Durban 2 Hatefest

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A statement by Anne Bayefsky at the Third Substantive Preparatory Meeting of the Durban Review Conference.

April 17, 2009
United Nations, Palais des Nations, Geneva, Switzerland

The eyes of millions of victims of racism, xenophobia and intolerance are
upon YOU, the representatives of states and the United Nations. And instead
of hope you have given them despair. Instead of truth you have handed them
diplomatic double-talk. Instead of combating anti-Semitism you have handed
them a reason for Jews to fear UN-driven hatemongering on a global scale.

The Durban conference -- allegedly dedicated to combating racism,
anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance -- will open April 20th on the
anniversary of the birth of Adolf Hitler without agreement on even so much
as remembering the Holocaust and the war against the Jews. Your draft words
on the Holocaust -- the very foundation of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights -- have been narrowed to the barest mention from previous versions.
And if the minor reference survives at all -- it will be a testament to your
interest in Jews that died 60 years ago, while tolerating and encouraging
the murder of Jews in the here and now.

The face of modern anti-Semitism IS the UN.

Furthermore, the draft before you demonizes the Jewish state of Israel and
then has the audacity to pretend to care about anti-Semitism in a single word
buried among 17 pages. Anti-Semitism means discrimination against the Jewish
people. Since it is evident that almost none of you have the courage to say
it, the face of modern anti-Semitism IS the UN -- your -- discrimination
against Israel, the embodiment of the Jewish people's right to
self-determination.

Over and over again we have heard a massive misinformation campaign about
the content of these proceedings and the draft before you. We have heard the
tale that this draft does not single out Israel, that the hate has been
removed, that the fault of the anti-Semitism at Durban I was that of NGOs
while states and the UN were blameless.

Perhaps you think that journalists and victims will not bother to read for
themselves the Durban Declaration adopted by some governments. There is only
one state mentioned in it -- Israel. There is only one state associated with
racist practices in it -- Israel. And yet the very first thing that this
draft before you does is to reaffirm that abomination, abomination for Jews
and Arabs living in Israel's free and democratic society, and for all the
victims of racism ignored therein. Lawyers call it incorporation by
reference when they hope nobody reads the small print. The propaganda stops
here. We have read it. We understand the game. And we decry the ugly effort
to repeat the Durban agenda to isolate and defeat Israel politically, as
every effort to do so militarily for decades has failed.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Chair of this Preparatory
Committee also told us this week that the Durban Declaration in all its
aspects is a consensus text. Perhaps they are unfamiliar with the Canadian
reservations made in Durban in 2001 which state categorically that the
Middle East language was outside the conference's jurisdiction and not
agreed. Perhaps they failed to notice that one of the world's greatest
democracies, the United States, voted with its feet and walked out of the
Durban I hatefest. The Durban Declaration has never represented a global
consensus among free and democratic nations. When the head of the Islamic
conference treats Durban as a bible, in their words, it is more accurately a
defamation of religions.

This week you decided which states ought to serve in a leadership role at
next week's conference. Among them are some of the world's leading
practitioners of racism, not those interested in ending it. You have also
decided to hand a global megaphone to the President of a state which
advocates genocide and denies the Holocaust.

So in a state of shock and dismay we address ourselves not to the human
rights abusers that glorify the Durban Declaration or its next incarnation,
but to democracies -- and we ask: Will Germany sit on Hitler's birthday and
listen to the speech of an advocate of genocide against the Jewish people
and grant legitimacy to the forum which tolerates his presence? What about
the United Kingdom, the birthplace of the Magna Carta? Or France that helped
to ship last generation's Jews to crematoriums?

You could have fought racism. You chose instead to fight Jews. You could
have promoted the universal standards against racism already in existence.
You chose instead to diminish their importance in the name of alleged
cultural preferences. You could have protected freedom of expression. You
chose instead to undermine it by twisted concepts of incitement. You could
have brought victims of racism together in a common cause. You chose instead
to pit victims against each other in an ugly struggle for meager
recognition.

For those democracies that remain under these circumstances you
are ultimately responsible for what can only be called an appalling
disservice to real victims of racism, xenophobia and related intolerance
around the world.

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