The Italian Parliament approves resolution on upcoming Durban II UN Conference 

December 8, 2008 
European Jewish Congress 
Original Source: 
https://mail.hudsonny.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.eurojewcong.org/ejc/article.php?id_article=3235 \t _blank http://www.eurojewcong.org/ejc/article.php?id_article=3235

Text of the Resolution presented on initiative of Hon. Fiamma Nirenstein and voted on unanimously by the Chambers of Deputies of the Italian Parliament (presented on October 29th and voted on December 4th)
The Chamber of Deputies,
Whereas : The “World Conference against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”, that took place at Durban in 2001 on initiative of the United Nations, turned into a political trial against the State of Israel, which has been called from the dock to respond to prosecutors that were (and still are) in large part regimes responsible of politics constitutionally founded on the denial of cultural plurality, on religious intolerance and on the persecution of any form of dissent and difference ; On that occasion, the UN Conference, surreptitiously centred on the “Israeli case”, used racism as a pretext for reviving a campaign of moral, political and religious lynching against the Jewish people and the State of Israel ; The Conference, thus, was compromised by the discriminatory attitude of some States and leaders (from Mugabe to Fidel Castro) and of most of the present NGOs : for this reason, the United States and Israel abandoned the Conference, during which several episodes of anti-Semitic nature have occurred, like the distribution to participants of the Protocol of the Elders of Zion and the exclusion of NGOs Jewish members from some sessions of the NGOs Forum, which took place in conjunction with the Conference ; Until the last of the nine days of the Conference, some states tried to reiterate the precedent of Resolution 3379, approved by the UN General Assembly in 1975 (and, by the way, revoked by the same institution on December 16, 1991) and to introduce into the final Declaration of the summit the expression “Zionism is a form of racism” ; this attempt has been eventually averted also due to the European Union pressure ; The forthcoming World Conference against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, better known as “Durban II” or “Durban review Conference”, is scheduled for April 2009, in Geneva ; the Bureau of the Preparatory Committee is chaired by Libya and formed also by states like Iran and Cuba. Observing the preparation works, is easy to perceive the risk that also this follow-up Conference against racism will turn into a racist conference by itself against Israel ; Recently, the Preparatory Committee has gathered the regional sub-committee contributions, formulating a “Draft Outcome Document”, which is scheduled to be adopted at the Geneva Conference as the main working document ; the text alludes, in a way as much implicit as evident, to Israel in the terms of “a foreign occupation founded on settlements, its laws based on racial discrimination [...] which constitutes a serious violation of international human rights and humanitarian law, a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity, a form of genocide and a serious threat to international peace and security” ; it continues stating that “[the UN] Reiterates its concern about the plight of the Palestinian people and other inhabitants of Arab territories under foreign occupation”. The fact that the Palestinian are the sole people to be explicitly mentioned as object of discrimination, outlines a clear continuity with the line pursued in the 2001 Durban Conference ; If the discussion on racism and discrimination continues to be based on such premises, the “Durban review Conference” will become again a fierce anti-Israeli forum. Regarding to racism, it is extremely wrong the typical prejudice that dominated the 2001 Conference and that is still present in the current preparatory documents, according to which racism, intolerance and slavery are an exclusive responsibility of the West. The current qualified historiography has confirmed that such phenomena have a wider and global diffusion. A wrong analysis would make impossible to contrast the politics of ethnic, cultural and religious oppression that in the last decades have stained with blood vast areas of the world, and among which emerges, with an always more alarming clarity, the violent persecution of Christians in many Islamic states and in large parts of the Asian continent ; Numerous countries have shown their awareness of the risk to revival in 2009 in Geneva what has happened in 2001 in Durban : on January Canada, having evaluated the preparatory process, announced through its Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity that will not take part to the Geneva Conference ; Israel has declared that it will not participate under the threat that the Conference could turn into an anti-Semitic propaganda tribune. On September 23, the American Congress approved Resolution 1361, which calls on the US government to “lead a high-level diplomatic effort to defeat the campaign by some members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to divert the United Nation’s Durban Review Conference from a review of problems in their own and other countries by attacking Israel, promoting anti-Semitism, and undermining the Universal Charter of Human Rights”. The French President Sarkozy announced the withdrawal from the preparatory process if it won’t abandon its anti-Semitic drift” ;
binds the Government :
to carefully verify, together with the European partners, the results and orientations emerging from the preparatory process of the forthcoming “World Conference against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance” ;
to intervene in the European framework in order to avert the risk that the Conference will develop on a platform based on intolerance and on ethnic, religious and cultural discrimination ;
to act in order to ensure that the preparatory documents will contain only the purpose of combating racism and discrimination at any latitude and for any reason, and to obliterate the not recondite aim of delegitimize the State of Israel ;
to exert the greatest vigilance and to concretely act so that the Conference will effectively aim at promoting the fight against racism and against every kind of discrimination, rather than being a fictitious stage for incitement to hatred towards specific people, states or ethnic and religious minorities.