CJC wants name removed from Durban petition 

By Joel Goldenberg 
June 11, 2008
The Suburban
Original Source: http://thesuburban.com/content.jsp?sid=16568585601765208407102740203&ctid=1000000&cnid=1015645





Canadian Jewish Congress may seek to have its name removed from a petition that is being perceived as seeking to improve a UN anti-racism conference taking place in Geneva next year that CJC actually wants boycotted, says CJC CEO Bernie Farber.

Farber said the petition itself has nothing to do with the 2009 conference.

Last Friday, CJC’s Rabbi Reuven Bulka and Sylvain Abitbol, along with Moshe Ronen of the Canada-Israel Committee, had an opinion article in The National Post criticizing the NDP for “flip-flopping” on what has been called Durban II. Durban I was the 2001 anti-racism conference held in South Africa, which was said by many to have been used as an outlet for anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda, including the distribution of the anti-Semitic forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The NDP first supported the government’s decision to boycott the 2009 conference because of what took place in 2001, but is now asking the government to reconsider its stance, based on a pledge by UN leaders to ensure there is no repeat of Durban I.

“Canada should take the lead in establishing an alternative to Durban II, a conference where human rights can be discussed and not disdained, where the global list of human rights violations can be challenged and not increased,” the CJC and CIC leaders wrote. “As we discard the broken thing that is Durban II, we must commit to creating something better.”

On April 28, the American Jewish Committee released a press statement that 95 “leading civil society organizations” — including CJC — said the United Nations and human rights fora should not serve as a “vehicle for any form of racism.” An ongoing petition referred to in the AJC release says the 95 are “united in our deep commitment to the goals of the WCAR to chart a course for future generations to eradicate racism, discrimination and intolerance in all its forms.”

But Ronald Eissens, general director of the Magenta Foundation, which co-organized the petition, was quoted in the release as saying that the 95 organizations “are united today in our desire to focus the Durban Review Conference (the 2009 Geneva conference) on the racial discrimination and related intolerance that continues to plague so many member states and to ensure that the failings of 2001 will not be repeated.”

Asked about this seeming contradiction, Farber told The Suburban that the petition was created because of what had taken place in 2001, and had nothing to do with the 2009 conference.

“It was only supposed to be a blueprint of how to move forward.”

Farber said the Jacob Blaustein Institute, the other co-organizer of the petition, “started a movement in 2003 to try to develop a better way to operate than WCAR, to develop a series of principles that, if anybody ever decided they wanted to do something like this again, it wouldn’t turn into an anti-Semitic hatefest,” he said. “This was well before the Durban Review Conference. They went to a large number of Jewish organizations, including ourselves, and asked us to sign on. Of course we would — it’s apple pie and motherhood.

“I don’t think Durban II comes up in the petition itself.”

The date CJC signed the petition, Sept. 7, 2007, was “well before Canada pulled out [of Durban II] and at a time when there was still some hope that maybe these principles could be adhered to. Two days after we signed the petition, that’s when we found out the preparatory committee [for Durban II] was going to have their two big planning meetings on Yom Kippur and Passover, and it went downhill from there. It was just awful. We’re probably in the midst, in the next couple of weeks, of asking to have our names removed [from the petition].

“As honest and nice an effort as this was, it’s pretty clear virtually every one of those principles [called for in the petition] has already been violated” leading up to the Geneva conference.

The petition says:

• We are united in our deep commitment to the goals of the WCAR to chart a course for future generations to eradicate racism, discrimination and intolerance in all its forms.

• Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance afflict peoples in many member states. We are committed to the important mission of NGOs to monitor and hold accountable those responsible for policy failures and for lack of implementation of measures to prevent and punish such acts.

• However, the global effort to eradicate racism cannot be advanced by branding whole peoples with a stigma of ultimate evil, fomenting hateful stereotyping in the name of human rights.

• The UN and its human rights fora must not serve as a vehicle for any form of racism, including anti-Semitism, and must bar incitement to hatred against any group in the guise of criticism of a particular government. We pledge to prevent this from happening again.

• We pledge to uphold language and behavior that unites rather than divides. As NGOs we commit to use language in accordance with international human rights standards and conduct ourselves with civility and with respect for human rights standards.