Meeting Prompts Fears of Another Durban

Michael J. Jordan
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia

The run-up to a major U.N. anti-racism conference planned for April appears to be mimicking the 2001 Durban gathering that notoriously singled out Israel with the most-incendiary language in the human-rights lexicon.

At a meeting last month in Geneva, the "Asian Group" reintroduced language drawn from 2001 pressing for any final document to pronounce the Jewish state guilty of "a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity, a form of genocide" and "acts of racism." The group's Middle Eastern member-states bar Israel from joining.

This week also brought renewed concern of a repeat of the anti-Jewish intimidation that marked the South African event seven years ago.

The developments are confirming fears by Jewish activists that, despite platitudes to the contrary, the follow-up to the first anti-racism conference will unfairly target Israel.

The 2009 World Conference Against Racism, slated to take place in Geneva, is billed as another landmark event, the most important such gathering in years and one that advocates say must send a tough message to human-rights abusers.

Concerned about the direction the conference was headed, Israel and Canada already have vowed not to participate. The United States is still seen as on the fence about its participation.

Many observers were looking to the European Union, which in September reiterated the "red lines" to avoid repetition of Durban 2001: no singling out of any state; no hierarchy of victims; and no outlawing or defamation of religions, which many see as infringing on free speech.

But after the preparatory conference, "the red lines aren't breached, they're shattered," said Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based group affiliated with the American Jewish Committee.

While some defenders of Israel tend to be dismissive of the world body as hopelessly biased against the Jewish state, conferences such as the April 2009 meeting produce nonbinding documents that, when cited and repeated, often can become building blocks for international law. At the very least, they fuel anti-Israel propaganda that helps shape the opinion of millions worldwide.

That explains why events at Geneva sparked alarm.

Beyond the inflammatory text, dozens of nongovernmental organizations hostile to Israel unveiled their campaign for another "NGO Forum," just before or alongside the official diplomatic gathering.

It was the 2001 NGO forum in Durban that enshrined the most extreme anti-Israel language in its final document. It also launched the boycott and divestment campaign that likened Israel to apartheid and is pursued today by many pro-Palestinian groups worldwide.

With Libya chairing the entire process, and Iran, Cuba and Pakistan serving as vice chairs, Jewish observers say it has become clear the Islamic bloc and its allies from the developing world have widened the crosshairs to target the West itself. High on the agenda is rising Islamophobia, denunciation of post-9/11 profiling of possible terrorists as inherently racist, and steps to ban "defamation of religions" like Islam -- known historically as blasphemy.

In a report issued this week, U.N. Watch went so far as to declare that "the aggressive campaign to impose a new regime of global censorship, dictated by Islamic sensitivities, makes the Durban II language even worse than that of the original conference in 2001."

A key question now, said Neuer and others, is if the Europeans -- led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who holds the E.U.'s rotating chair until Jan. 1 -- will abandon the conference, harpooning its credibility.