It's my birthday and I'm officially bored at work. My supervisor is in a meeting and I've completed all the work that I was supposed to, so now I'm just aimlessly cruising for things to do. I've asked everyone else in the office if they need help, but they don't. So, here I sit. I am going for lunch with my dad though which should be fun. Although that will probably be exactly when my supervisor gets out of his meeting so he can actually give me something to do... go figure.

Anyway, about my struggle with anti-semitism. I was listening to Robert Enright yesterday morning on CBC and they were having a panel discussion on the current level of anti-semitism in the world as well as the current awareness of Jewish issues. They bantered back and forth about the current level of persecution and many of them seemed to be arguing that anti-semitism was on the rise and many of them warned about the possibility for a future holocaust. What bothered me was that they were suggesting that they find it difficult to discuss Jewish issues in their social circles for fear of rebuke. However, the only issue that they seemed to suggest was contentious was the battle in Israel. As an individual who has difficulty supporting the current Israeli position on Middle East Peace, and as someone who feels that the human rights of Palestinians have been abused, am I automatically an anti-Semite?

One commentator mentioned the UN Conference on Racism in Durban where she said Israel was "singled out" and that if the highest body on human rights can't protect Jews, who can? First off, the UN Conference assembled a long list of human rights violations around the world and was looking to include Israel's disrespect for Palestinian human rights. The reason they were "singled out" is that Israel didn't agree with this nor did many of its allies. Additionally, the commentator's suggestion that the UN conference was "anti-semitic" because it was "anti-Israel" or even "anti-Israeli conduct against Palestine" seems a stretch. So, anyway, I'm going to go on thinking about this and working towards a greater understands of Jewish issues...