Zionists oppose prestigous award for Mary Robinson

stevoslice

Just heard this on matt cooper

ZOA

The Zionist Organization (ZOA) has criticized President Barack Obama for awarding America’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, to two virulent critics of Israel, former Irish President and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson and former South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Both have made statements and presided over organizations and conferences that were viciously critical of Israel.

Mary Robinson’s record on Israel:

· Robinson was the driving force behind the ‘World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance’ (the Durban I Conference) in September 2001 that was in fact an anti-Semitic hate carnival. “She said nothing when the preliminary Asian Regional Conference in Tehran (from which Israel was excluded) inserted blatantly racist statements into the conference agenda. She failed to speak out when, on the grounds of the U.N. conference itself, the Arab Lawyers Union distributed pamphlets depicting hook-nosed Jews as Nazis spearing Palestinian children. In the same tent where nongovernmental organizations depicted Israel as a "racist, apartheid state," were distributed fliers entitled, "What if Hitler had won?" The answer: "There would be no Israel, and no Palestinian bloodshed.” Nor did she protest when the South African hosts denied visas to European anti-slavery activists critical of human rights in Sudan and other Muslim states (Michael Rubin, ‘Mary Robinson: War Criminal?’ National Review Online, May 20, 2002).

· In April 2002, Robinson’s Human Rights Commission voted on a decision that condoned suicide bombings as a legitimate means to establish Palestinian statehood after Robinson initiated a drive to become a fact finder to investigate the now-famous fictitious massacre in Jenin.

· In June 1999, when the Geneva Conference of High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, a body that had never been convened in its history gathered to condemn the Israeli construction of apartment blocks on empty, Jewish-owned land in eastern Jerusalem, Robinson insisted that the Fourth Geneva convention applies to the “Occupied Palestinian Territories” and that “legal and diplomatic mechanisms under the United Nations Charter” and the Convention “remain an option for serious consideration” against Israel. These options include trials for war crimes and crimes against humanity. So extreme were Robinson’s words at this conference (which was curtailed when its Convener, Switzerland’s Walter Gyger, counseled restraint and adherence to non-politicized terms of reference) that she was censured for them.

· During the so-called Naqba riots in May 1998, when Jews were assaulted at prayer by rioting Palestinians, Robinson spoke only of the rioters who were killed and injured by Israeli police as victims and called upon Israel to “respect the right of peaceful assembly, to avoid the excessive use of force.”

· In November 2000, when she visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA)-controlled areas, Robinson said she came to “hear” the Palestinians but to “put points to [the Israelis],” indicating she was taking the Palestinian side even before arrival. She subsequently surrendered to PA demands that she cancel meetings with Israel’s democratically-elected opposition figures. Acting Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami (Labor) saw this as so blatantly biased that he declined to meet with her. Her subsequent report on her visit consisted largely of regurgitating Palestinian claims, no matter how subjective, including anger at those who had dared to (correctly) allege that Palestinian children were deliberately dispatched to scenes of violence. The stoning of Jewish worshippers at Jerusalem’s Western Wall and the destruction of Joseph’s Tomb and a Jericho Synagogue received barely a reference, but after meeting with Muslim and Christian clerics, she called on Israel to respect and protect religious sites.

· In 2000, when the Iranian government arrested and convicted a number of Jews on trumped-up charges of espionage for Israel in an in camera trial, utilizing forced confessions as evidence, Robinson accepted the Iranian position that it was an internal Iranian matter and did not send observers to the appeal trial.

· In 2000, Robinson appointed Mona Rishmawi to a senior position within her Commissariat. Rishmawi has likened Israeli practices in the territories to those of Nazis and is a long time activist of al-Haq, the Palestinian advocacy organization promoting a Palestinian agenda couched in terms of human rights.

· As UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002), Robinson took a discriminatory line against Israel as soon as she took that post. She discontinued the practice of her predecessor, Ecuador’s José Ayala-Lasso, of meeting with both the UN regional groups and the Israeli ambassador to discuss human rights matters. (As the only member-state not a member of any regional group, Israelis could only obtain information from the HCHR on this basis). Only later did she reluctantly resume the practice of inviting the Israeli ambassador.

