My writing in regard to this is granted a bit late, however still very relevant. As you are all aware, there was a UN Summit to fight racism held in Geneva on the 20th of April. In this summit, President Ahmadinejad of Iran begun to make a speech shortly after being disturbed by a couple of protesters. As he continued through the speech, accusing racism on the part of Israel, and accusing the west of supporting Israel’s racist policies, British and EU officials decided to walk out of the conference, instead of staying there and making a counter statement against Ahmadinejad’s.
The video below shows the beginning of Ahmadinejad’s speech, and the walkout.
Following the walkout, BBC journalist Jeremy Paxman interviewed Peter Gooderham about the walkout. The video is below, which is strangely now no longer available on the biased BBC. I hope you enjoyed the video as much as I did.
From what I can gather from this video, Gooderham didn’t really have a “distinction” between Zionism and racism. In case you struggled to hear what Paxman had quietly mumbled while Gooderham was attempting to explain this distinction I have typed it up below:
Peter Gooderham: Well Zionism is a political movement related to the establishment of a homeland…
Jeremy Paxman: So are some forms of racism.
As for what Ahmadinejad had to say, I agree with most of it. Israel was formed as a result of the suffering of the Jewish people, at the expense of the Palestinian people. And before cries of anti-Semitism reach me, at no point did Ahmadinejad refer to Judaism other than the suffering of Jews, merely Israel.
I have included the full-text speech transcript of Ahmadinejad, kindly borrowed from Palestine Think Tank. Click on the “Continue Reading…” link to read this. You will also find the full video of the translated speech as soon as I am done converting it so it can be viewed on the web. Enjoy.