Another day, another tongue lashing from Anne Bayefsky. Bayefsky, the director of the Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust at Touro College, has become a Jewish gadfly here in Geneva, as speechifying diplomats wrapped the first week of a two-week “preparatory” session for the 2009 World Conference Against Racism. A common theme here is for Arab, Islamic and African nations to they’re racist, then point their fingers at Israel for racism. So for a fourth straight day, Bayfesky weighed in. “I wasn’t planning to say anything,” she said, after singling out Iran, Syria, Senegal and Algeria for hypocrisy. “But their words strained credulity, so I couldn’t let it go unanswered.” She’s become such an irritant for Arab anti-Israel sentiment that the Egyptian ambassador couldn’t help but express his frustration with her on Thursday. “This has become a daily show,” he said, “and we are sick and tired of it.”
While Israel boycotts the forum because of its distinctly anti-Israel vibe, one quasi-Israeli mills about – “kind of undercover,” as he puts it. Khazriel Ben Yehuda isn’t actually a citizen, but a permanent resident of Israel for 30 years. You wouldn’t guess it from his dapper African-looking garb. Ben Yehuda hails from Israel’s small Black Israelite community. “I don’t really announce I’m from Israel, like a Malian wouldn’t announce ‘I’m from Mali!,'” says Ben Yehuda, who spoke on behalf of the African Hebrew Israelite Development Agency, based in Ghana and in his Israeli hometown of Dimona. Still, he sees the forum like an Israeli would: “When you get down to it, the Arab and Islamic countries tend to dominate.”
