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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (6970)	2/4/2005 11:39:07 AM
From: Emile Vidrine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22250

Wiesenthal Center Campaign: "anti-Zionism is racism" Wednesday, February 02, 2005 From John Sigler: In an effort to boost the argument that "anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism" and thereby tar any criticism of Israel as "racist", a number of leading international Zionist organizations including the Simon Wiesenthal Center (http://www.wiesenthal.com/) and the World Jewish Congress (http://www.worldjewishcongress.org), have initiated a campaign to have "anti-Zionism" included as a United Nations recognized form of racism. This campaign took an aggressive turn at the Experts' Seminar on Defamation of Religions and the Global Struggle Against Discrimination, anti-Semitism, Christianophobia and Islamophobia, which was held at Barcelona, Spain, November 11 to 14, 2004. At this event, which was specifically concerned with religious discrimination and oppression around the world, the Zionist camp disrupted the proceedings by attempting to have their ethnically exclusive and discriminatory national movement equated with Judaism and therefore classified as a form of racism. Accordingly, Dr. Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center argued "Anti-Zionism argues for the denial of sovereignty only to the Jewish people, which is, ipso facto, an act of racism." [See: wiesenthal.com] Needless to say, anti-Zionism is no more "racist" or anti-Jewish than anti-Fascism is anti-Italian or anti-Nazism is anti-German. To equate an ethnocentric and openly discriminatory political nationalist movement with the religion or ethnicity of the offending party is just as racist whether committed by true anti-Semites ("all Jews are Zionists and hate Arabs") or by the Zionists themselves ("Zionism represents all Jews, therefore any anti-Zionist expression is against all Jews"). That major elements of the Zionist movement would adopt a racist argument in order to oppose the charge of racism can be no surprise. There is nothing particularly new in this, after all, to be anti-Fascist was portrayed as being anti-Italian and to be anti-Nazi was portrayed as being anti-German, thus it can come as no surprise to see the Zionists adopting the same tactic in defense of their ethnocentric and discriminatory movement. Spearheaded by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, this is developing into a full blown movement with attacks on Mr. Doudou Diène, the Rapporteur on Racism, who refused to support the Zionist position in Barcelona, as well as on UNESCO and the UN Human Rights Commission in an effort to force their position. See for example:SWC to UN Human Rights Commissioner: "Rapparteur on Racism must not endorse Anti-Zionism wiesenthal.com Why the SWC will not attend "Education for peace" Conference at UNESCO worldjewishcongress.org This campaign to equate anti-Zionism with racism played a further disruptive role before the Ethics Initiatives Consortium, at UNESCO in New York on January 18-19, of 2005 and is aimed at subverting the upcoming Rapporteur's report which is due to be presented to the Human Rights Commission in March/April 2005. One of the few bastions of resistance to Israeli policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians is the legitimacy of the Palestinian perspective in international law and the willingness of international bodies to recognize and affirm this legitimacy. Thus, any declaration by leading United Nations organs deeming opposition to Zionism a form of racism would be a major blow global anti-racism in general. After all, if such is the case, then surely opposition to Russian Nationalist skinheads, German Neo-Nazis, and American Ku Klux Klan members must be forms of racism too, against Russians, Germans, and Americans respectively. In view of both the Zionist goal regarding the upcoming report as well as the dangerous undermining of the anti-racist position that such a move would result in, it is worth the effort to try to counter this campaign. We would like to encourage all anti-racist and anti-Zionist activists to send letters, faxes, and email to the following to thank him for taking the principled stance that anti-Zionism is a legitimate protest against an overtly racist ideology and for opposing moves to de-legitimize United Nations efforts against racism by accepting anti-Zionism as racist.