planet earth looks blue

Durban II, the follow up to the 2001 meeting in South Africa, starts tomorrow in Geneva.  Durban I was the first official international conference addressing the issues of world racism.  Bush boycotted the first meeting, Obama, nor any US representatives, will be attending tomorrow.  The United States isn’t the only western nation remaining outside of these important talks - Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and Italy as well will not attend.

Why the cold shoulder on racism?  Israel.  The purpose of the first Durban conference was to develop a document basically defining racism, addressing past, present, and potential future problems and human rights issues surrounding racism.  Several nations wanted to call Israel’s actions against the Palestinians racist.  The United States and Israel walked out of the conference, which they felt was using the world meeting to join together and condemn Zionism.

So who is right, and who is wrong - and what about addressing racism?  The question of ‘right’ when it comes to the land known as Israel, formerly known as Palestine, has led to decades of violence, generations of hate, and senseless killing.  Nothing has been created, nothing has been solved.  The world is apparently waiting for its saint, for its Gandhi, or King to fix this mess.  Those that live in Israel today, of course don’t want to give their homes back to the Palestinians, and feel that the suffering that the Jewish people have gone through, the Holocaust, as well as international racism towards Jews everywhere, gives them the ‘right’ to a Jewish homeland.  The Palestinians, who were kicked out of those same homes, and live in, let’s face it, terrible conditions for the most part, feel that they have a ‘right’ to return.

In all honesty, Israel has a lot of control over the lives of the Palestinian people.  They choke off the Gaza Strip so the two million people living their do not even have access to adequate goods, let alone the ability to thrive themselves with commerce.  They have a much stronger military force, and are comfortable using their US funded military, even at the cost of civilian casualties, as they have proved in the past two wars, the 22-day war in Gaza, and the 2006 war with Hezbollah.  Israel continues to colonize what areas are left to the Palestinians, something that they had agreed to stop doing in agreements made with former President Bush.  So if Israel’s actions are not being racist towards the Palestinian people, what exactly are they doing?

The Israel-Palestine situation is one example of ’something’ in the world today.  If we do not like to use the word racism, we can just call it ’something’.  But, all titles aside, ’something’ exists.  ‘Something’ makes some people believe they are entitled to more than other people, many times at the expense of other people.  ‘Something’ makes people who have plenty not worry while others don’t have enough.  ‘Something’ allows stratified nations and a stratified world, in which it is nothing short of a miracle, and a blessing, when one man can truly call another, my brother.