· During the last four years of Robinson’s term as Irish president and at a time that Ireland held the EU presidency (second half of 1996), EU aid money to Yasser Arafat went to terrorism. PA documents seized by Israel in 2002 from Arafat’s Muqata compound in Ramallah show that the PA spent approximately $9 million of EU aid monthly on the salaries of those organizing terror attacks against civilians. “While European officials like Robinson looked the other way, the Palestinian Authority regularly converted millions of dollars of aid money into shekels at rates about 20 percent below normal, allowing the Palestinian chairman to divert millions of dollars worth of aid into his personal slush fund ... European funds enabled Arafat to purchase $50 million worth of sophisticated Iranian weaponry for use against civilians” (Michael Rubin, ‘Mary Robinson: War Criminal?’ National Review Online, May 20, 2002).


Desmond Tutu’s record on Israel:

· Smears Zionism as being racist: Tutu has claimed that Zionism has “very many parallels with racism.” (American Jewish Year Book, 1988, p.50).

· Calls Jews arrogant: Tutu accused Jews of exhibiting “an arrogance--the arrogance of power because Jews are a powerful lobby in this land and all kinds of people woo their support,”(Jewish Telegraphic Agency Daily News Bulletin, Nov. 29, 1984).

· In a speech delivered to a two-day conference titled, ‘The Apartheid Paradigm in Palestine-Israel,’ Tutu was reported to have cited passages from the Bible to argue that the God worshiped by Jews would champion the cause of Palestinians, “Remembering what happened to you in Egypt and much more recently in Germany -- remember, and act appropriately ... If you reject your calling, you may survive for a long time, but you will find it is all corrosive inside, and one day you will implode” (‘Tutu urges Jews to challenge oppression of Palestinians,’ Boston Globe, October 28, 2007).

· Compares Israel to Hitler, Stalin and apartheid: “I have been very deeply distressed in all my visits to the Holy Land, how so much of what was taking place there reminded me so much of what used to happen to us Blacks in Apartheid South Africa … The Apartheid government was very powerful, but we said to them: Watch it! If you flout the laws of this universe, you're going to bite the dust! (applause) Hitler was powerful. Mussolini was powerful. Stalin was powerful. Idi Amin was powerful. Pinochet was powerful. The Apartheid government were powerful. Milosevic was powerful. But, this is God's world. A lie, injustice, oppression, those will never prevail in the world of this God. That is what we told our people. And we used to say: those ones, they have already lost, they are, they are going to bite the dust one day. We may not be around. An unjust Israeli government, however powerful, will fall in the world of this kind of God” (Tutu in an address delivered at Old South Church, Boston to the Friends of Sabeel North America’s conference, (a body whose leaders say that Israelis are “crucifying” Arabs like the Jews did Jesus), April 13, 2002). [ZOA: The full text of this address was once available on-line at http://media.startribune.com/smedia/2007/10/03/19/Archbishop_Tutu_Transcript.source.prod_affiliate.2.doc, but disappeared sometime after ZOA cited it at length in a press release of October 12, 2007].

· Refuses to call Israel by name: In conversations during the 1980s with the Israeli ambassador to South Africa, Eliahu Lankin, Tutu “refused to call Israel by its name, he kept referring to it as Palestine.” (Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Response magazine, January 1990).

· In November 2006, Tutu was appointed by the same UN Human Rights Commission previously headed by Mary Robinson to head its “investigative commission” to the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun to investigate “human rights violations” by Israel” which Tutu had already condemned as “an outrage that cries out to heaven and we must condemn it unequivocally.” The commission never investigated Sudan, or other scenes of genuine, massive human rights abuses.

· Falsely claims Jews create refugees: Asked about the Zionism-is-racism resolution, Tutu complained that “the Jewish people with their traditions, religion and long history of persecution sometimes appear to have caused a refugee problem among others.” (South African Zionist Record, July 26, 1985).

· Urged Jews to forgive Nazis: During his 1989 visit to Israel, Tutu “urged Israelis to forgive the Nazis for the Holocaust” (Jerusalem Post, December 31, 1989), a statement which the Simon Wiesenthal Center called “a gratuitous insult to Jews and victims of Nazism everywhere” (Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Response magazine, January 1990).

· Claims Jews monopolize victimhood: Jewish Monopoly of the Holocaust: Tutu complained about “the Jewish monopoly of the Holocaust.” (Jerusalem Post, July 26, 1985).

· Depicts the Jewish lobby as malignly powerful: “People are scared in this country [the U.S.], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful--very powerful.”

