More Tone-Deafness From the Judenhass Confab

First we were told it was being held behind closed doors (a nod to the myth that the Jews are conspiring in secret). Next we learned that the conference had come up with a "Protocol" (a la that Czarist forgery purporting to be the minutes of a secret meeting of a bunch of Jewish "Elders" who are conspiring to take over the world). Now, in a letter to the National Post, the confab's Australian delegate defends the hiddenness by mentioning "the rules" which purportedly make the secrecy kosher:

Re: 'The Oldest Hatred Behind Closed Doors,' Nov. 8.

I am member of the Australian Labour government and chair of the Australian Parliament's foreign affairs committee. I am also an international delegate at the 2010 ICCA Conference of Combatting Anti-Semitism, which is being held in the Canadian Parliament.

The article wrongly claims that parliamentarians and experts from over 50 countries coming together to exchange information on traditional and new forms of the "oldest bigotry" is some kind of secret meeting.

I have discussed with the organizers of the conference and established that it is open to the media for interviews with participants and all of the plenary sessions are open. On the first day, working groups were held under Chatham House rules to encourage unfettered debate amongst MPs and experts. The recommendations of the working groups are being made public at the conference's end.

Canadians can be proud that their country is hosting a conference with over 150 MPs from around the world, including many prominent non-Jewish MPs and includes the imam who is president of the All India Organization of Imams of Mosques. Canada has provided a valuable public platform for people across the political spectrum, from across the world. Jews are often the canary at the bottom of the political coal mine and anti-Semitism can end up affecting the political health of all societies.

Michael Danby, Australian MP, currently in Ottawa.

To which Joseph Brean, the reporter who wrote the secrecy article responds:

Chatham House rules means a meeting is open, but the information discussed is not to be attributed to a person or organization. A journalist cannot observe these rules if they are barred from attending. Releasing recommendations at the end has nothing to do with it.

What the heck is Chatham House? David Pryce-Jones writes about it here. In essence, it is a highly influential think-tank--Historian Arnold Toynbee, who was in on the ground floor of Zionhass, being its most famous director--that, back in 1920s and 1930s, was extremely anti-Zionist and pro-Arab, and that is responsible in no small measure for the colonialism-imperialism-innate-nobility-of-the-Third-World bollocks that has infested academe and poisoned the minds of leftist elites. For an Anti-Semitism conference to resort to "Chatham House rules"--to even mention that loathsome enterprise as it goes about its business--is about as inappropriate as it gets.