Germany and Austria Join Boycott of UN’s Durban III Conference
A September 2, 2011, Jerusalem Post article reports that Germany has now pulled out of the Durban III conference, making it the ninth country to boycott this event. A spokesman from Germany’s Foreign Ministry announced that,
Germany “cannot rule out that the Durban commemoration event in New York will be misused for anti-Semitic statements, as was the case in previous conferences.”
The spokesman continued that “therefore Germany will not participate. This is an expression of our special responsibility toward Israel.”
Germany’s withdrawal follows a similar action taken by Austria last week. As explained in a Jerusalem Post article dated August 31, 2011,
Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Schallenberg told the Post that “we have no intention of participating in Durban III in September.” Austria has now joined the anti-Durban group of countries, which includes Italy, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Australia, the United States, Canada and Israel. Schallenberg said that Austria has “doubts about the content and direction of the conference” which is the reason for its decision to skip the event. The September 22 Durban III event commemorates the 10th anniversary of the Durban I conference, which took place in Durban, South Africa. It was widely denounced as an anti-Semitic, UN-sponsored event that singled out Jews and Israel in order to attack them, including calls to abolish Israel.
Claudia Rosett of the Foundation in Defense of Democracies, recognized for her reporting on corruption at the United Nations, writes,
The UN’s “Durban process” has proved from the get-go to be one of its most bigoted endeavors, fixated since its 2001 curtain-raiser in Durban itself on institutionalizing anti-Semitism and the excoriation of the democratic state of Israel.
In a Jerusalem Post article of August 19, 2011, Anne Bayefsky, Senior Editor of Eye on the UN, announced a Durban III counter-conference:
The Durban conference legitimized hate speech on a global scale,” said Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro College Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, and a principal organizer of the counter-conference. She added that the September 22 daylong conference, sponsored by the Hudson Institute and Touro College and titled “The Perils of Global Intolerance: the United Nations and Durban III,” will serve as a call to action.
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