Praise for Ahmadinejad's Racist Regime Comments

Comment pieces in the Syrian media argued this week that the European representatives who walked out in protest at comments by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the Durban II conference did not really believe in democracy or human rights.



In his remarks last week at the opening of the conference on racism, held in Geneva, Ahmadinejad labelled the Israeli government “the most cruel and repressive racist regime”.



He accused the western world of “sending migrants from Europe and the United States in order to establish a racist government in occupied Palestine”.



Twenty-three European Union delegations, as well as that of Morocco, walked out in protest.



Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Muallem, however, praised Ahmadinejad’s comments at a press conference afterwards, claiming, “A large proportion of public opinion in the Arab world supports the Iranian president’s words.”



In an April 22 article in the official newspaper Al-Thawra, columnist Ali Qasem said the walkout showed that European countries refused to tolerate legitimate criticism of Israel.



Meanwhile, in an opinion article in the pro-government newspaper Al-Watan, Muhammad Kafina wondered whether delegates would have behaved similarly if the comments had been about Palestinians rather than Israelis.



In the same newspaper, columnist Ghassan Ramdan wrote that he was happy to see so many countries display their pro-Israel bias so publicly.



“They can no longer claim to be tolerant. The hypocrisy is now documented.”