This conference is taking place on multiple levels. There are diplomats meeting behind closed doors; NGOs meeting in the lounge; large scale formal gatherings in the main room; and rallies outside its gates. And then there is the international media coverage which may define the story in the end. Further, there are thousands of people here, all with different agendas. How you turn all of this chaos into a coherent narrative depends, in part, on how you define power.

News accounts suggest the Israeli leaders are thrilled with how the conference has turned out, meaning they are happy that Ahmadinejad effectively delegitimized the proceedings.  They needed him. I overheard a low level Palestinian diplomat say, on the other hand, that he is tired, angry, frustrated and pissed off. An Arab Israeli NGO delegate told me, “The Palestinian delegation gave up everything. They let them take every word about Israel and occupation out of the final outcome document, and they got absolutely nothing in return.”

Meanwhile, Eye on the UN’s Anne Bayefsky and company (sponsors of the Alan Dershowitz session) continue to make Israel the victims. It’s an amazing magic trick. Thousands of Gazans are either dead or hospitalized after this January’s war, but Israel, and we Jews, are the only victims that matter here.

Coming here myself has made me distrust virtually all reporting of Durban I. Already, I see terms in the media like “hate-fest” and ” the “racist anti-racism conference.” A journalist friend noted that at a press conference she attended, all of the reporters were asked questions from the right wing Israel Lobby talking points. (There are NGO Monitor fact sheets all over the press rooms here.) I don’t doubt there was anti-Semitic literature and language at Durban I. But was it 90% of the conference, or .09%? I have no way to know. I do know, however, that yesterday’s Sharansky, Voight, Dershowitz session, supposedly on anti-Semitism, was a tour de force of insulting and demeaning anti-Muslim/Arab stereotyping and callousness, infused with Islamophobia, and that not one media account will ever call it what it is.

There’s simply no question that there are plenty of Arab and Muslim diplomats in particular who are more than happy to use their air time to go after Israel and ignore their own miserable human rights records. This is not news. And I’m sure that if you took enough time, you could find someone who supports Hamas, someone else who hates Jews, and someone else who hates women.

But where is the power? That, in some ways, is the only question that matters. And in the end, Israel continues to act with diplomatic impunity, thanks in large part to the US which protects it. That’s why a strong UN is a threat.

The United Nations is not a corporate entity. It is a place where every country has some voice, though some-like the United States and other Security Council members- have much much stronger voices than others. At a conference like this, the representatives of those countries, no matter how vile, stupid or cruel, get to speak. As Ijm Dike told me, “After Ahmadinejad  spoke, any leader of state could have gotten up and taken him to task, and then re-asserted the focus on the conference. I don’t understand why nobody did that. Besides, Obama keeps telling us you need to talk to your enemies. How does boycotting a conference, which is mostly about important work on racism around the world, further anything?”

It doesn’t.

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