4.2.12 WC: 191694 immediately called someone I knew in the Obama administration, who phoned the US Embassy in Geneva and I was allowed back in the hotel with an apology. The photograph of me being forcibly removed from the hotel was flashed around the world, with the following caption: “Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, is led away after declaring he planned to challenge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about his views on the Holocaust and Israel minutes before the meeting between Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz and the Iranian president in Geneva, Switzerland, on April 19, 2009.” The next day Ahmadinejad was scheduled to give his address to the Durban Conference. We were not allowed into the Chamber in which he was speaking, but were told to go to a special room where we could watch and listen to his talk. We assembled in that room and watched as Ahmadinejad was greeted with applause by many of the delegates. When he began to speak, we discovered that his words, delivered in Farsi, were not being translated to those of us in the separate room, but only to those in Assembly Chamber. This was not acceptable and so I marched to the Assembly Chamber and simply walked in. Several delegations were absent and so we simply took their seats. But not for long. As soon as Ahmadinejad denied the Holocaust, which he did near the beginning of his speech, I stood up and shouted “Shame” and walked out, passing directly in front of his lectern. Many others walked out as well, including several European delegations. Ahmadinejad’s talk was a fiasco, and was so reported by the media. He had made a fool of himself, with little help from us. The following year, the Durban Conference on human rights was once against convened, this time in New York. Once again, we convened parallel conferences. In my address, I made the following point: One important reason why there is no peace in the Middle East can be summarized tragically in two letters, UN. That building dedicated in theor