by Maceo Carrillo Martinet
Daily Lobo Columnist
The United Nations, at least in theory, is an amazing example of democracy on a global level. Each time it meets, representatives from countries can have a dialogue face-to-face, and hopefully heart-to-heart, if peace and justice for everyone is what it’s all about.
This might be a romantic notion of the U.N., considering this past Monday’s walkout by U.S. and Jewish officials from the U.N. Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, but I don’t think so.
Why would we ever leave such a major conference if its objectives were truly at heart?
Officials refuse to participate if countries “pick on Israel,” as President Bush so eloquently put it. If the rest of the world used the same logic as U.S. and Israel officials, then nobody would be at this meeting in the first place.
To deal with the painfully relevant issues that this global conference represents, I am sure many other countries besides Israel to “pick on.”
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Something is missing in the mass media, which has not explored this issue more carefully, considering that racism is one of humanity’s biggest problems that has festered like rotten fruit since the 15th century.
U.S. and Israel officials made the conference sound like a crazed-mob of anti-Semitism.
If we refuse to stay because of so called anti-Semitic language in one of the conference drafts, then we surely would have threatened to leave when officials at a meeting in Strasbourg, Germany, challenged the connection between colonialism and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. They said that it brought African people many “benefits.” But no such walkout happened.
Palestinians are not the only ones speaking about economic, political and human rights issues that are affecting their people.
Africans from all over the world are ready to talk about the crippling effects of foreign debt and the healing process of reparations.
Latinos and Native Americans, from all the Americas, are waiting to talk about issues such as immigration and cultural sovereignty.
The Dalits of India also are there to talk about how the racist caste system has impacted their lives and how widely misunderstood the caste system is.
These immense issues on the table seem to outweigh what the strongest table could carry, but it seems that for the U.S. officials, the Israeli issue goes far and beyond all of that. What type of statement are this country’s so-called leaders making to the world and to each one of us?
To understand the essence of the Israel-Palestinian issue, I often contemplate a powerful quote by Gandhi, “I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about as freely as possible, but I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”
Zionism refers to the movement that established the Jewish state, Israel.
The “hateful language,” as Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to it, hides the reality that Palestinian people are attempting to address everyday patterns of discrimination that this establishment has inflicted upon them since World War II.
It is not a personal attack on every Jewish person or their religion, but an attack on heavily militarized roadblocks that effectively incarcerate entire cities of people and helicopter bombings by people who do not seem to care who is killed as long as they are Palestinian.
Leaving this major conference is a signal to the world that the U.S. and Israeli governments are unwilling to confront their own racism and work toward a better future.
It would strengthen us all to remember what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “If we want to know where to go from here, we got to recognize where we are.”
Questions, comments and suggestions should be sent to Maceo Carrillo Martinet at conuco8@unm.edu.
