WHY WE CAN'T GO TO DURBAN II

The workings of Mr. Obama's cool and logical mind escapes me. Durban II, the UN-sponsored conference in Geneva on world racism is, according to our President (the great advocate for change), too dangerous a place for the USA to attend. We might be exposed to some bad thoughts and words there---things there about Zionism and Israel. So Mr. Obama has decided (along with Canada, Austrailia and Israel) to boycott Durban II. As a consequence, the USA, the earth's most powerful nation, will have no say regarding the world's dispossesed and marginalized people. We will have no voice regarding the evils of world racism. As former Congresswoman and Green Party Presidential candidate Cythia McKinney stated today in San Francisco's Bayview Newspaper: "We heard the same palaver in 2001 from the same forces inside our country, basically that a discussion of Zionism, in the context of such a conference, would be anti-Semitic; therefore all the world’s dispossessed and marginalized people must continue to suffer and sacrifice while muting their grievances so that no discussion of Israel would take place on the world stage in this context."

In Brooklyn New York where I was raised, youngsters of the fifties, learned to chant that old doggerel: "Sticks and stones will hurt my bones...but names will never harm me." In those halcyon days, those sentiments seemed to fit in well with our sense of entitlement as post-WW II Americans. Our elders fought a great war--one in which many of our dads, friends and neighbor's died, just so we could be "free-speech Americans". We lived at a time when those sun-bleached little war flags still hung in our neighbor's front windows. We knew kids whose fathers or older brothers went to war but never came home...like Pete Franza, my next door neighbor's brother. So that oft-chanted doggerel seemed to fit with our underlying philosophy. It was a child's rendition of our First Amendment Rights. If Congress and the Nazis could not abridge our right to speech--- who would dare? We were raised to think that Free Speech was a good, a God-given right. Furthermore it was guaranteed by our Constitution.

Decades later, that sense of entitlement was further supported in the famous court case, Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989). Some of us learned then how the Supreme Court reversed the conviction of Gregory Lee Johnson for burning an American flag by a 5-4 vote. Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. asserted that "if there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable." (See Wikipedia, First Amendment)

We lived by those ideals-- we hoped our new Obama Administration would too.

Apparently not.

The US, led by the nose by our tough little Mid East ally, Israel-- a nation which armed to its teeth, stands up fiercely to a wide array of hostile nations around its borders with no fear, but claims it is too frightened of the possibility of harsh words at Durban II to attend that conference. Just what words are they afraid of? That the rest of the world will focus negatively on Israel's treatment of their Arab-citizen minorities? Or the harsh policies and statements of their new, foreign minister Avigador Lieberman who would have Israeli Arab citizen-rights subject to a loyalty oath? (Does that remind one of 15th Century Spain?) Or perhaps their harsh treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories? And more recently, and more seriously their over-the-top military action in Gaza?

Perhaps these Israeli actions actually need a good airing in the world press. In the end, after that exposure would they be classified as a racist state? Perhaps not. But why should we in the US, a nation which flies its First Amendment rights with pride, act in a way which shields these issues from open discussion, and in the process deny the truly disposed and ill-treated their fair hearing in the world forum?