The next UN disaster

By Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper 
February 25, 2009
The National Post
Original Source: http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=1325502

As President Obama struggles with America's economic woes, his new team is also hard at work putting a new face on U. S. foreign policy, with an emphasis on multilateral engagement. From Tehran to Tokyo, the world is trying to decipher Barack Obama's promise of change.
An early test of the President's vision of his diplomatic outreach is the announcement that the United States will attend an upcoming preparatory meeting (prepcom) in advance of April's Durban Review of the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Geneva that Canada will not attend. Known as Durban II, it follows up the 2001 UN Conference Against Racism convened just before 9/11 in South Africa.
The initial conference was a disaster. Attracting 3,900 NGOs from over 160 countries, Durban I was supposed to address global racism, religious intolerance and discrimination. Instead, it was hijacked by anti-American and anti-Israel zealots who debased it into a hate-fest that damaged the 21st-century human rights movement.
Resolutions condemned Europe's record of colonialism, but ignored human rights abuses in Libya, Sudan, Iran, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, North Korea and Cuba. It was there that Israel was demonized as an apartheid state. Jewish delegates were physically intimidated by Iranian activists, street demonstrators hawked copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and caricatures of swastika'd Jews with fangs dripping blood adorned NGO exhibitions. Australia and Canada condemned the conference. The United States and Israel walked out.
It's clear that those who won the day for America's entry into the Durban II process see it as a golden opportunity for the Obama administration to both deepen its dialogue with the Arab and Muslim world and -- they would argue -- better position itself to protect Israel's rights.
But the United States cannot satisfy both sides.
The election results in Israel reveal a profound shift to the right by an electorate that's had enough with the double standard practised by the United Nations and the international community -- silent while 3,000 rockets rained down on Southern Israel, but rushing to convene all-night emergency sessions once the Israelis decided to act in self-defence and enter Gaza. Abroad, the spike in attacks on synagogues, violent assaults and genocidal rhetoric from London and Paris, to Los Angeles, New York, Caracas and Melbourne has badly shaken the Jewish Diaspora.
If the United States does go to Geneva, the Jewish world will expect to be aggressively defended from the inevitable anti-Zionist onslaught. But if that were to happen, the Arab-Muslim bloc would cry foul. Either way, America's involvement in Durban II will spell more unnecessary complications for Mideast Special Envoy George Mitchell's mission.
Make no mistake: The autocratic cabal driving Durban will not be silenced. That is why Ottawa already decided to boycott. The chair of Durban II's preparatory meetings is Libya, whose leader, Muammar Gaddafi, recently proposed relocating Israeli Jews to Alaska or Hawaii. Other members of the committee are Pakistan and Iran, the latter of which continues to stone women for adultery, persecute gays, finance international terrorism, develop nuclear centrifuges in defiance of the UN and threatens to wipe Israel off the map.
Iran and Syria manipulated the unanimity rule to make sure there will be no restrictions on Durban II delegates wanting to express Holocaust Denial. Egyptian and Pakistani delegates rebuffed a British historian seeking to discuss mistreatment of women under Islam. Meanwhile, the Council's Special Rapporteur condemned Islamophobia but remained silent about attacks targeting Christianity or Judaism.
At a Nigeria prepcom, the African Bloc lined up behind the Arab-Muslim agenda that singled out only the plight of the Palestinians, thus insuring no criticism of mass rape, displacement and genocidal murder of Black Muslims in Darfur.
The new U. S. administration was swept into office by promising change. The Obama team has a unique opportunity to change the rules of engagement, not by validating Durban II, but by working with close allies like Canada to launch a new multilateral push for human rights that will fearlessly and fairly examine every nation's record and restore to the UN the core ideals upon which it was founded.
-Rabbi Marvin Hier is founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance. Rabbi Abraham Cooper is associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.