I would like to kvetch about Durban II, the conference being held this week against racism around the world. The purpose of the conference is to provide follow-up to the Durban I conference held in 2001. This noble purpose, however, was torpedoed in 2001, and recently again on Monday, when Iran’s President Ahmadinejad presented a vitriolic speech condemning Israel with much of the same racist rhetoric that sank the viability of the Durban I conference. As a result, major players Britain and France joined 21 other nations in walking out of the room in protest. Other countries, including the United States, Italy, Israel and Canada boycotted the entire conference in response to a draft declaration that endorsed a conclusion of Durban I that equated Zionism with racism. The shenanigans and anti-Semitism of Ahmadinejad are holding up important work against racism. Not only are there bigger fish to fry then the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that conflict is not one rooted in racism.

Zionism is not racism. It has multiple meanings to many different people, and has also connoted different meanings at different times in its history. The most basic statement of Zionism would be this, “There should be a Jewish state.” That is what I believe. This statement does not imply anything about other peoples, religions or races. It does not even specify a particular place that state needs to be, although, of course, we all know that the place where it ended up is a rather contentious strip of land. The first Zionists even considered purchasing land in Africa, and who knows what that would have precipitated.

“Why must there be a Jewish state?” is the obvious question to the statement proffered. There must a Jewish state simply because of the fact that for two millennia Jews have been kicked around. Because they are such a small minority, less than 0.2 percent of the world population, it is politically disadvantageous for any government to look out for their well-being. It simply is not expedient for a politician to worry about the persecution of Jews in Africa if both that group in Africa and Jews voting in his country are miniscule in number. While certainly there are parts of the U.S. in which Jews are an important voting block, they still make up less than 2 percent of the U.S. population. In most countries, the population is small enough to always be ignored. Given that it is not reasonable to expect most politicians to look out for Jews, there should be just one state in the world that will — always and consistently, regardless of domestic politics. The only state that can guarantee that is a Jewish one.

But fundamentally, in order for an attitude to be racist there must be one race valued more than another race. The comparison of Israelis to Palestinians as a racist paradigm is flawed. It is apples to oranges. Israelis can be any religion or color — Israeli is merely a nationality. Jews are every color. In Israel there are Jews with origins in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Palestinian refers only to people who originate from a certain area, it says nothing about their religion or color. How, then, is Zionism racism if two people, similar in every way, are only dealt with differently based on what passport they carry? We do that in the U.S. when we go through Customs or apply for certain jobs. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a purely political one. While there are certainly religious issues that make the results of the process potent, it does not change the character of the situation to anything other than just political. It is just politics — tough, contentious and sometimes dirty politics. A discussion of Zionism has no place in Durban II.