Sorry for the short diary, but this is something that is occurring right now.
The President of Iran has lived up to his billing, spewing racism at a conference against racism. There can be no Jewish state according to the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Here is a link to the webcast: http://un.org/...
Here is part of a report from the BBC:
Diplomats have walked out of a speech by the Iranian president at a UN anti-racism conference after he described Israel as a "racist government".
. . .
Some of those who stayed clapped as Mr Ahmadinejad continued his speech.
The world can now see who are the real subjects of racism in today's world. The world according to Orwell.
Good for Obama to keep us away from the charade. Good for the Western Europeans to walk out.
From Haaretz:
Dozens of Western representatives at the UN-sponsored Durban II conference against racism walked out during Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's address to the forum on Monday.
The diplomats rose from their chairs and walked out of the hall in Geneva as Ahmadinejad launched a tirade against the Israeli government.
Now the President is rebuking the people who reacted to the words and asking them to keep a respectful atmosphere.
I wonder if the Western diplomats will return.
Now the Norwegian representative defends Ahmadinejad's right to expression, but calls it incitement to hatred.
UPDATE: Interesting that some must point out that the incitement to hate in Ahmadinejad's speech was not "racism" though, historically, the Jewish people have often been identified as a race, particularly by those with most animus toward them. And he was, after all, inciting hate in a conference about racism. Yet we need to have some nitpicking, as this is Daily Kos. So it goes.
UPDATE II: To continue in the vein of Update 1:
In the 1980s, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Jews are a race, at least for purposes of certain anti-discrimination laws. Their reasoning: at the time these laws were passed, people routinely spoke of the "Jewish race" or the "Italian race" as well as the "Negro race," so that is what the legislators intended to protect.
But many Jews were deeply offended by that decision, offended by any hint that Jews could be considered a race. The idea of Jews as a race brings to mind nightmarish visions of Nazi Germany, where Jews were declared to be not just a race, but an inferior race that had to be rounded up into ghettos and exterminated like vermin.
http://www.jewfaq.org/...
As a Jew, I don't consider it my race, but if others do, and they hate me as a result, they are racist.