Please read "There are no direct flights from Tel Aviv to Tehran" before reading this blog post, which was written earlier-but does not express the nuance of the events that unfolded fully well when I was in Geneva.
I write from Geneva, where I was invited to speak at the UN "Durban II" conference on racism and have just today been spat at by two Israelis. I found myself (unknowingly) on what turned into a "bash Iran" panel with a problematic Zionist agenda. The expectation, perhaps, was that I, being Muslim and gay, would sit and join in the Iran-bashing choir. In doing the opposite I did not make myself the most popular person in the room.
Later, two Israeli delegates spat at me. Surprisingly, an erudite Canadian professor and member of Parliament threw around a baffling and hard-to-explain term: "genocidal anti-Semitism". Only he knows what he means, I certainly do not!
Still later as the Iranian president walked into his press conference, clueless, young (all White by the way) UN workers stood and hissed, accusing him of "racism" (a term problematically applied in this case).
Today for the first time I was witness to the extent of power the pro-Israel , anti-Iran and anti-Palestinian lobbies wield, even here in Geneva.
Cleary Ahmadinejad made provocative comments which were in poor taste. But the complete lack of discussion of Israel's continuing genocide of the Palestinian people, its use of banned weapons of mass destruction like white phosporous on Palestinian civilians, the shameful loss of Palestinian life and its skewed ratio with the loss of a few Israelis are not topics of discussion here.
A greater dispatch will follow but let me very clear: the first day of this UN conference was not an Israeli hate-fest. Quite the opposite; Israel and its many lobbies in majority Caucasian countries (and sometimes mine like India) are loud enough to drown out the rhetoric of the "humble" former mayor of Tehran. (his initial electoral terminology)
I write, in a hurry from Geneva where I shall now go and torment myself at a Shoa remembrance being turned into an Iran hate-fest. So very quickly-this is an alternative update from Geneva from a pro-Muslim homosexual Muslim! I shall soon be writing in detail about the politics here in Geneva town.
I HAVE NOW WRITTEN THE FOLLOW UP BLOG TO THIS-and it is a necessary read, in order to understand this-please comment at "There are no direct flights from Tel Aviv to Tehran"
