The United States has failed to persuade the organizers of the UN anti-racism conference, to be convened in South Africa at the end of this month, to delete two issues from its agenda - reparations for the crime of slavery and defining Zionism as a form of racism.
Now that the US has expressed its disappointment that its proposal was not accepted, the probability is that Washington will not attend the conference. It will not be the first time for the US to boycott anti-racism meets, though. It had not attended the two previous conferences held in Geneva in 1978 and 1983.
The United States was extremely upset about the insistence by African nations that slavery should be in the agenda. Adding to its displeasure was the demand by Arab countries that Zionism should be included in the list of racist movements to be discussed by the conference.
Of course, there is no mystery why it does not want slavery to be discussed at a UN conference. Those who suffered under the system, African representatives in particular, have made it clear that they would try to have the conference name the nations and powers responsible for the crime and demand apologies and reparations from them. Such a discussion, Washington rightly fears, will lay open for all to see and demand an accounting for, a disgraceful chapter in American history.
It is a fact of history that America was built with the blood of imported slaves. In the heyday of the trade, there were 400 firms engaged in large-scale slave-running operations. Twelve hundred ships, owned and operated by them, were in year-round service engaged in the lucrative business. There were also several hundred European firms and ships engaged in the transport of “free” human beings as slaves from Africa to the New Continent.
A newly published American book, “Colossus: How The Corporation Changed America”, indicates that, as of the beginning of the 19th century, there were already nearly 3 million slaves captured, handled and transported by these firms. This, of course, is the number of the slaves who reached America and does not include the millions who died in ships - of hunger and thirst, or as a result of such “disciplinary” actions as torture or being thrown overboard to end up as fish bait.
Obviously, the US objection to the conference discussing slavery has the purpose of avoiding payment of compensations. However, it has put a respectable spin on it: its conviction, it explained, is that the aim of the conference should be not to waste time on the past, but to focus on the ways to eliminate all forms of racism in the future.
This is what one could call a classic case of double standard. The United States has dedicated itself to go into every minute detail of the Jews’ past and is leading the fight for collecting for Israel compensations for what the “racist” Nazis did to them - in the past. But when it is suggested that the same Nazi crimes, even when practiced by the Zionists on Palestinians, are racist, America finds it offensive, and refuses to attend an international conference. No one in the world needs any evidence to prove that Zionism is a racist movement; the whole world is witness to Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.
Of course, no one needs to prove America’s double standards anew. An everyday example is its definition of terrorism. If an Arab or Muslim commits an individual act of violence, it is Arab and Islamic “terrorism”; when Israel sends gunships, tanks and artillery to assassinate, demolish or occupy, America cannot remember that word.
If that is not hypocrisy, what is?