Obama’s Policy Shift on Durban Racism Conference Draws Concern, Criticism

By Patrick Goodenough
February 16, 2009
CNSNews.com
Original Source: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=43556



(CNSNews.com) – When diplomats meet at the United Nations in Geneva on Monday to continue hammering out plans for an international conference on racism in the spring, representatives of the United States will take part for the first time in years.
 
The major policy shift, announced by the State Department over the weekend, is the strongest indication yet that the Obama administration could end up participating in the Durban Review Conference, also known as “Durban II.”
 
Doing so would undercut a campaign calling on democracies to boycott the event, which opponents say will be used by Islamic states and their allies to attack Israel, undermine Western counter-terrorism initiatives and endanger free speech.
 
A decision to stay away by President Obama would provide cover for other Western countries to do so; U.S. attendance, conversely, is expected to have the opposite effect. Currently Israel and Canada alone have formally announced they will not take part.
 
Obama campaigned on a platform of re-engaging with the U.N. after years of chilly relations between the world body and Washington, and his newly appointed ambassador, Susan Rice, is reportedly advocating strongly for participation in Durban II.

In a major policy shift, the Obama State Department, led by former Sen. Hillary Clinton, has agred to take part in planning a controversial conference on racism. (AP Photo) 
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, pledged to “lead a boycott of the conference should current efforts to rein in the forces of hatred fail,” describing the issue as “a test of resolve” for the next president.
 
The statement released by State Department spokesman Robert Wood on Saturday night stressed that a decision on actual participation in Durban II would be made at a later date, “depending on the results that we see from the negotiating process.”
 
“The intent of our participation [in this week’s discussions] is to work to try to change the direction in which the Review Conference is heading,” it said. “We hope to work with other countries that want the Conference to responsibly and productively address racism around the world.”
 
Observers are skeptical that the U.S. would be able to force a direction change at this late stage in the preparatory process.
 
“It is clear that this thing cannot be reversed,” Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told a press conference in Jerusalem on Sunday.
 
He expressed the hope that the administration would make a decision, “by the end of the month,” not to attend Durban II.
 
U.S. representatives attending the Feb. 16-19 inter-governmental working group discussions will be confronted by a draft agenda that equates Israeli policies and actions with those of apartheid South Africa, and revisits the U.N.’s controversial “Zionism is racism” resolution by highlighting what the drafters call “a racially-based law of return.”
 
They will also be met by references to racism impacting on counter-terrorism efforts, and calls for governments to act against “negative stereotyping of religions and defamation of religious personalities, holy books, scriptures and symbols.”
 
Arguing that “Islamophobia” is a “contemporary form of racism,” the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is using Durban II to further its campaign to have religious “defamation” outlawed – a drive which critics say is designed to prevent criticism of Islam and practices associated with it.
 
‘Terrible signal’
 
The Bush administration walked out of the last U.N. racism conference, held in Durban, South Africa, in September 2001, protesting the singling out of Israel “for censure and abuse.” Israel also withdrew, and some of the language targeting Israel in the conference draft documents was subsequently changed.
 
(A parallel non-governmental organization forum was characterized by virulent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment, and ended with a declaration that labeled Israel a “racist apartheid state” guilty of “genocide” and called for the reinstitution of the U.N.’s “Zionism is racism” resolution.)
 
Over the years since 2001, the U.S. has not participated in the Durban follow-up process, or in preparations for April’s Review Conference. Declaring the original conference to have been “noxious” to the U.S. and “a disgrace in the international community,” the U.S. also voted against U.N. budget resolutions because they included funding for Durban II.
 
The chief planners for Durban II are a 20-strong panel, chaired by Libya and comprising a diverse group that includes countries hostile to Israel, among them Iran, Pakistan and Cuba.
 
The process is being supervised by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, which has itself drawn fire for what critics say is a disproportionate focus on Israel at the behest of OIC states which control one-third of the council’s seats. The U.S. has not joined the three year-old council, but is expected to stand for election this year.
 
Anne Bayefsky, editor of Eye on the U.N., a project of the Hudson Institute, said Obama’s decision to take part in the preparatory discussions “sends a terrible signal.”
 
“Durban II is a cover for an assault on free speech, the demonization of the Jewish state, and an effort to undermine anti-terrorism activities by labeling them all racist,” she said.
 
“Everyone knows that the agreed purpose of Durban II is to implement Durban I’s Declaration which criticizes only one country on the planet – demonizing Israel as guilty of racism.
 
“The United States cannot change that agenda. It can only legitimize it – which is exactly what U.S. participation now does,” she said. “Evidently, this incarnation of ‘Zionism is racism’ is not a problem for President Obama.”
 
‘Risky plunge’
 
For Prof. Gerald Steinberg, executive director of the Jerusalem-based organization NGO Monitor, the stakes are high.
 
“The Obama Administration has taken a very bold and risky plunge by attempting to change the hate-filled agenda,” he said.
 
“Success or an American-led walkout will restore moral leadership and U.S. influence,” he said. “But a failure which reinforces the first Durban attack on human rights will do long term damage throughout the world.”
 
NGO Monitor, which says its goal is to “promote transparency, critical analysis and debate on the political role of human rights organizations,” evaluates the work of non-governmental organizations in relation to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Steinberg heads the political studies department at Tel Aviv’s Bar Ilan University.
 
Bayefsky noted that some Western states had been “poised to pull out if Obama did.”
 
“Now Obama has handed fascists pretending to be interested in human rights a victory without anything in return,” she said. “He’s legitimized a process designed to defeat democracy, a process which the U.S. has refused to legitimize since September 2001.”
 
The “Zionism is racism” resolution, sponsored by Islamic states and Cuba in 1975, was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly by a 72-36 vote.
 
Zionism, the assertion that Jews are entitled to a national homeland, is the basis for Israel’s existence. The law of return states that any Jew migrating to Israel can become a citizen of the state.
 
The resolution was eventually repealed in 1991.