· Claims critics of Israel are smeared: “You know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the U.S.] and to criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic, as if Palestinians were not Semitic.”

· During the 1989 visit to Israel, Tutu remarked “If I’m accused of being anti-Semitic, tough luck,” and in response to questions about his anti-Jewish bias, Tutu replied, “My dentist’s name is Dr. Cohen.” (Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Response magazine, January 1990)

· Claims Judaism tries to monopolize G-d: Speaking in a Connecticut church in 1984, Tutu said that “the Jews thought they had a monopoly on God; Jesus was angry that they could shut out other human beings.” In the same speech, he compared the features of the ancient Holy Temple in Jerusalem to the features of the apartheid system in South Africa. (Hartford Courant, October 29, 1984).

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “It is deplorable that President Obama should have honored two such utterly partisan, vociferously anti-Israel figures like Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu.

“Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu’s records of defaming Israel, as we have shown above, stand for themselves. Both figures have shown a propensity to pervert and disserve the cause of human rights in the course of heading committees and organizations designed to defend them. That tells us something about the state of human rights organizations and their internal perversion by anti-Israel activists and the repressive and corrupt regimes which tend to control these bodies. But it also tells us something about Robinson and Tutu. Neither Robinson nor Tutu ever resigned in protest at the direction these bodies have taken, or took anything that could be called a courageous stand in favor of truth. Rather, both have lent their reputations to travesties of the truth and given the bodies on which they served an aura of undeserved legitimacy. By awarding them the Medal of Freedom, President Obama compounds their offense by lending them further underserved legitimacy.

“We are aware that, while other Jewish organizations have criticized the award to Mary Robinson, none appear to have taken issue with the same award being made to Desmond Tutu. It would appear that there is reluctance to criticize an African figure who had some prominence in the fight against apartheid in South Africa. Yet participation in a just cause does not, and should not, provide immunity from criticism for other words and deeds defaming Zionism and Israel while aiding the eliminationist Palestinian cause.

“We also note that President Obama recently meet with Jewish leaders to reassure them about his policies to Israel, something words alone cannot do when so much else in the words and deeds of the Obama Administration gives genuine cause for concern. At a time when President Obama is being severely criticized by Jewish leaders for bias against Israel and in favor of Arabs, and has only 6% of Israelis call him pro-Israel, one would have expected him to be especially careful not to offend pro-Israel sensibilities by honoring two of Israel’s most severe critics. How little President Obama seems to regard Jewish sensitivities can be seen by these awards to Robinson and Tutu only weeks after that meeting.”

wes

So there actually attacking Mary Robinson and Archbishop Desmond Tutu? Really? Are they high or something? I taught them going after Carter, a man who helped negotiate peace between Israel and Egypt, was bad enough, but they really have lost the plot.

Someone really ought to tell them the story of the boy who cried wolf, as there really not doing themselves any favors here, especially going after someone like Tutu for goodness sake.

Biggins

Yep. agree with the previous poster, they are really not doing themselves any favors, only showing how full of hatred they are and unwilling to look at alternative views of history and its implications for the future for all.

yawnstretch

Agree with previous 2 posters

stevoslice

totally agree. them zionists are just getting crazier and crazier.

ChocolateSauce

A bit rich coming from them. IMO, they can bend over and take Robinson's human-rights-hood.

ei.sdraob

thebhoy wrote: »

totally agree. them zionists are just getting crazier and crazier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBcI64QzXNc

Svalbard

Mary Robinson can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned.

Israelis on the other hand.......

irish_bob

im no fan of mary robinson but its a scurilous accusation , michael d who im no fan of was on matt cooper this evening and i have to hand it to him , he wiped the floor with the zionist of america spokesman

goldenbrown

is right to describe US pressure groups who are pro israel as 'bullies', I recall how the BBc dropped tom paulin the writer after he observed that the nazi today is the settler with the uzi over his shoulder

IRISH RAIL

In April 2002, Robinson’s Human Rights Commission voted on a decision that condoned suicide bombings as a legitimate means to establish Palestinian statehood


Anyone who thinks its ok to give someone like this an award should hang there head in shame.
I just hope no one who supports her ever falls victim to a suicide bomber.

anonymous_joe

I like Mary Robinson (and Tutu) and respect them both, but I also think the Zionists represent a point of view that's not too far removed from those that Robinson championed.

