An international disgrace

Tuesday, April 21, 2009 | 2:08 a.m.

By being the only head of state to show up to the United Nations conference on racism, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got to speak first. Not surprisingly, he led off with his own racist, anti-Semitic views.

Ahmadinejad blasted Europe and the United States for working to create Israel after World War II, and he called Israel “the most cruel, repressive and racist regime in Palestine.” He said the Holocaust was merely a “pretext of Jewish suffering” to allow for the creation of the Jewish state.

A group of European diplomats rightly walked out as Ahmadinejad spoke. (They reentered after the speech to work on the conference’s stated goal — condemning racism and encouraging governments to work against it.)

What a disgrace, particularly considering that Ahmadinejad spoke on the eve of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. secretary-general, said he met with Ahmadinejad the day before to discuss the speech, and Ban said he counseled the Iranian president not to use his speech “to accuse, divide and even incite” conference attendees. After the speech, Ban expressed outrage, but what did he expect?

Ahmadinejad is a notorious Holocaust denier and has called for Israel to be wiped off the face of the earth. In its purported fight against racism, the U.N. doesn’t seem to be terribly serious about addressing anti-Semitism.

The United States and Israel walked out of the last U.N. conference on racism eight years ago after attempts to link Israel with racism. The United States, Israel and several other countries boycotted this meeting.

Navi Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner on human rights, had the audacity to bash the countries that boycotted, essentially minimizing the vileness of anti-Semitism and the very real threat that such racism poses to Israel and Jews everywhere.

This is deplorable. If the U.N. truly wants to fight racism, it should first clean up its own house and not let racists set the tenor of such meetings.