Antony Lerman Ahmadinejad, Durban and another fine mess
Iran’s president may have derailed the UN meeting. But rather than walk out, delegates should have stayed to argue their case
“A mess, and doomed, it may well be. But the boycotts by the US, Canada, Israel, Italy and others only hand a kind of victory on a plate to those who want to hijack the conference for their own, narrow political purposes.
Seth Freedman Durban II: Ahmadinejad’s charade
Antony Lerman is wrong – the Iranian leader’s presence discredited this racism conference and betrayed the Palestinians
“The worst part about Ahmadinejad’s insidious performance is that once the vile rhetoric and ramped-up conjecture is stripped away, much of his take on the plight of the Palestinian people is correct, and it does need to be said – just not by a bloodthirsty, Holocaust-denying hypocrite whose own hands are steeped in the blood of domestic dissidents in Tehran.”
Brian Klug Standing up against antisemitism
Ahmadinejad’s attack on Zionism at the Durban conference was in a long antisemitic tradition. Delegates were right to walk out
“Bigotry, whether aimed at Jews or others, should never be shown respect. Which is why those delegates, snubbing the man as he spoke, were right to walk – especially at a UN conference against racism.”