Why the Simon Wiesenthal Center will not Co-Sponsor nor Attend January “Education for Peace” Conference at UNESCO 

December 27, 2004
Simon Wiesenthal Center
http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/s/content.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=253162&ct=326319 http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/s/content.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=253162&ct=326319
Paris--Following interest in its February New York symposium at the United Nations, the Ethics Initiatives Consortium invited the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s European Office to co-sponsor a further conference, planned for 18-19 January 2005 at UNESCO. The subject matter - Child and Parent Education for Peace and Respect for Universal Values - is indeed within the competence of the Wiesenthal Center. Nevertheless, we felt it necessary to withhold co-sponsorship and, indeed, our participation.
Due to numerous enquiries from our members, friends and organizational colleagues, it has now become necessary to elucidate the background to this decision.
When we learned of the presence of UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) Rapporteur on Racism, Mr. Doudou Dične, among the otherwise excellent speakers selected for the program, we advised the organizers of our serious reservations.
Our Center, on 25 March 2003, requested the UNHRC Chair to withdraw Mr. Doudou Dične's reports due to their lack of equilibrium and even denial. His well-documented 57-paragraph report on Islamophobia (E/CN.4/2003/23 Situation Of Muslim And Arab Peoples In Various Parts Of The World In The Aftermath Of The Events Of 11 September 2001) was accompanied by a 40 paragraph counterpart on other forms of racism (E/CN.4/2003/24 Contemporary Forms Of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia And Intolerance). This contained only one paragraph (n° 39), which states that he had received from the Government of Israel and from several Jewish NGOs allegations of the large-scale distribution in the Middle East and in Europe of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion... the document apparently appeared... In one Middle Eastern country, a private television channel has allegedly produced and shown the Protocols ...AND NOTHING MORE!
It should be noted that this Rapporteur is a central figure in the UN apparatus for the implementation of the Program and Plan of Action of the blatantly antisemitic Durban Conference on Racism of 2001.
More damaging, Doudou Dične, on 11-14 November 2004, led a meeting in Barcelona entitled Experts' Seminar on Defamation of Religions and the Global Struggle Against Discrimination: Antisemitism, Christianophobia and Islamophobia, organized by the UNESCO Center of Catalunya, but incorrectly presented as under the auspices of UNESCO. This gathering keynoted speakers who are notoriously celebrated for championing the replacement of Israel by a State of Palestine and the seminar's conclusions highlighted the legitimacy of anti-Zionism.
Criticism of any government policy is legitimate, including that of Israel. To deny sovereignty, however, only to the Jewish people is an act of racism and a violation of the UN Charter in singling out one member-state for extinction. The Barcelona seminar launched a campaign to undo this August's OSCE Berlin acknowledgement of anti-Zionism as a pretext for contemporary antisemitism and as the core of Middle East incitement to Jew-hatred.
Our Center provided copies of our correspondence on this matter to the Ethics Initiatives Consortium, conditioning our participation at its Paris conference upon a statement by Doudou Dične by which he would condemn the relevant Barcelona conclusions and withdraw his endorsement of them.
As it seems he has not done so, the Wiesenthal Center cannot lend itself, through this Paris conference, to providing a fig-leaf for Doudou Dične or a cover for any UN agency that espouses anti-Zionist positions, while ostensibly denouncing antisemitism.