UNreconstructed

Today the United Nations convened a conference on “Confronting Anti-Semitism: Education for Tolerance and Understanding,” sponsored by the UN Department of Information. The conference was the subject of Melissa Radler’s Jerusalem Post article: “UN to hold first-ever conference on anti-Semitism.”
From the Jerusalem Post article we learn today’s conference is scheduled to be the first of a series of “unlearning intolerance” conferences, that the next “unlearning intolerance conference” would apparently be on the subject of the great worldwide threat of Islamophobia, and that the chief self-advertised credential of Shashi Tharoor, the anti-Semitism conference’s convener, is that his first girlfriend was a Jew. I have held out little hope for the conference.
Despite my misgivings, one inarguably good thing has come out of the conference — today’s speech at the conference by Anne Bayefsky: “One small step.” (Courtesy of Armavirumque.) See also the Reuters report on today’s proceedings: “Annan sees ‘alarming resurgence’ of anti-Semitism.”