United Nations Continues to Betray Its Mission

The United Nations, under the guise of a conference ostensibly devoted to combating racism, continues to abuse its role of promoting peace and tolerance among nations, by fostering the very intolerance it purports to be combating.

The UN has had a long history of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel activity. The Durban Conferences, the first of which was in 2001, have attempted to enshrine this bias in a sanctioned mandate of the international community.

As Anne Bayefsky, Senior Editor of Eye on the UN, writes of the first Durban Conference of 2001,

The Durban Conference provided rampant antisemitism with a global platform under UN auspices, in a conference allegedly against racism and xenophobia. It also revealed the malevolent antisemitism underlying the campaign to delegitimize the state of Israel.

Later, in describing Durban II, she writes,

Durban II, known officially as the Durban Review Conference, was held in Geneva in April 2009. It was headlined by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who saw the occasion as ideal for issuing another denial of the Holocaust and an endorsement of genocide against the Jewish state.

Finally, regarding Durban III, Bayefsky goes on to write,

By virtue of a 2010 General Assembly resolution, the purpose of Durban III is to celebrate a world conference that reveled in anti-Semitism and to adopt a final declaration that reaffirms the original Durban Declaration (and Programme of Action). That’s the Declaration supposedly to combat racism, xenophobia and related intolerance but that somehow manages to charge just one of the 192 UN members with racism, namely, Israel.

The rampant singling out of Israel for vilification and delegitimization, which Hillel Neuer of UN Watch identified before the Human Rights Council of the UN, has again been made evident through the Durban Conferences.

As Irwin Cotler, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada described in 2006, “Durban became the tipping point for the coalescence of a new, virulent, globalizing anti-Jewishness reminiscent of the atmospherics that pervaded Europe in the 1930s. In its lethal form, this animus finds expression as state-sanctioned genocidal anti-Semitism.”

And as Roberta Seid of StandWithUs wrote in 2008,

In Sept. 2001, the UN’s first conference to end world racism met in Durban, South Africa. Unfortunately, despite its idealistic agenda, the conference, and the attendant Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) meetings, quickly turned into an anti-Semitic, anti-Israel hate fest. Celebratory posters of Hitler were displayed. Jews were physically and verbally attacked and intimidated, and denied participation in various meetings…In a tragic paradox, the conference to end racism fomented and embraced one of the world’s oldest racisms—anti-Semitism. The late Congressman and Holocaust survivor Tom Lantos (D-CA) wrote that it was “the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I had seen since the Nazi period.” The United States and Israel walked out. The Durban Conference itself became synonymous with hate, Judeophobia and prejudice.

Six countires have now withdrawn their participation in Durban III. Canada, in November of 2010, was the first country to boycott the event, with Canadian Minister Jason Kenney stating that “Canada will not participate in this charade. We will not lend our good name to this Durban hate fest. Canada is clearly committed to the fight against racism, but the Durban process commemorates an agenda that actually promotes racism rather than combats it.”

Israel was the next country to pull out of the conference in December of 2010.

The United States cancelled its participation in Durban III with a statement issued in June 2011 by the US State Department:

The United States will not participate in the Durban Commemoration. In December, we voted against the resolution establishing this event because the Durban process included ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism, and we did not want to see that commemorated.

In 2009, after working to try to achieve a positive, constructive outcome in the Durban Review Conference, we withdrew from participating because the conference reaffirmed the original 2001 Durban Declaration, which unfairly singled out Israel.

The Czech Republic announced this month of July 2011 that it was pulling out of Durban III, concerned about the “unacceptable statements with anti-Jewish connotations” that would ensue.

Italy has also now withdrawn from the conference, with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini announcing that Italy would boycott the Durban III Conference to be held in September due to its anti-Israeli nature. The Netherlands announced its withdrawal from Durban III, with the foreign minister citing that there are countries who use the conference for anti-Israel propaganda and for denying Israel’s right to exist.

The institutionalized pattern of anti-Israel bias at the UN, and the singular vilification of Israel that has been the hallmark of these Durban Conferences, have been made evident once again, as these countries boycotting Durban III affirm.