Sitting at the Conference floor of the United Nations on Monday I was overwhelmed. I watched in utter disbelief as the High Commissioner introduced the President of Iran amidst strange excitement and anticipation among the audience as he made his way to the podium. It was surreal. Of course I had expected to see him there and of course deeply skeptical as to what he might say. But to actually hear a head of state who denies the Holocaust and espouses racism actually addressing the United Nations - the purported bastion of human rights - seemed almost to be a sick joke.

Whilst I felt reassured and even proud, as I saw heads of delegations (including the UK) and their teams walk out of the Conference floor and people from the galleries jeering I still could not reconcile the deep feeling and burning question - how did it come to this?

When I returned from the Durban Conference in 2001, people referred to my experience as a ‘baptism of fire’. If I hadn’t somehow truly understood antisemitism, in all its guises before, I certainly did then. I had gone to Durban looking forward to the prospect of the world challenging racism together. I returned to the UK crestfallen at what had become a grotesque carnival of intimidation, hatred and overt antisemitism.

And here I was, again, eight years on - hopeful yet far more cynical at the prospect of a genuine attempt to deal with the tangible issues of racism and human rights around the world. It may be a slightly less rowdy environment here but the message seems to be the same - it’s okay to deny the Holocaust, attack Israel and equate Zionism with racism - in fact don’t say it on the streets, come and say it in the official forum of the United Nations, the UN anti-racism conference!

Matters didn’t get any better as the conference wore on, despite the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ initial regret for Ahmadinejad’s hateful diatribe. At a special forum held mid-week for all NGOs, I had the opportunity, as a representative of British Jewry, to ask High Commissioner Navanethem Pillay what lessons were learned, given the regrettable events surrounding the President of Iran. While I had no illusions that she might openly apologise for having allowed Ahmadinejad to speak, I was nevertheless stunned to hear not a single - even diplomatic - reference to public displays of racism, antisemitism or even prejudice. What I got instead was a curt response - to rounds of applause - on how the walkout created a “vacuum”, preventing those who had left the room from “staying and engaging” with the substance of Ahmadinejad’s speech!

Durban II should have lit a beacon of hope to all those around the world suffering from the injustices of racism and discrimination. Instead it was hijacked by a Holocaust denier whose sole intent was to fire provocative and inflammatory barbs at world Jewry. The clowns didn’t make a mockery of this process, the UN did.

The walkout of diplomats during Ahmadinejad’s speech made a necessary statement and was rightly applauded. Besides being an affront to decency, his words proved an almost fatal distraction from the work that Geneva was supposed to be hosting; challenging the spectre of racism, antisemitism and xenophobia.