Walking Out on Ahmadinejad was Just Plain Childish

Isn't it time western diplomats just grew up and stopped these infantile games
over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? All that this play-acting over
boycotting of conferences because of his presence and walking out because of
his words achieves is to flatter his ego, boost his poll ratings at home and
play into the hands of an Israel that is desperate to prove Iran the gravest
threat to its existence.

True, Iran's President is not the world's most endearing
character. Some of the things he says are certainly contentious. But he
is far from the most offensive leader on the block at the moment. With
Silvio Berlusconi sounding off about women and sex, and Nicolas Sarkozy
sounding off about everything from the quality of his fellow leaders to
the unsuitability of Muslims to join the civilised nations, and a
Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, giving his views on gays, Europe
could claim its fair share of premiers who should not be allowed out in
public.

Read Ahmadinejad's address at the UN conference on racism
in Geneva this week and there is little to surprise and a certain
amount to be agreed with. His accusations against the imperial powers
for what they did with colonial rule and the business of slavery is
pretty much part of the school curriculum now. His anger at the way the
economic crisis originated in the West but has hit worst the innocent
of the developing world would find a ready echo (and did) among most of
the delegates.

It was not for this, however, that the countries
of Europe and North America gathered up their skirts and walked out of
Ahmadinejad's peroration. The UK's ambassador to the UN in Geneva,
Peter Gooderham, rather gave the game away when he said afterwards: "As
soon as President Ahmadinejad started talking about Israel, that was
the cue for us to walk out. We agreed in advance that if there was any
such rhetoric there would be no tolerance for it." The Iranian leader,
he went on to say, was guilty of anti-Semitisim.

Just how you can
accuse a man of anti-Semitisim when you haven't stayed to hear him talk
is one of those questions which the Foreign Office no doubt trains its
diplomats to explain. But what basically was our representative trying
to say here? That any mention of the word Israel is barred from
international discussions? That the mere mention of it is enough to
have the Western governments combine to still it? In fact,
Ahmadinejad's speech was not anti-Semitic, not in the strict sense of
the word. Nowhere in his speech did he mention his oft-quoted
suggestion that Israel be expunged from the map of the world. At no
point did he mention the word "Jews", only "Zionists", and then
specifically in an Israeli context. Nor did he repeat his infamous
Holocaust denials, although he did reportedly refer to it slightingly
as "ambiguous" in its evidence.

Instead, he launched the
time-honoured Middle Eastern accusation that Israel was an alien
country imposed on the local population by the West, out of its own
guilt for the genocide; that it was supported by a Zionist take-over of
Western politics and that it pursued racist policies towards the
Palestinians. Now you may find these calls offensive or far-fetched (if
there is a Zionist world conspiracy, it is making a singularly bad job
of it) but it is pretty much the standard view in the Muslim world.
Western support of Israel is seen as a conspiracy, and it is not just
prejudice. There are now books by Western academics arguing that the
pro-Israeli lobby wields an influence in the US out of all proportion
to its numbers. If the Western walkout in Geneva did nothing else, it
rather proved the point.

Nor is it far-fetched to charge Israel
with being a racist state. As the only country in the world that
defines itself and its immigrants on racial grounds, it could be
regarded as fair comment. And if you doubt that this founding principle
leads Israel into racist attitudes to non-Israelis, then you only have
to read the comments of its new Foreign Secretary, Avigdor Lieberman,
to disabuse you.

Of course, Ahamadinejad was playing to his home
audience. He is a politician facing re-election at a time when his
domestic economic record makes him vulnerable. Most of the educated
class are fed up with his cavorting on the world stage while his
country goes from wrack to ruin. And, of course, international
conferences of this sort, intended to spread sweetness and light, are
not the most appropriate forums for such tirades.

But on these
issues he does speak for the majority not just in Iran but in the
region. Deny that view a hearing and you will only increase the
resentment and the sense of a Western world set up against them. Which
is precisely what our oh-so-sanctimonious representatives achieved this
week.