Anti-Semitism Day at the UN

By BENNY AVNI
September 22, 2011
NY Post
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/anti_semitism_day_at_the_un_m81ln6lY1fYnnhE7WJugpJ

Yesterday was horror-show day at the United Nations, with the anti-Semitic Durban III conference preceding Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s ravings on the floor of the General Assembly. 
But even as decent countries walked out on the Iranian and boycotted the Durban hatefest, there was barely a tweet when Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan uttered similar bile.
There’s no surprise about Ahmadinejad, who preached about divine law even as his govenrnment publicly hanged 17-year-old Alireza Molla-Sultani back home. 
But why did the UN crowd politely applaud, and even cheer, as Erdogan used the lion’s share of his long, ad-libbed speech to gratuitously attack Israel and call for sanctions against the Jewish state?
Israel, he said, has violated “89 UN resolutions that are binding, and hundreds of General Assembly resolutions.” Which ones? According to Erdogan, they mostly have to do with “Palestinian territory that Israel illegally occupies.”
Israel isn’t punished, he complained, while Sudan and Iran are under sanctions; this, in Erdogan’s world, is “the greatest blow to the sense of international justice.” 
But does the word “occupation” apply only to “Palestinian territory,” as Erdogan (along with most UN diplomats) contends? 
Hmm: Several hours earlier, the president of Cyprus, Demetris Christofias, told the assembly that his country still suffers after 37 years of occupation of a “large part of its territory by the military forces of Turkey.”
And, as Christofias indicated, Erdogan has recently terrified the Cypriots (and everyone else in the region) by threatening to send his navy to the shores of the Mediterranean island: The Turks want a piece of the action when Cypriots start pumping lucrative off-shore natural gas.
Sanctions, anyone? Not on Erdogan, who invents “violations” even as he violates every UN rule in the book. 
It was wise for 14 countries, including America and the other influential democracies, to boycott yesterday’s commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the Durban hatefest. 
It was right for European diplomats to march out yesterday as soon as Ahmadinejad accused them of using “the pretext of the Holocaust, after six decades, as the excuse to pay fine or ransom to the Zionists.” 
And kudos to America for walking out even earlier, when Ahmadinejad started spinning his old conspiracy theories related to what he called that “mysterious Sept. 11 incident.”
But who will hold Erdogan to account, as he accuses the UN and America of double standards even as he builds his image as a neighborhood bully?
mailto:beavni@gmail.com \t _self beavni@gmail.com