Racist Anti-Racism at Durban

[hellboy]

Our wonderful and progressive UN at work.

Updates from AIJAC

Racist Anti-Racism at Durban


September 3, 2001
Number 09/01 #01

Sorry to keep dwelling on the Durban issue, but the results of the NGO forum accompanying the official government conference on Sunday were as bad as anyone expected or worse. Moreover, the atmosphere, according toe Jewish participants was openly antisemitic, including hate literature, intimidation and shouting down of Jewish delegates, and efforts to minimise the Holocaust, and redefine antisemitism to mean Israel's treatment of Palestinians. All of this has been insufficiently reported in the press.

Below is the statement of the Jewish Caucus following their walkout from the NGO forum after the Caucus refused to even adopted the Caucus's idea of a statement opposing antisemitism and calling for educational measures to counter it. Following this are editorials on Durban from the Jerusalem Post, Ha'aretz and American publications The Washington Post and The New Republic.


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Statement of the Jewish Caucus on the NGO Process and Concluding Document

World Conference against Racism
Durban, South Africa September 1, 2001

Jewish non-governmental organizations came to a World Conference Against Racism after decades of commitment and involvement in the human rights movement and the fight against racism in communities all over the world. We have carried our efforts to the hospitals, to the schools, to the poor, to the needy of every race, creed and colour. In our work, we have also been ever mindful of those in need as survivors of the Holocaust and their children, who bear the awful memories of hell on earth. But we have been sustained and nourished in our charitable acts and activism by the reality of a Jewish homeland in Israel that is watchful of the rise of neo-Nazism and antisemitism in all its forms, that is a sanctuary both physically and spiritually for the Jewish people.

We came to Durban as part of a community struggling to resist the consequences of racism. We leave as victims of an assault on the very principles for which they have stood all their lives. This Conference Against Racism became a Conference For Racism. It took the vision of universal human rights standards applicable to all races, nationalities, and religions in the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and excluded the Jew. It took the vision of the equality of all nations large and small in the words of the United Nations Charter and barred the state of Israel.

Therefore, with profound sadness, the Jewish caucus rejects the text of the NGO Final Document in its present form. We must object both because of process and content.

Process

From the beginning of this process, there has been a constant attempt to silence our voices and appropriate our victimization.

* In the Asian regional preparatory conference, it was made impossible for a UN accredited Jewish nongovernmental organization to participate.

* On Wednesday, August 29th, the commission on antisemitism was invaded and shouted down by those hostile to our concerns. We were able to continue only by breaking up into six working groups.

* The agitators continued their harassment by filing a complaint with the organizing committee that our commission was invalid because we did not continue in the plenary which they made impossible to conduct. Further they complained that our consensus was illegitimate because it did not count the voices and the votes of those who would oppress us.

* On Thursday, August 30th at a press conference we called, the very same thing happened. A group hostile to our concerns invaded the press conference and shouted it down too, so that we were not able to continue. The din created by agitators chanting Zionism is Racism prevented journalists from asking us questions.

Furthermore, there has been a steady stream of individual incidents of people from our caucus being threatened, verbally abused and harassed for no other reason than that they are Jewish and stood up for the rights of the Jewish people. The overall impression and effect was to make us feel unwelcome and unwanted.

The grounds of this conference have been an arena of antisemitism, a stadium of hatred. We have seen the continuous circulation of virulent antisemitic hate propaganda - Jews with hooked noses, blood dripping from fangs, with pots of money surrounding the victims, distributed on the grounds of this NGO Forum in officially-sanctioned booths of participants. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, along with other traditional antisemitic literature, is on sale at this conference. Antisemitic material that violates international human rights standards as hate propaganda is freely distributed.

The organizers of this conference have done nothing to prevent this dissemination. By this failure, they have shirked their responsibility. Indeed, some of the organizers have actively participated in it.

Individual Jewish participants here were harassed and intimidated. At the rally yesterday, there was a poster saying "Hitler should have finished the job". At another rally during the conference, a person shouted "kill the Jews".

Within the Conference grounds, clothing is freely distributed with the official NGO World Conference logo inciting hatred and violence towards the Jewish state. Marches and chants have gone on almost continuously throughout the Conference of an antisemitic nature, equating Zionism, the Jewish assertion of the right to self determination with racism.

There have been consistent attempts not only to shut us up, but appropriate our voice. The word "antisemitism" which was coined in the 19th century by William Marr of Germany to describe his opposition to Jews and Judaism, and has consistently been used ever since as meaning hatred of Jews, is now - in this document - taken away from us and said to mean something altogether different. This redefinition of antisemitism is an attempt, like Holocaust denial and Holocaust minimization, to deny our victimization

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. You're two and a half years late

from the Israel/Palestine forum guidleines:

New threads must be based on a recently-published news item or op-ed piece. They may not be based on editorial cartoons or photographs. Citations and references should include a link to the original source. Exceptions will be allowed if, based on prior approval, the moderators feel a thread is appropriate.
All threads must be based on material originally published no more than 3 weeks ago.

[undergroundrailroad]

2. Locking per I/P Guidelines.

Not a recent article or op-ed.



Undergroundrailroad
DU Moderator
I/P, F/A Affairs