Both are loopy religious nut groups, both hate each other, both claim the same land, both don't eat similar foods. And so on. I could go on with the spurious comparisons, but the average Israeli or Palestinians a decent person, in the same way both countries have produced awful people.

The Zionists are entitled to an opinion, and I would personally say that Mary Robinson, like a lot of Irish people, empathises more with the Palestinians than the Israelis. I'd argue that that is a bit unfair, but such is life.

stevoslice

IRISH RAIL wrote: »

In April 2002, Robinson’s Human Rights Commission voted on a decision that condoned suicide bombings as a legitimate means to establish Palestinian statehood


Anyone who thinks its ok to give someone like this an award should hang there head in shame.
I just hope no one who supports her ever falls victim to a suicide bomber.

bear in mind that this is an entirely subjective piece, and iirc robinson didn't 'condone' the bombings as such, just accepted that as as a form of protest/rebellion from a peoples living on the very edge of their society, who have limited options to get themselves heard internationally. i'm sure someone on here could elaborate, as i'm not very articulate...

Macha

IRISH RAIL wrote: »

In April 2002, Robinson’s Human Rights Commission voted on a decision that condoned suicide bombings as a legitimate means to establish Palestinian statehood

Mrs Robinson said that, as UN human rights commissioner, she had no influence over the Human Rights Commission.

“Any resolutions of the Human Rights Commission, I played no part in,” she said. “Following that resolution, which related to the events in Jenin at the time, I did try to have a complete, impartial, high-level group going in order to take this out of divisive politics and the polarisation that was happening . . . and the Israeli government wouldn’t allow it. That again was a leadership role in which I was trying to prevent the kind of polarisation which was going on and I believe that I was acting purely in a principled, human rights way with no bias, which I am incapable of.”

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/0806/1224252080732.html

Anyone who can't understand the role of the UN Human Rights Commissioner needs to go and do a bit of homework before they start ranting.

wes

IRISH RAIL wrote: »

In April 2002, Robinson’s Human Rights Commission voted on a decision that condoned suicide bombings as a legitimate means to establish Palestinian statehood


Anyone who thinks its ok to give someone like this an award should hang there head in shame.
I just hope no one who supports her ever falls victim to a suicide bomber.

You are of course assuming that the above piece is accurate, when as clearly shown by other posters above it most certainly isn't. Taking the Zionist Organization of America as being a accurate source of information is imho ridiculous. They represent one side of the conflict and are hardly interested in the truth, in much the same way as any claims from the likes of Hamas would be suspect.

Also, such organizations have a history of spurious claims of Anti-semitism. The article the op posted even has them attacking Archbishop Desmond Tutu of all people. The way I see it, they have cried Wolf one time to many and have lost what little credibility they may have once had.

Nodin

IRISH RAIL wrote: »

In April 2002, Robinson’s Human Rights Commission voted on a decision that condoned suicide bombings as a legitimate means to establish Palestinian statehood

Even if thats true, why should we give a rats ass? They've all legitamate recourse cut off by the US Veto and have been systematically brutalised for 40 odd years. Israel drove them to it suicide bombing, Israel occupies them, Israel is still taking land and putting its citizens on it. If now and again you get bit in the process, tough. If now and again somebody states the bloody obvious and you don't like it, tough. Let them get back to their own side of the border.

Nodin

After 40 years of this is it any wonder they act the way they do?

A former Israeli military commander has told the BBC that Palestinian youngsters are routinely ill-treated by Israeli soldiers while in custody, reports the BBC' s Katya Adler from Jerusalem and the West Bank. "You take the kid, you blindfold him, you handcuff him, he's really shaking... Sometimes you cuff his legs too. Sometimes it cuts off the circulation. "He doesn't understand a word of what's going on around him. He doesn't know what you're going to do with him. He just knows we are soldiers with guns. That we kill people. Maybe they think we're going to kill him. "A lot of the time they're peeing their pants, just sit there peeing their pants, crying. But usually they're very quiet.''

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8186905.stm

Fair play to anyone who shows this shower for what they are.

Wheely

IRISH RAIL wrote: »

In April 2002, Robinson’s Human Rights Commission voted on a decision that condoned suicide bombings as a legitimate means to establish Palestinian statehood


Anyone who thinks its ok to give someone like this an award should hang there head in shame.
I just hope no one who supports her ever falls victim to a suicide bomber.

