The Durban snow job continues

By Anne Bayefsky
April 16, 2009
The New York Daily News
Original Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/04/16/2009-04-16_the_durban_snow_job_continues.html

GENEVA - The UN's idea of an anti-racism conference entered the final stretch yesterday with the planning committee deciding Iran ought to preside as a vice-chair, Libya will serve as the chair of the Main Committee running the conference and that Cuba will be the rapporteur. All three human rights paragons will assume their new duties on the first day of Durban II set for Monday, April 20. 
Although the flowers are blooming by Lake Geneva, these Durban II preparations are best described as a massive snow job. The UN had set aside three days to hammer out a final document to be adopted formally at the conference itself. But Chairwoman Najat Al-Hajjaji of Libya adjourned the meeting half an hour after it began - despite the fact that half of the 142-paragraph draft manifesto has not yet been agreed upon. 
Al-Hajjaji is the front for the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Her not-so-hidden agenda is shared by the secretary general of Durban II, UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay. For Pillay, a native of Durban, South Africa, the Durban Declaration's status is of biblical proportions. Sitting at the podium side-by-side, Al-Hajjaji and Pillay's strategy became painfully obvious to the hundreds of assembled diplomats and representatives of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) who thought they had come to talk about combating racism.
Their tactic had two elements. First, to run out the clock. By adjourning rapidly and probably repeatedly throughout most of the next two days, the conference will inevitably start on Monday with the European Union at the table and the threat of a pull-out by democratic countries gone. 
UN diplomats are all well aware that the EU will agree to just about anything when faced with the spectacle of a failed UN conference. Because EU members don't have the numbers to prevail at the UN if a vote is called, they therefore feign consensus instead of appearing to be losers to the folks back home. They are also fond of the UN as an excellent means to outweigh the United States by 27-1. The EU states also wilt at the prospect of being labeled as former colonialist racists, even by racists from the developing world.
The second OIC-UN move is to keep all disagreements behind closed doors for as long as possible. This way, the damage done to combating racism for real via their backroom negotiations will be in the form of indecipherably ambiguous UN-ese by the time it is a done deal. 
As Al-Hajjaji was clocking out 30 minutes after showing up for work, she asked the delegates to pick up a new draft of the Durban II Outcome Document on their way out the door. Seeing it, there is little wonder she wanted no opportunity for public discussion. 
Here is what can be found in the latest draft of the UN's new anti-racism bible: 
* Condemnation of foreign occupation - aka Israel-bashing. Foreign occupation is said to be closely associated with racism, racial discrimination . . . and [to] contribute to the persistence of racist attitudes and practices . . . In other words, the racist label applied to the Jewish state is back.
* Defamation of religions under a new guise. The document professes deep concern about the negative stereotyping of religions.
* More of the Islamic assault on free speech. The draft reaffirms that all dissemination of ideas based on . . . incitement to racial discrimination . . . shall be declared offenses punishable by law . . .
* More Iranian-sponsored references to cultural diversity - diplomatic cover for turning the other way while regimes murder homosexuals, encouraging the judicially-sanctioned amputation of hands and feet, and stoning of women for alleged adultery. 
* Renewed emphasis on the transatlantic slave trade and total rejection of a proposed mention of the trans-Saharan slave trade perpetrated by Arabs and other Africans. 
* Additional emphasis on the adoption of complementary standards on racism and xenophobia - this is an Islamic idea designed to subvert the principles for combating racism in existing treaties.
And lest anyone be under the impression that Durban II will go away come April 25, the draft demands that the Durban Declaration be implemented in the whole UN system forever more.
Silencing public commentary on the abomination was not the only thing the OIC-UN nexus accomplished in the space of 30 minutes. Also quickly gaveled without comment was approval of 81 NGOs to participate in Durban II. Included among these illustrious human rights partners: 
* The Independent Jewish Voices, a network composed largely of anti-Zionist extremists preoccupied with driving a wedge between Jews and Israel.
* The Palestine Return Center, which peddles a tale of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that began more than sixty years ago as part of its opposition to the creation of Israel.
* The Gadhafi International Charity and Development Foundation, whose president is a son of Col. Moammar Gadhafi and still insists that the Libyans convicted for the bombing of PanAm Flight 103 were innocent. 
The Obama administration has delayed a decision whether to come or go to the final hour. The opening sentence of this new draft still reaffirms the 2001 Durban Declaration, which the U.S. rejected the first time around for its overt discrimination against and demonization of Israel. 
Obama claimed his administration wouldn't go to Durban II if this declaration was reaffirmed in toto. Combined with the new allegations of racism against Israel, he and UN Ambassador Susan Rice have nowhere left to hide. 
Other countries that might join Canada and Israel in staying out of the conference include Australia, Italy and the Netherlands. Australia has had a finger in the wind for months. Italy is not participating at the moment and doesn't have any reasons to go back with this latest travesty. And Dutch efforts to improve the statement have been treated with disdain. Even so, the Germans and French are pressing fellow EU members hard to show solidarity with the EU - the merits of Durban II and all those red-lines they use to espouse be damned.
So on April 20, the 120th anniversary of Hitler's birth, a representative of the Islamist government of Iran will be elected as a vice-chairman of a global anti-racism conference. On the afternoon of opening day, a Holocaust denier who wants to wipe Israel from the map - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - will address a UN conference against racism and representatives of the European Union will sit and listen to an avowed anti-Semite give a lecture about combating intolerance. In the end, most UN states will almost certainly adopt a document incompatible with the UN's foundational principles of the equality of all men and women and of nations large and small. 
A good day for UN-based anti-Semites. A bad day for those who care about human rights.
Bayefsky, a law professor at Touro College and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, edits EYEontheUN.org.
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