over attempts to equate Zionism with Racism. A few days later, the world witnessed a horrific terrorist attack against the United States in which nearly 3,000 people died. Since that attack, the US government under the administration of George W. Bush and a militant cadre of neo-conservatives hellbent on forging an empire constructed on the corpses of millions in the Middle East, launched three key wars. The War on Terror, the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq continue to this day though there have been amusing attempts at re-branding them for a home audience tired of hearing about the misery they voted (democratically, of course) to inflict on others. The combined wars have killed more than 1.5 million people, 80 percent of whom died in Iraq. That is more than 500 times the number who died in the 9/11 attacks. These were all wars which were designed by racist ideologies - the us versus them mentality; the kind of thinking which prompts Bush to label the wars as crusades or for his military commanders to declare that my God is stronger than their [Muslim] God. The wars were supported by xenophobia. In the days after 9/11, Sikhs were attacked and killed in the US because they looked foreign, Arab or had the misfortune of wearing turbans. Oprah Winfrey, the regal ambassador of prime-time ignorance, hosted several shows which bemoaned the veil worn by millions of Muslim women. Unfortunately, her producers failed to tell her that Hasidic Jewish women and Christian nuns also cover their hair and follow very orthodox lifestyles. But it wouldn t have been hip - the media behemoth wanted to lynch a few Arabs (Ann Coulter, ever the beacon of compassion, urged US leaders to nuke Mecca) much in the same ways blacks were lynched in a town spectacle up to the 1930s. Which brings us back to Geneva 2009. The media focused on the walk-out of a handful of European delegates but neglected to focus the cameras on the more than 100 delegates who chose to stay in the conference hall, some of whom wholeheartedly agreed with Ahmadinejad over several key points. Thankfully, it was left to Al Jazeera s Alan Fisher to point out that in many parts of the world, even among the UK and France, there are many people who agree with Ahmadinejad. Shame on the EU. Where were their walkouts when Israel s champion of human rights, Avigdor Lieberman, called for the destruction of Egypt s Aswan Dam should the two countries go to war. Destroying the dam would kill nearly 20 million Egyptians, more than the entire population of Jews around the world - but then again, that is a small price to pay for keeping the hegemony of racism dominant in the Middle East. Where were they when the Israeli cabinet voted to start issuing ID cards which clearly distinguish Arabs from Jewish Israelis? Would any European nation have dared raise a voice in protest? No. Instead, we are bombarded by hollow propaganda that Israel is a democracy, that Arabs in Israel are afforded equal rights. The reality is very much different, however. Any state which launches a war that completely uproots a civilian infrastructure cannot be considered a state that follows the principles of democracy. In 1991, the US destroyed key water distillation plants, bridges, power plants and flooded Iraq with so much depleted uranium (see the brilliant work of Dr. Souad N. Azzawi on the effects of DU on Iraq s population) that birth defects became the norm in much of the impoverished south of the country. According to the UN, more than 500,000 Iraqi children died due to the US-designed-and-enforced sanctions on the country. When then Secretary of State Madeline Albright was asked if so many deaths were justified, she said yes. No walkouts. No uproar. The Iraqis complained. A few Arabs here and there waved their arms. Nothing happened. And definitely no disgust expressed by western media. The reasons are clear: the west is racist, it will continue to be racist, it will use the UN, the IMF, the World Bank and every other international body and conference to sugarcoat, whitewash, and package in bright rainbow colors racist policies at work around the world. The strangulation of Gaza, the use of white phosphorous, the targeting of Palestinian women and children are very much the same as Iraq 1991-2009. And it will not end. Arab nations and developing countries must stop looking to the UN which is crippled by the veto power of the five permanent members of the Security Council. One of those boycotted the Geneva conference; two others walked out. Incidentally, Ahmadinejad called for the UN to abolish its racist veto system and was greeted with thunderous applause. Those clapping were not turbaned terrorists, but leaders of developing nations who have had enough. Alexander Gainemis a journalist and commentator who has been writing on Middle Eastern affairs since 2001.
