Britain will not attend an event marking the tenth anniversary of a UN anti-racism conference, known as "Durban III" later this month in New York. In doing this, Britain joins the United States, Israel, Canada, Germany, Australia, Austria, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Italy and The Netherlands in their decision not to attend the conference. The conference was meant to combat global racism but it was reduced to an anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hate fest.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said "After careful consideration, I have decided that Britian will not attend the UN meeting in Durban which is supposed to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the World Conference on Racism.”
He added: "No one should be in any doubt: this government is one-hundred percent committed to tackling racism both at home and abroad. Ten years ago, the World Conference on Racism saw open displays of unpleasant and deplorable anti-Semitism. It would be wrong to commemorate those displays. Indeed, they should be condemned. And that's why the UK will play no part in this conference."
The First United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance met in Durban, South Africa from August 31 to September 8, 2001. Yet the noble goals of the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism were undermined by hateful anti-Jewish rhetoric and anti-Israel political agendas, prompting both Israel and the United States to withdraw their delegations from the conference. Participants revived the scurrilous charge that "Zionism is Racism" and used false and hostile allegations to delegitimize Israel.
The September 3 statement of withdrawal of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell read: Today I have instructed our representatives at the World Conference Against Racism to return home. I have taken this decision with regret, because of the importance of the international fight against racism and the contribution that the Conference could have made to it. But, following discussions today by our team in Durban and others who are working for a successful conference, I am convinced that will not be possible. I know that you do not combat racism by conferences that produce declarations containing hateful language, some of which is a throwback to the days of "Zionism equals racism;" or supports the idea that we have made too much of the Holocaust; or suggests that apartheid exists in Israel; or that singles out only one country in the world--Israel--for censure and abuse.
As described by one of the participants at Durban I, Irwin Cotler, Member of the Parliament and former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, and Professor of Law (Emeritus) at McGill University: “what happened at Durban was truly Orwellian: A conference purportedly organized to fight racism was turned into a festival of racism against Israel and the Jewish people. A conference intended to commemorate the dismantling of South Africa as an apartheid state resonated with spurious calls for the dismantling of Israel’s as an apartheid state. A conference dedicated to the promotion of human rights as the new secular religion of our time increasingly singled out Israel as a sort of modern-day geopolitical anti-Christ. HOW DID this happen?“
The World Conference Against Racism was organized around four regional conferences – in Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia. Each regional conference was to formulate a declaration against racism and a plan of action. Then the four regional declarations and plans of action were to be collated in Durban into a composite draft declaration against racism.
The problem originated with the Asian regional conference, held in Teheran in February, 2001. Although Israel belonged to the Asian group, the conference organizers excluded Israel and Jewish non-governmental organizations from participation. Contrary to the United Nations’ own principles with respect to universality and equality, a member state was made a pariah. The Teheran conference also supported a country-specific indictment of Israel, yet another breach of international human-rights principles and the UN’s own procedures in this regard.
The six-point indictment emanating from the Teheran regional conference, which became a dominant blueprint for Durban, has emerged as one of the more scurrilous documents relating to Israel and the Jewish people to appear since World War II.
The first specific indictment of Israel spoke of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as a “crime against humanity, as a new form of apartheid, as a threat to international peace and security.” While UN Security Council Resolution 1373, adopted in the aftermath of 9/11, would characterize terrorism itself as a threat to international peace and security – which no cause or grievance could ever justify – Teheran and later Durban would characterize terrorist acts against Israel as “resistance” to occupation, and since delegates at Durban saw “resistance” against apartheid states as eminently praiseworthy, Durban served to validate terrorist acts against Israel.
Second, Israel was accused of the “ethnic cleansing” of “Mandatory Arab Palestine” in 1947-48 – of being, in effect, an “original sin” in its very creation, though its international birth certificate was sanctioned by the UN Partition Resolution of 1947, which recommended the partition of then mandatory Palestine into two States – a Jewish State and an Arab State. The Jewish leadership accepted the Partition Resolution, while the Arab and Palestinian leadership rejected it, and launched, in their words, a “war of extermination” against the embryonic Israeli state.
Third, Israel was cast as being responsible for all the evils in the world, the “poisoner of the international wells,” the contemporary analogue to the medieval anti-Semitic libel. In this regard, the delegates at Teheran and Durban were very much taking their cues from the larger UN itself, where, on the occasion of the Teheran conference, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights condemned Israel – and Israel alone – for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Fourth, the documents emanating from Durban introduced a new perspective on the notion of “holocausts,” intentionally written in the plural and in lower case. A large number of states even sought to minimize or exclude any references to the Holocaust, or to marginalize and ignore anti-Semitism, while holding up Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as an example of a “real” holocaust. Zionism was characterized not only as “racism,” but as a violent expression of racist supremacy – indeed, as a form of anti-Semitism itself.
The hate literature distributed during the NGO conference included caricatures of Jews with hooked noses, Palestinian blood on their hands, surrounded by money, and Israelis wearing Nazi emblems. Copies of the anti-Semitic work, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, were sold on conference grounds At the Government Conference, and there was daily distribution by NGO participants of literature reading "Nazi-Israeli apartheid."
Meanwhile, outside the conference hall, as one delegate reported in the Los Angeles Times, he and other representatives of Jewish groups were subjected to taunts and physical intimidation. anti-Israel protesters jeered participants chanting "Zionism is racism, Israel is apartheid," and "You have Palestinian blood on your hands"; at one point, thousands of South African Muslim demonstrators marched bearing banners proclaiming "Hitler should have finished the job." Circulated among conference attendees were fliers depicting Hitler with the question, "What if I had won?," with the answer: "There would be NO Israel and NO Palestinian bloodshed."
Anne Bayefsky, a NGO participant, and a representative of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, reported, "Like all Jewish participants, I felt concern for my safety. The Jewish Center in Durban was forced to close because of threats of violence." During an NGO discussion on Palestinian issues, representatives of human rights organizations asked Bayefsky to leave: "They explained to me that as a representative of a Jewish organization, I was biased and couldn't be counted on to act in the interest of general human rights."
