The forked US tongue on 'Durban 2'

By Melanie Phillips
March 1, 2009
The Spectator
Original Source: http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3401341/the-forked-us-tongue-on-durban-2.thtml

On Friday afternoon, the Obama administration let it be known that it was now withdrawing from the planning process for the ‘Durban 2’ anti-Israel and anti-Jew hate-fest taking place under the aegis of the satirically-named UN Human Rights Council in Geneva next month, and wouldn’t take part in the conference itself. As I reported here and here, Obama had sent a delegation to Geneva to try to sanitise the draft Declaration being planned for the meeting, saying that if it failed it would withdraw. On Friday, after the draft text had got worse rather than better, it appeared that the US had indeed withdrawn from the planning process and was now boycotting the whole thing; certainly, Ha’aretz thought it had done so, various Jewish groups threw their hats in the air and Obamaphiles breathed a sigh of relief and replaced the halo above their hero’s head.
They should have waited. Indeed, they should have read the warning signs in the story. For the Americans chose their words carefully:
‘The document being negotiated has gone from bad to worse, and the current text of the draft outcome document is not salvageable,’ State Department spokesperson Robert Wood said. ‘As a result, the United States will not engage in further negotiations on this text, nor will we participate in a conference based on this text. A conference based on this text would be a missed opportunity to speak clearly about the persistent problem of racism. The United States remains open to a positive result in Geneva based on a document that takes a constructive approach to tackling the challenges of racism and discrimination’, Wood said.
It was obvious from this that the Americans were not now doing what they should have done from the start -- saying that the whole Durban process was a sick farce and that they would have nothing to do with it. Instead, they were still leaving the door ajar for some kind of fudged form of words in the Declaration. An early version of the Jerusalem Post story deepened the ambiguity. Anonymous US officials told the paper:
The Obama administration would reconsider its position if the document improves in a number of areas including dropping references to any specific country, references to defamation of religion which the US views as a free speech issue, and language on reparations for slavery. It also wants a shorter text and does not want the final document for Durban II to reaffirm the final document from the 2001 Durban conference, the US official said.
By Friday evening, when the US published its official statement on the matter, the fog had deepened further still. As Anne Bayefsky – the UN watcher whose single-handed efforts in blowing the whistle on Durban 2 and America’s manoeuvrings must take much of the credit for the pressure applied to the US over its participation – has now pointed out in an article for Forbes, the statement said:
...‘the United States will not ... participate in a conference based on this text,’ but we will ‘re-engage if a document that meets [our] criteria becomes the basis for deliberations.’ A new version must be: ‘shorter,’ ‘not reaffirm in toto the flawed 2001 Durban Declaration,’ ‘not single out any one country or conflict,’ and not embrace the troubling concept of ‘defamation of religion.’ And by the way, it continued, the U.S. will ‘participate’ for the first time in the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Those two words ’in toto’ leave the door ajar for the Israel-bashers to find a way round the US insistence that there can be no singling out of any one country, while fulfilling the remit of 'Durban 2' to ‘reaffirm’ the 2001 Durban Declaration which singled out Israel for defamation as a racist state. Bayefsky reports that, after US officials told Jewish groups US participation was over while assuring the Israel-bashers it was looking for ways to 're-engage', the bashers are furious; tellingly,
Peggy Hicks from HRW [Human Rights Watch] complained that insisting on ‘no reference to a single country or conflict is very problematic and destructive to the Durban Review process.’
Whoops, what a giveaway. To Human Rights Watch, the Durban Review process is all about singling out one particular country. No prizes for guessing which one, eh, Peggy?
So to keep the Israel-destroyers sweet, Obama has thrown them a bone. A big fat juicy one. The US may not be going back into the 'Durban 2 'process, but it will go one better – it will re-enter the Human Rights Council itself as an observer and will stand for election to it. Until now it was boycotting the council precisely because the connection with ‘human rights’ of a body whose members are overwhelmingly not democracies and which include China, Saudi Arabia and Cuba is a sick joke – and because its overwhelming purpose is to delegitimise Israel and engineer its destruction. Accordingly, it singles out Israel for (unwarranted) vilification while ignoring real human rights abuses elsewhere. As Bayefsky observes:
The Council -- controlled by the Organization of the Islamic Conference -- has adopted more condemnations of Israel than all other 191 U.N. states combined, while terminating human rights investigations on the likes of Iran, Cuba and Belarus. Obama’s move denies the opportunity to leverage the prospect of American membership to insist on reform.
Even UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the UNHRC:
‘The Secretary-General is disappointed at the council's decision to single out only one specific regional item given the range and scope of allegations of human rights violations throughout the world.’
So the Obama administration has decided as a matter of principle to withdraw from 'Durban 2' (pro tem) because it ‘singles out’ Israel for vilification, and instead will take part in and thus legitimise the UNHRC -- which singles out Israel for vilification. This is what the State Department calls 
advancing the cause of human rights in the multilateral arena.
Doubtless it will carry out its intention to
ensure the Human Rights Council focuses on the pressing human rights concerns of our time
by tackling the HRC's singling out of Israel for vilification through telling it precisely what it told the ‘Durban 2’ planning meeting in order to tackle itssingling out of Israel for vilification.
Nothing.