That's a blatant lie. Nowhere in the text of that resolution are the words "suicide" or "bombing" to be found. It does restate

"General Assembly resolution 37/43 of 3 December 1982 reaffirming the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples against foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle"

Mary Robinson was on Dublin City Council in 1982 so she's pretty clean on what to be honest is GA Resolution I agree with. And I'm not hanging my head in shame.

anonymous_joe

Nodin wrote: »

After 40 years of this is it any wonder they act the way they do?


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8186905.stm

Fair play to anyone who shows this shower for what they are.

And? The Palestinians are no better nor any worse than the Israelis. It takes two to tango.

Therein lies the problem - both sides do terrible things to each other when the options present themselves.

Moreover, both sides are made up of a majority of ordinary decent people, but large and aggressive minorities do most of the damage. Both metaphorically and, sadly, physically.

wes

anonymous_joe wrote: »

And? The Palestinians are no better nor any worse than the Israelis. It takes two to tango.

Therein lies the problem - both sides do terrible things to each other when the options present themselves.

Moreover, both sides are made up of a majority of ordinary decent people, but large and aggressive minorities do most of the damage. Both metaphorically and, sadly, physically.

Fair enough point, but the fact of the matter is that one side is occuping the other, which is were both sides violence stem from, in the case of Israel to enforce there occupation and in the case of the Palestinians to resist it.

The problem on both sides is the occupation and as such imho, that puts the onus on ending the mess more so on the side of the occupiers. Now this doesn't mean that the Palestinians have to do nothing, they most certainly have there part to play, but ultimately it is the occupier who will end the occupation.

Macha

anonymous_joe wrote: »

Moreover, both sides are made up of a majority of ordinary decent people, but large and aggressive minorities do most of the damage. Both metaphorically and, sadly, physically.

Yes, it's just one side happens to have bigger guns.

As for the Palestinians being just as bad as the Israelis um...don't you think they are just a little bit justified in being majorly pissed off that their land has been stolen? Just a thought..

ei.sdraob

anonymous_joe wrote: »

And? The Palestinians are no better nor any worse than the Israelis. It takes two to tango.

Therein lies the problem - both sides do terrible things to each other when the options present themselves.

Moreover, both sides are made up of a majority of ordinary decent people, but large and aggressive minorities do most of the damage. Both metaphorically and, sadly, physically.

they are both bad

but one side kills a magnitude more people than the other

how do you reconcile that?

Nodin

anonymous_joe wrote: »

And? The Palestinians are no better nor any worse than the Israelis.

As one side is a nuclear power building colonies on top of a bunch that barely have two AK's to rub together......

edanto

It might be tough, but I think this thread would be more fun if it didn't veer off into the usual Israeli-Palestinian argument. I've been in a lot of those threads and I can only remember one recorded instance of someone changing their opinion.

As for Mary R, she has spoken quite clearly lately about how Israel is denying Human Rights to the Palestinians, she has the legal and international experience to make strong arguments and she is gathering momentum with The Elders. Of course this scares the hell out of ZOA and AIPAC.

Which is why AIPAC are trying to tarnish her reputation with statements like:

"Mary Robinson, who was one of the people responsible for the 2001 Durban conference against racism descending into an anti-Israel propaganda forum, is not an appropriate recipient for one of our nation's highest honors"
"In fact, awarding the Medal of Freedom to Mary Robinson does great dishonor to the many outstanding men and women who have received it in the past"

Typical approach from ZOA/AIPAC. If you are worried about what someone is saying about you, discredit them.

Nodin

Sure if you took that shower seriously, you'd be trying to find Jimmy Carter, her and Tutu on the platform beside Herr Shicklgruber and co at Nuremberg...

Affable

wes wrote: »

So there actually attacking Mary Robinson and Archbishop Desmond Tutu? Really? Are they high or something? I taught them going after Carter, a man who helped negotiate peace between Israel and Egypt, was bad enough, but they really have lost the plot.

Someone really ought to tell them the story of the boy who cried wolf, as there really not doing themselves any favors here, especially going after someone like Tutu for goodness sake.

It's no surprise-they are always on their high horse about something.

Mad Finn

It's a pretty standard Israeli/Zionist attempt to bash the United Nations at every opportunity. The Israelis don't like the fact that they have been repeatedly condemned by the UN for their actions against civilians in Lebanon, the occupied territories and within their own state.

