An Op-ed piece in the local paper today, someone was bitching about the UN seminar on anti-semitism. Was he bitching about having the seminar? Hell no, he was bitching because after 6 decades of UN existence, they are just now getting around to the issue.

Huh?! Why do we need a UN seminar on the issue at all? To tell people that hating others is wrong? We don't need a seminar for that.

Hating other people is wrong!! Any sensible person knows that this is a sound doctrine to live by. What possible good is it going to do to have the UN discuss it?!

From the article, "All in all, you might think, a typical U.N. program - one of scores of gatherings the world body hosts each year on a wide array of human rights issues.

The anti-Semitic hatred and violence seething in so much of the world are a grave international problem, so it stands to reason the United Nations would make it the focus of regular and serious attention."

I don't understand how this is a grave international problem. It is a problem when one group of people hates another, sure, but is a 'UN seminar' going to change any minds? Seriously. The politically correct thing to say, if you are the average person on the street being asked this question is, "It should change people's minds." We would hope it would, but just as telling a terrorist that the chances of a 'nobody' becoming an influential martyr with suicidal massacre is nil, so too will the haters turn a deaf ear to any such advice. If anything it hardens their convictions.

"When it (the UN) adopted an international convention against racial discrimination, it refused to include a reference to anti-Semitism."

Isn't racial discrimination enough? Why is it some of the Jewish community feel they deserve special recognition? I can hear the answer to this one, "We can't let people forget the holocaust!!" Why not? Did the memory stop what happened in Kosovo? Iraq? What happens every day in parts of Africa and South America? Fuck no!! They don't give two shits! People in power are going to commit atrocities if they are so inclined, no matter what history tells us. Sure, we condemn the persecution of the Jewish community in Germany, but it's a given that it's contemptible to act in such a way toward anyone.