Send in the clowns: Durban III counter-protest September 22

From HaOlam:

A StandWithUs-sponsored “circus” will expose the shocking hypocrisy of the United Nations when the UN puts on its third “Durban conference” against racism on September 22 in New York City. The circus and clowns StandWithUs is sponsoring will appear in front of UN headquarters on Sept. 22 from noon until 2 PM, just when the three-ring circus known as the Durban III conference is under way. Leading democratic nations have severely denounced the previous two Durban conferences, held in 2001 and 2009, for demonizing Israel and for flagrant anti-Semitism.

“One good way to counter the Durban conference’s hypocritical travesty of human rights is with parody. Sometimes humor reveals the deepest truths. There is no possible rational response to the Durban conference’s perverse distortions. They are too divorced from any reality. In fact, they turn reality upside down. We plan to fight the UN ‘clowns’ with actual clowns that expose their hypocrisy and perversity,” explained Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs.

Durban I, the first conference against “racism, xenophobia, and other forms of intolerance,” held in 2001 in Durban, South Africa, was a travesty of its stated goals that shocked the world’s democracies. The conference turned into an anti-Semitic hatefest that singled out democratic, multicultural Israel as the most racist country in the world, while ignoring discrimination and human rights crimes rampant in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere in the world. The conference allegedly against racism had turned into a hotbed of racism. Canada, the U.S., and Israel walked out of the conference and condemned Durban I for fomenting the world’s oldest racism, anti-Semitism.

Indifferent to these widespread denunciations of Durban I, the UN attempted to reaffirm the Durban I declaration in a second conference in 2009 in Geneva, Switzerland. ...

At the demonstration in New York, clowns will wear Ahmadinejad masks and hold balloons that correctly label Durban III as a forum for hypocrisy, racism, and lies.

“The balloons are symbolic but accurate. The Durban conferences cast all decent values to the winds. Hopefully, our demonstration will encourage the world to demand that the UN finally live up to its original ideals,” concluded Rothstein.

You can join the protest yourself; just show up in a clown costume!

StandWithUs is a partner of EoZ.