President Obama has apparently decided that we will not be represented at the UN racism conference in Switzerland. I really don’t understand this. The concern is apparently that there will be an anti-Israel bent to it. To me this seems like precisely the reason to go so we can stand with Israel against the Zionism=racism crowd. The President of Iran gave one of his usual anti-Israel diatribes at the conference and we should have been there to call him on it. The particulars aside, we should always be willing to talk. Simply attending a conference in no way obligates us to sign on to any statements it produces if we don’t agree. Not talking to people with whom you disagree doesn’t accomplish anything. It seems awfully petty of us to not show up just because we’re afraid we might not like what we hear. We’re bigger than that, or at least we should be.
but the reason we’re not going is because some of what we don’t want to hear is actually true.