US, Israel quit Durban 

By Herb Keinon
September 04, 2001
The Jerusalem Post
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DURBAN (September 4) - The US and Israel dramatically announced simultaneously in Washington and Jerusalem last night that they would be leaving the UN conference against racism currently taking place here. 

The decision comes after the failure of attempts by the US and Israel to water down the viciously anti-Israel language of the resolutions. 

Today, I have instructed our representatives at the world conference to return home, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a statement, which was issued simultaneously in Washington and Durban, where the conference was in its fourth day. 

I have taken this decision with regret because of the importance of the international fight against racism and the contribution that this conference could have made to it, he said. But following discussions today by our team in Durban and others who are working for a successful conference, and others, I am convinced that it will not be possible. 

In Jerusalem, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres announced Israel's decision to leave, explaining that there is no chance to change the ugly and insulting decision drafted by the conference. 

We have instructed our delegation in Durban to come back home, Peres said at a news conference timed to coincide with the US announcement. We regret very much the very bizarre show in Durban. An important convention that's supposed to defend human rights became a source of hatred. We were portrayed in an insulting and baseless manner as a colonial nation. 

The Durban conference is a farce, he said. 

He expressed gratitude to the 43 states that opposed the one-sided decision of the Arab and Muslim leagues. 

These countries saved world respect from deteriorating to the low level of lies and incitement, Peres said, adding that he had hoped that the truth would prevail over the hatred. 

According to sources here, the decision to bolt the conference came after Egypt, Syria and Iran indicated that they would reject a Norwegian bridging proposal that would have had a generic anti-racism resolution adopted, without singling out any country by name. 

According to Shimon Samuels, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Paris office and head of the Jewish caucus in Durban, the Egyptians insisted in a negotiating session with the Norwegians that Israel be termed a racist state; the Syrians repeated Holocaust-denial statements; and the Iranians declared that anti-Semitism was not a form of contemporary racism that should be dealt with at the conference. 

After that, Samuels said, it became clear that there would be no chance to water down the resolutions. 

Alan Baker, the Foreign Ministry's legal advisor and deputy head of Israel's mission in Durban, told a throng of journalists at the conference last night that no rational argument has carried any weight with the Arab countries and the Palestinians determined to attack us. 

Baker said that not only has Israel been uniquely singled out, but that totally false accusations and lies unrelated to the purpose of the conference have been flung at us. 

Saying that the conferences has been hijacked, Baker said, We have been forced to the conclusion that there is no purpose in our being here. 

Baker said that Israel deeply regrets that the noble aims of the conference have been perverted. 

Samuels said that the rabidly anti-Israel and Anti-Zionist resolutions framed last week at the NGO part of the conference hardened the Islamic countries, and gave them motivation to continue carrying on their battle to delegitimize Israel. 

We saw an NGO document that would have made Goebbels happy, Samuel said. And now it is clear that we are going to see, at the end of the government conference, resolutions that can be called the UN's Mein Kampf. 

Israel and American sources said that an alternative to the Durban conference, where leading intellectuals and leaders will voice support of Israel, is being planned, and is likely to take place in Jerusalem in the next few weeks. 

Meretz leader Yossi Sarid expressed support for the decision to leave the conference, which he said was intended from the beginning to serve as a political lynching against Israel. 

Diplomats had desperately tried to find middle ground between Israel and the US, both of which objected strongly to the draft declarations, and Arab and Muslim states, which wanted Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip condemned. 

It seems that despite extraordinary efforts by the American government reaching back many months, it will prove impossible for the American delegation to continue participating at this conference, Congressman Tom Lantos, a US delegate, said. 

Those who have made it their goal to hijack the conference for their propaganda purposes apparently have shown in the course of the day a degree of rigidity and unwillingness to compromise, he told reporters. 

The decision to bolt the conference came a few hours after Israel finally had its say against the anti-Zionist forces, with Mordechai Yedid, its representative, taking center stage in the plenary and declaring unequivocally that anti-Zionism, the denial of Jews the basic right to a home, is nothing but anti-Semitism, pure and simple. 

The venal hatred of Jews that has taken the form of anti-Zionism, and which has surfaced at this conference, is different in one crucial way from the anti-Semitism of the past. Today, it is being deliberately propagated and manipulated for political ends. 

After his speech, which was full of biblical references to the Jews' experience with slavery in Egypt and the divine imperative on how to treat the disenfranchised, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher left the hall and in visible anger questioned Israel's right to moralizeâ to the world. This is the only country in the world that bombs civilians with F-15s. Who are they to preach humanity? 

Maher, seeing Israeli journalists around him, refused to answer their questions, and testily walked away. 

Yedid, responding to his outburst, said he is very sorry to hear of the Egyptian opposition. I think that the Egyptians should have been a leading force in drafting a compromise resolution that could have succeeded. I would not have thought that they would have come to make a very delicate situation even more difficult. 

Yedid said that in the various negotiations about the language of the resolution, Israel would only be satisfied if the conference ended with no condemnation of Israel, no signaling it out among all the nations of the world, and no hate language. 

He prefaced his speech by saying that it was to have been presented by Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Melchior, but that he is not participating in this conference because of the negative developments which appear to be materializing. 

Racism, in all its forms, is one of the most widespread and pernicious evils, depriving millions of hope and fundamental rights, Yedid read in an unemotional manner from a text that was originally written for Melchior. It may have been hoped that this first conference of the 21st century would have taken up the challenge of, if not eradicating racism, at least disarming it. But instead humanity is being sacrifice to a political agenda. 

He said that barely a decade after the UN repealed the Zionism-is-racism resolution, a group of states for whom the terms 'racism,' 'discrimination,' and even 'human rightsâ' simply do not appear in their domestic lexicon have hijacked this conference and plunged us to even greater depths. Can there be a greater irony than the fact that a conference convened to combat the scourge of racism should give rise to the most racist declaration in a major international organization since World War II? 

Despite the vicious anti-Semitism we have heard here, I do not fear for the Jewish people, which has learned to be resilient and to hold fast to its faith. Despite the virulent incitement against my country, I do not fear for Israel, which has the strength not just of courage, but also of conviction. 

But I do fear, deeply, for the victims of racism, he said, for the slaves, the disenfranchised, the oppressed, the inexplicably hated, the impoverished, the despised, the millions who turn their eyes to this hall in the frail hope that it may address their suffering, who see instead that a blind and venal hatred of the Jews has turned their hopes into a farce. For them I fear. 

Former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and former justice minister Yossi Beilin criticized the decision to leave Durban, saying Israel should have kept a delegation here to respond to the anti-Israel rhetoric and explain why Zionism is the opposite of racism. 

Melchior told Jerusalem Post Radio that he rejected a suggestion that Israel's PR let it down ahead of Durban: Well, it's really a very, very cheap argument, he said. I don't know how Israel's public relations machine was supposed to affect the decisions which were made in Tehran of the Islamic states, and those are exactly the proposals that are on the table in Durban. 

You can hear the full interview with Melchior at www.jpostradio.com 

(Nina Gilbert, Gil Hoffman, and news agencies contributed to this report.)