The Day In Israel: Mon Apr 20th, 2009

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Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is expected to remove Ofer Dekel as special negotiator for bringing back Gilad Shalit, and will reportedly appoint a new negotiating team, amid reports that the Shalit family told Netanyahu they had lost faith in Dekel.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

11:25PM: Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz has defended his meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying “Switzerland is neutral and not part of any alliance.”

You know, being neutral can at times be immoral. This is one of those times.

Here’s hoping Merz gets a really sore arse from sitting on the fence.

10:40PM: You can’t make stuff like this up: Unless your an Iranian News Agency. Then you can.

Here’s the Fars News version of what happened today at the UN Conference on Racism:

Urgent:

Durban Conf. Participants Defuse Plot against Iranian President

TEHRAN (FNA)- Thousands of participants at the Durban Review Conference in Geneva on Monday defused a plot by the Zionist lobbies to insult Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and heckle his inaugural address to the conference.

As the Iranian president was delivering a speech to the conference, a participant sought to insult him by throwing an object to his face, but over 4500 representatives of the NGOs and human rights activists attending the convention asked the Iranian president to continue his address and gave him repeated applause.

“I demand all participants to forgive them. They are uninformed people,” Ahmadinejad said before going on with his speech.

Following the incident, a minority of representatives from 23 organizations and states left the hall in protest of Ahmadinejad’s speech. But thousands of others, including the United Nations representatives remained in the hall as Ahmadinejad continued, calling Israel a cruel and racist state and accusing Zionists of using the Holocaust as an excuse to steal Arab land.

Ahmadinejad also called Zionism a form of racism.

Those who remained in the hall expressed support for Ahmadinejad’s ideas all throughout the speech.

10:30PM: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is shocked that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would cynically manipulate the anti-racism conference in Geneva.

“I deplore the use of this platform by the Iranian president to accuse, divide and even incite. This is the opposite of what this Conference seeks to achieve. This makes it significantly more difficult to build constructive solutions to the very real problem of racism,” the statement read.

“It is deeply regrettable that my plea to look to the future of unity was not heeded by the Iranian president. At my earlier meeting with him, I stressed the importance of the Conference to galvanize the will of the international community toward the common cause of the fight against racism,” it continued.

Yes, Moon actually thought Ahmadinejad would heed his calls.

I think the world should take note, especially when considering Iran’s march towards nuclear weapons. Trying to reason with Ahamadinejad and the Mullahs is not going to work.

8:18PM: By the way, tomorrow is Holocaust Remembrance Day (with some activities tonight). And as Shy Guy points out, today was Hitler’s birthday. So there is something quite eery about Ahmadinejad being given center stage today.

8:13PM: Roger Simon posts about his close encounter of the turd kind:

Ahmadinejad is staying in my hotel.

No, really.

I had no idea this would happen, but (name-dropping alert) I was standing with Alan Dershowitz and his wife Caroline and author Shelby Steele in our Geneva hotel lobby, exchanging pre-dinner pleasantries – if such a word is even vaguely apropos at the Durban Review Conference – speculating on the days to come, when we noticed a number of what could only be Iranian security people milling about. (They weren’t hard to spot. They wore Iranian flag lapel pins.) Alan wandered over and engaged them in conversation. He was a Harvard professor, he told them, and offered them his card, noting that their President had already spoken at Columbia and that he might be interested in a “debate” (as if) at Harvard.

Some Swiss security people suddenly materialized. They didn’t seem to like Alan’s fraternizing and started edging us all backwards. There were sirens, the sound of motorcycles. It was clear who was arriving. We were pushed further back by the security types who were turning stern and warned us not to take pictures, to put our cell phones away. Momentarily the motorcade pulled up, about forty men getting out, all Iranian, flanking the relatively diminutive Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Yes, it was he, walking into the hotel – with his posse.

He crossed not ten feet away from me, smiling and waving to the sixty or seventy people in the lobby. As far as I could tell, no one waved back.   But I can tell you that being up close and relatively personal with Ahmadinejad is not a pleasant experience, far from it. It’s not like seeing a normal political adversary, someone from the other political party or whatever. It’s rather like being in the presence of pure evil, at least it was for me, or what I imagine that to be. Pure evil come to address a human rights convention! I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach. I also felt nauseated.

Ahmadinejad and his entourage passed by quickly into the elevators. He was giving some kind of press conference. We weren’t invited. But this didn’t stop Dershowitz who wanted to confront the man. He headed up after him.

I’m not sure what happened next, but fairly soon the largest Swiss government security guy was muscling, well not quite muscling but lightly pushing, Alan out the front door of the hotel where we were all staying. I followed along with the others and took a few iPhone photographs of the ensuing confrontation. It was tense, but didn’t get truly out of line.  Tomorrow I will interview Dershowitz about this.  We will also be at Ahmadinejad’s speech and other events, including his main press conference, after which Dershowitz, Steele, Jon Voight and others will comment.  Ahmadinejad dominating the UN’s biggest human rights conference in beyond Orwellian. No wonder I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach.

6:48PM: Here is video of Ahmadinejad’s rant, including the delegate walkout and attack of the clown.

5:40PM: Believe it or not: the wigged protesters were French students (since this post, it was reported they were French Jewish students. So nothing unbelievable there).

5:35PM: According to this report, there were homemade projectiles involved.

A wigged protester shouting “Racist! racist!” threw a soft red object at Ahmadinejad, hitting the podium and interrupting his speech.

Which begs the question: why did it have to be soft?

5:00PM: More on Ahmadinejad’s speech and delegate walkout:

Dozens of delegates walked out of the chamber as Ahmadinejad accused Israel and the West of making “an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering … in order to establish a totally racist government.”

He said Zionism, the Jewish national movement, “personifies racism,” and accused Zionists of wielding economic and political resources to silence opponents. He also blasted the United States-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Protesters in brightly colored wigs interrupted Ahmadinejad as he began to speak, shouting: “You’re a racist!” in accented English.

But some delegates cheered, while security officers dragged at least two protesters from the chamber.

4:55PM: The delegates of 23 nations participating in the UN racism conference in Geneva walked out during the keynote speech delivered by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as he began attacking Israel as a racist nation.

In addition, a man in a multi-colored clown wig stood up from the crowd and yelled at him as he took the podium.

3:05PM: And now for some Durban II news:

  • Not on our Swatch: Israel has recalled her Ambassador in Switzerland in protest of the Swiss President’s meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
  • The Dersh has been hauled away from the Geneva hotel where Ahmadinejad and the Swiss President were meeting, after he declared plans to challenge Gorilla Boy about his views on the Holocaust and Israel.
  • Israel is organizing demonstrations during Gorilla Boy’s speech, and will distribute materials on human rights violations in Iran, with the assistance of  actor Jon Voight!
  • Israeli President Shimon Peres said “I feel disgraced that a racist conference is opening in Geneva on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, with Ahmadinejad as guest of honor” and “There must be a limit to Switzerland’s neutrality.” Touche.

10:08AM: Further to the previous update, it looks like Hizbullah found case #4 for lying:

The leaders of the Hizbullah cell seized in Egypt recruited activists by misleading them into believing that they would be working for the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades  – Fatah’s military wing, the London-based Arabic-language al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper reported Monday, quoting sources involved in the Cairo investigation.

The sources told the paper that the leaders of the Hizbullah organization in Egypt told the activists they were being recruited by the Palestinian group in order to ease their mobilization.

5:45AM: Here is a Hamashole explaining when Islam permits lying.

I’m guessing case #2 gets used a hell of a lot by Hamas, judging by the photos I have seen.

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