Israel Matzav

Canadians urge UN to drop Durban III

A series of interviews with participants at the Conservative party conference in Ottowa this past week ought to be music to the ears of Israelis.

When asked about Harper’s government taking the lead in rejecting the UN Durban Review Conference in Geneva (Durban II) in 2009 and the Durban III event slated to take place in New York City on September 21, Jason Kenney, the minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism, said: “Under the previous liberal government, Canada participated at Durban I [in 2001], and I think there was a pretty broad recognition after the fact that it was mistake for Canada to lend its good name to that circus of hatred at Durban I.”

Human rights groups and the US and Israeli governments said the UN World Conference against Racism 2001 held in Durban was marred by rabidly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic groups’ protests and a resolution that singled out and attacked Israel.

When “our government came to office, we were the first country in the world to announce that we would not participate in the Durban II review conference. We did so because our assessment was that a repeat of the some of the most egregious aspects of Durban I was likely... because countries like Iran and Libya were on the organizing committee for Durban II, which was all we needed to know,” Kenney, 43, a charismatic MP and gifted public speaker from Calgary, Alberta, said.

The organizers of the Durban II conference invited all of the NGOs from the Durban I event, including some of the most “egregious anti-Semitic” groups, and scheduled meetings on Jewish High Holy Days, “presumably to limit the participation of Jewish NGOs,” he said.

According to Kenney, Canada decided that the Durban process was “basically irredeemable” and the “UN should drop it.” It has become a “sick joke and sullies the reputation of the UN,” he said.

Canada was the first country to announce, on November 25, 2010, that it will not participate in the Durban III conference in New York.

“Navi Pillay and her crew should stop the process and realize that the poison at Durban I” has placed “the entire process under a permanent cloud,” Kenney said. Pillay is the UN high commissioner for human rights and oversees the Durban conference process.

“A conference that gives a platform to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to advocate genocide is a sick joke,” and advocates of Durban should stop defending the process, Kenney said.

He pointed to Canada’s multicultural system as the “most successful model of pluralism” and said Canada is always keen to participate in a legitimate process to address xenophobia, hatred, prejudice and racism.

Canada has set a example for the world on how “to deal with diversity in a positive way” and “the official policy of multiculturalism is an example to other liberal democracies, he said. Canadian multiculturalism rejects cultural relativism, Kenney said, citing such “barbaric cultural practices” as “honor killings,” female genital mutilation, and forced marriages.

Read the whole thing.

Unfortunately, there are some Canadian Jews who are too politically correct to expel the anti-Zionists from among them.

Labels: Canada, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), Durban III, Hamilton Jewish Federation, Jason Kenney, Never Again Group, Stephen Harper

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:03 AM