The UN's 9/11 insult

December 12, 2010
NY Post
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/the_un_insult_9rjkaIjzDs8pUnWFMBXoCK

Next year, as New Yorkers observe the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the United Nations is planning a celebration. 
It’s perverse. It’s inexcusable. And it’s business as usual in Turtle Bay.
September 2011, you see, also marks the 10th anniversary of the Durban Conference on Racism, a weeklong farce that accused Israel of being the world’s most racist nation and sought to undermine its very right to exist.
So last month Yemen sponsored a resolution calling for the anniversary meet-up. The idea is to create a forum for yet another round of Israel-bashing hate speech.
In a sane world, such a party would be ridden out of town.
At the UN, the resolution passed 121 to 19, with 35 abstentions.
Canada is fighting back by boycotting the coming “hatefest,” which it says scapegoats Israel and “promotes racism rather than combats it.” If only the United States were just as blunt.
“My delegation regrets that this resolution contains elements that require us to vote no,” said a US diplomat, who noted that he was “deeply troubled” that New York would be the venue.
Troubled ain’t the half of it.
There’s only one reason the new conference will convene in New York in September 2011: to rub salt in the city’s wounds, to dance on the city’s graves.
Participants at the original conference, which ended three days before 9/11, openly celebrated Islamic terrorism.
Durban I became what Holocaust refugee and former Rep. Tom Lantos described as “the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I had seen since the Nazi period.”
The follow-up conference in 2009 was no better. Durban II actually began on April 20 — Hitler’s birthday — and was highlighted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s keynote address.
Canada has taken yet another brave and public step in defiance of the UN. The US needs to do more than simply follow suit.
This anti-Semitic bash should not be held on US shores, least of all as the city observes another solemn 9/11 anniversary.
If only the Obama administration would announce its own boycott and then do everything in its power to end this farce.
The key words there: “if only.”