Nor do they like to acknowledge the fact that they owe the UN for their very existence. The legal basis for Israel's existence is a UN resolution of 1947 which established a recognised independent Jewish state in Palestine for the first time since King Herod.

They really are a most ungrateful shower. To turn a popular neocon jibe on its head, they would still be speaking German now if it wasn't for the UN.

So they would.

edanto

I heard her speak last November at the IIEA in Dublin and she was using a human rights framework to show that Israel were abusing the Palestinians. It's a very convincing argument and I suspect that Obama has already been exposed to it.

arybvtcw0eolkf

thebhoy wrote: »

bear in mind that this is an entirely subjective piece, and iirc robinson didn't 'condone' the bombings as such, just accepted that as as a form of protest/rebellion from a peoples living on the very edge of their society, who have limited options to get themselves heard internationally. i'm sure someone on here could elaborate, as i'm not very articulate...

I wonder did she hold the same view's when the IRA used suicide bombings by proxy against british targets in NI?.

I doubt it somehow.

.

The Saint

Rose Clean Racist wrote: »

I wonder did she hold the same view's when the IRA used suicide bombings by proxy against british targets in NI?.

I doubt it somehow.

.

It doesn't matter if you like it or not, it's perfectly legal as long as civilians aren't being targetted.

UN General Asembly Resolution 3103, 1973

Reaffirming that the continuation of the colonianism in all its forms and manifestations, as noted in General Assembly resolution 2661 (XXV) of October 1970, is a crime and that colonial peoples have the inherent right to struggle by all necessary means at their disposal against colonial Powers and alien domination in exercise of their right of self-determination recognized in the Charter of the United Nations and the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations

UN General Assembly Resolution 33/24, 1978

2. Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, particularly armed struggle;

The Saint

Just some tidbits about Mary Robinson and the Durban conference on racism that any idiot could find with a quick wikipedia search.

The Geneva meetings had opened on 30 July against the backdrop of an international debate over the extent to which the Durban Declaration and programme of action should focus on the Palestinian issue, particularly in relation to Zionism. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which is coordinating conference preparations, was clearly concerned with this debate. Particularly alarming was the US threat to boycott the conference should the draft documents include allusions that could be interpreted in any way as equating Zionism with racism. In her address to the preparatory meetings earlier this week, Mary Robinson, WCAR secretary- general and UN high commissioner for human rights, said that regional political conflicts should not be imposed on the agenda of the conference.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2001/546/fr2.htm

Mary Robinson

I also admit that it was an extremely difficult conference. That there was horrible anti-Semitism present - particularly in some of the NGO discussions. A number people came to me and said they've never been so hurt or so harassed or been so blatantly faced with an anti-Semitism...

I pointed to the downside which was in relation to the Middle East and the anti-Semitism but it was a gathering of an extraordinary range of people from the margins - indigenous peoples, young Roma from Europe, those of African descent from the Americas, the Kurds - voices that never get an opportunity on the international stage.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/forum/1673034.stm

The Declaration, not to put too fine a point upon it, is bit of everything to everyone. One gathers the impression that every lobby was able to get its own pet aversions included in the Declaration. Its formulations on Israel, described as a ``racist, apartheid state'', guilty of ``racist crimes including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing'' seem to have outraged even so considerate a friend of the NGO sector as Ms. Robinson who has declined to accept the Declaration and has declared that she would not recommend the Declaration to the main Conference.

http://hindu.com./thehindu/2001/09/09/stories/05091344.htm

Waving a book of anti-Semitic cartoons distributed at the anti-racism conference in Durban, UN High Commissioner Mary Robinson - in a dramatic act of identification with the Jews vilified in the pamphlet - declared "I am a Jew" at an NGO dinner there Wednesday night.

Shimon Samuels, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris, said that after he showed Robinson the booklet, she stood up, waved it and said, "This conference is aimed at achieving human dignity. My husband is a cartoonist, I love political cartoons, but when I see the racism in this cartoon booklet, of the Arab Lawyers' Union, I must say that I am a Jew - for those victims are hurting. I know that you people will not understand easily, but you are my friends, so I tell you that I am a Jew, and I will not accept this fractiousness to torpedo the conference."

August 30, 2001

The Jerusalem Post