On January 20th 1942 senior Nazis met at a villa on the Wannsee near Berlin to finalise the details of how to murder and dispose of every last European Jew.

In Geneva, Switzerland on April 20th the follow-up to the UN conference on racism held in Durban in 2001, and usually referred to as Durban II, will take place.

The first conference has become infamous for its singling out of Israel in its resolution and the walking out of the Israeli and American delegations after abuse and accusations were hurled at Israel. Zionism was equated with racism and Israel was deemed an Apartheid state.

This time Islamic countries have attempting to focus on the issue of religious defamation in an attempt to protect Islam from any criticism and thus legitimise attempts at free speech in order to uniquely protect Islam and enshrine intolerance as part of the UN charter. At the same time the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) which has a majority at the conference has focused once again on Israel and attempting to denounce it as racist and confirm the anti-Israel declaration of Durban I.

Several countries have already said they will not take part if the declaration against Israel proceeds.
Today it was announced that several of the draft terms have now been dropped after pre-conference negotiations. It remains to be seen whether the US, Canada and the EU will be mollified by the modified draft. It should be noted that the original Durban I declaration is still on the table to be ratified by in Geneva.

The details are tiresome and disturbing. A caucus of Arab and Muslim states dominate the conference. Libya is to chair the conference. Iran is a vice-chair.

For a conference which is designed to fight intolerance and racism many of the representatives and committee members seem to epitomise religious, sexual and gender intolerance. They are countries without free speech, a free press or free and fair elections. These countries have the temerity to accuse, vilify, demonise and deligitimise Israel where there is universal franchise, freedom of religion, freedom of sexual orientation, a free press and free speech, the latter of which enables Arab Israeli citizens to criticise the state and call for its destruction without fear of prosecution or persecution. Many of these countries, including Egypt and Iran, publish literature, broadcast TV programmes and make political speeches of the vilest anti-Semitic nature, yet it is these countries which accuse Israel of the racist crimes of which they are so blatantly guilty.

So why did I mention the Wannsee conference? It seems to me that under the increasingly irrelevant auspices of the UN, an association of African and Islamic states are attempting to formalise the grounds for the destruction of Israel: a necessary first step towards the elimination of the Jews and the perpetration of a second Holocaust. This is to be achieved by demonisation, deligitimisation, media propaganda, boycotts and, if ever they have the power to do so, military threat. 

The world is splitting and polarising, if it hasn’t already done so, into two camps: the liberal democracies of the West with its supporters and the Islamic states and its supporters. In the middle is Israel, and for a football they use the Palestinian people.

And the politicians in the EU and the US still believe it is all about territory: give the Palestinians a state and all will be well with the world. The politicians believe negotiation, carrots and sticks and self-interest will prevail. They are wrong. The lessons of history, that we were told we have learned, were not learned. We may be moving inexorably toward something terrible.

See Jerusalem Post article by Isi Leibler. This follows up the controversy of the American Jewish Committee’s involvement.