It’s been 15 years since the infamous United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, known as Durban I, was held in the South African beach resort city of Durban from Aug. 31 to Sept. 8, 2001. It was chaired by then South African Foreign Minister Jacob Zuma, the country’s current president.
If any gathering of politicians, activists, propagandists, and others can be called a “game changer,” this certainly was one. Its impact has been deep and long-lasting, especially for Israel, which bore the lion’s share of criticism.
The UN General Assembly had authorized the conference in Resolution 52/111 in 1997, aiming to explore methods to eradicate racial discrimination and to promote awareness in the global struggle against intolerance.
Yet its goals were undermined by anti-Jewish rhetoric and anti-Israel political agendas, prompting both Israel and the United States to withdraw their delegations. Participants revived the charge that “Zionism is a form of racism,” and used other hostile allegations to delegitimize Israel.
Copies of the antisemitic work, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, were sold on conference grounds. Anti-Israel protesters jeered participants, chanting “You have Palestinian blood on your hands.” Fliers depicting Adolf Hitler with the question, “What if I had won?” circulated among conference attendees.
Durban simultaneously hosted a UN conference of 3,000 non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In this forum, the Jewish Caucus proposed that Holocaust denial and anti-Jewish violence caused by Jewish support for Israel be labelled forms of antisemitism. The proposal was almost unanimously defeated.
Anne Bayefsky, a representative of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, commented, “The only group that voted for it was the Jews.”
The Anti-Defamation League delegation led Jewish delegates in a chant of “shame, shame, shame,” and the Jewish Caucus walked out.
The final resolution of the NGO conference, which was overwhelmingly adopted, called Israel “a racist apartheid state” guilty of the “systematic perpetration of racist crimes, including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing” against the Palestinian people.
It called for the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes, and the full cessation of all links between all states and Israel.
Former U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos said that “much of the responsibility for the debacle rests on the shoulders of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who, in her role as secretary-general of the conference, failed to provide the leadership needed to keep the conference on track.”
She herself later admitted that “there was horrible antisemitism present.” A number of people had told her that they had “never been so hurt or so harassed.”
The follow-up Durban Review Conference, known as Durban II, was held April 20-24, 2009, in Geneva, under the mandate of the UN General Assembly resolution 61/149, passed in 2006, to review the implementation of the program of action that was adopted in 2001.
The conference, attended by delegates from 141 countries, was chaired by Najat Al-Hajjaji, representing Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya.
However, it was boycotted by Western countries such as Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Poland, along with – of course – Israel. Most other European Union countries sent low-level delegations.
The Western countries had expressed concerns that the conference would be used to promote antisemitism and laws against blasphemy perceived as contrary to the principles of free speech.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated that it was clear that the conference would be used to “scapegoat the Jewish people.” U.S. President Barack Obama contended that it risked a reprise of Durban I, “which became a session through which folks expressed antagonism toward Israel in ways that were often times completely hypocritical and counter-productive.”
Indeed, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the only head of state to attend, stated that Western nations were refusing to participate because “Zionists control an important part of the politics in the U.S. and Europe and used this influence, especially in the media, to force their demands, which are nothing more than the plundering of nations, onto the world.”
At the conference, he made a speech condemning Israel as “totally racist” and accusing the West of using the Holocaust, which he considered open to “question,” as a “pretext” for aggression against Palestinians.
Durban III, another follow-up conference, took place on Sept. 22, 2011 in New York, and was again boycotted by the aforementioned countries, as well as Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, and the United Kingdom. Ahmadinejad was again one of the participants.
A counter-conference, “The Perils of Global Intolerance: the United Nations and Durban III,” took place, organized by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and Anne Bayefsky.
She asserted that the original Durban Conference “legitimized hate speech on a global scale” and that the counter-summit would “deny legitimacy to prejudice and the Durban Declaration.” As well, she criticized the timing and location of the conference, being held several days after the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, as pouring salt in the wounds “of still grieving Americans.”
As Gerald Steinberg, the president of NGO Monitor and professor of political studies at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, recently wrote, Durban “has served as a blueprint for the well-financed NGO network that aims to demonize and isolate Israel internationally.
“Durban marked a turning point with the emergence of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaigns, which are rooted in the strategy set out in the NGO Forum’s Final Declaration.”
Supported by more and more academics, writers, human rights advocates, and students, the BDS movement, organized in July 2005 by over 170 Palestinian NGOs, now poses a growing threat to Israel, with its very legitimacy as a state now under assault.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
