| The Disgrace in Durban |
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| Written by Lara Granville | |||||
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What I saw at the UN's World Conference Against Racism I was one of seven members of the South African Union of Jewish Students who went to Durban this August to attend the United Nations World Conference Against Racism. The UN convened the WCAR to bring together government representatives, non-governmental organizations, and youth from around the world to discuss the problem of racism and develop strategies to combat it. Ironically, the WCAR ended up being the most blatant display of racism that I have ever witnessed. We knew before the conference began that it would be exploited as an occasion to attack Israel. The draft of the inter-governmental statement on racism that had been prepared for the conference contained language, inserted by Arab and Muslim states, equating Zionism with racism. SAUJS members decided to go to Durban to combat this harsh attack on Israel. We were joined there by about 20 other Jewish students from Israel and Europe who had come to South Africa for the same purpose. Before the world's diplomats converged on Durban, students and young people from every corner of the globe gathered for the WCAR's Youth Summit. The Youth Summit was a day-long conference that aimed to create a declaration about racism and the role of youth in combating racism. We had hoped to influence the language of the Youth Summit's declaration by participating in committee sessions where the text would be drafted. But we quickly realized that this strategy would prove unsuccessful. Palestinian and Muslim delegations far outnumbered Jewish students, and even delegations without a direct stake in the Arab-Israeli conflict had been influenced by successful Palestinian media campaigns and propaganda and were strongly anti-Zionist before the conference even began. One committee session, entitled "New Forms of Apartheid" was "facilitated" by a Palestinian and exploited by Palestinian delegates to insert anti-Israel language into the declaration. Clearly, we wouldn't be able to expect evenhandedness from the summit's facilitators or organizers. Moreover, the conference itself was chaotic and consistent procedures for making amendments were seldom followed. Our delegation also faced open hostility from pro-Palestinian delegates, and we often felt harassed and insecure. Rational discussion was simply impossible. Once we realized the futility of our participation, we decided to take our stand outside of the chaotic conference rooms, in the street. In Durban we had seen anti-Semitic cartoons distributed that could have been directly copied from the Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer, as well as pictures of swastikas superimposed over the Star of David. But we also had our own message, and we were determined to be heard above the hateful din. Representatives of Jewish organizations from around the world came to participate in the WCAR's Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) conference, demanding the inclusion of language condemning anti-Semitism and the exclusion of anti-Zionist rhetoric from that conference's final declaration. Jewish students set up a table on the grounds of the stadium where the conference was being held, just outside the media tent. From there we disseminated informational materials explaining our point of view to passers-by. Our literature pointed out that Zionism advocated the right of Jews to have a homeland like all other nations, and that anti-Zionism is, in fact, anti-Semitism. Our materials explained that the conference had been hijacked by Arab states determined to demonize Israel, instead of concentrating on real instances of racism around the world. We tried to show that the WCAR was entirely "UNbalanced" and had turned into a "World Conference Advocating Racism." When we took out the Israeli flag to demonstrate that we were proud to be Zionists, Palestinian conference-goers, adorned in kaffiyehs, began to crowd around our table shouting angrily and chanting "Zionism is racism" and "Israel is an apartheid state." The Jewish students, who had no desire to get into violent confrontations, handed out flowers and sang "give peace a chance." Police eventually stepped in to prevent an escalation, but confrontations such as these continued throughout the week. The final declarations that emerged from the Durban conference were appalling. While Western countries, following a walk-out by the American and Israeli delegations, were able to excise the most offensive anti-Israel language from the inter-governmental declaration on racism, the declarations produced by the NGO and youth conferences were another story entirely. The youth declaration accused Israel of practicing apartheid and called on "businesses worldwide to divest from the Israeli economy." The NGO conference devoted no less than 18 discrete sections of its final declaration to singling out Israel for abuse. It equated Zionism with racism, called for "the international community to impose a policy of complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state," and accused Israel of perpetrating "racist crimes against humanity" and "acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing." Even Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, organizations that have often been harshly critical of Israel, criticized the language used by the NGO declaration. While we were unable to meaningfully impact the shape of the final conference declarations, the WCAR did show the Jewish students who attended that it is inadequate to silently support Israel and Jewish rights. We learned that to support Israel and to prevent anti-Semitism, Jews need to make their voices heard.
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