DURBAN - At the last major UN parley - exactly a year ago in New York at the Millennium Conference - then prime minister Ehud Barak was one of the darlings of the party.

It was just a month after Camp David, and though the summit failed, Barak - to the world - srnelled sweet because he was willing to offer so much for peace.

The Palestinian-initiated violence was still a few weeks away, and Israel basked in the glow of the Oslo process as one of the world's peace-yearning nations.

No one then spoke of Israel as a country committing genocide, or practising apartheid, or racism, or ethnic cleansing. Israel was welcome.

At that conference, Barak was wont to tell Israeli journalists - as he told the nation on many occasions after Camp David - that if the gamble succeeded, then the nation would have peace and security; and that if it failed, at least the world would see who was responsible, and would draw the proper conclusions.

We all saw in the last two weeks in Durban the conclusions the world has drawn. Regardless of the final resolutions drawn up at the laughably named World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophopia, and Related Intolerance, whether the conference does or does not refer to the Palestinian right of return or come out against Israeli occupation, the sweet-smelling air of that coastal town was poisoned.

It was poisoned to the point where a journalist from the official Jordanian news agency, Petra, told an Israeli "colleague" that "in the end you will all be forced to go back to the countries you came from."

It was poisoned to the point where some of the kippa-wearing Jews at the anti-racism conference preferred to wear hats to cover their kippot, for fear that they, identified as Jews, would be the victims of racism.

It was poisoned to the point where it seemed almost, every other speaker who took the plenum whether from Asia, Africa, or South America, had something nasty say about Israel.

Barak promised that if Palestinians rejected his offer, started violence, the world would see who was to blame. Durban thrust the point home again that, when it comes to the Jews, most of the world - with the noble exception of the US - is hypocritical cowardly, and blind. But a mere 60 years after the Holocaust, should this really come as much of a surprise?

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