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August 3, 2001/Av 14, 5761, Vol. 53, No.43
Durban conference a real threat
MICHAEL J. JORDAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - The renewed campaign to equate Zionism with racism is not merely a quest by the Palestinians and their Arab allies for a symbolic or rhetorical victory, Jewish activists say.
Rather, the campaign aims to undermine the moral legitimacy of the State of Israel, these activists say, and subsequently would brand pro-Israel Jews everywhere as racists.
Delegates from some 100 nations are meeting in Geneva, hammering out the language of the declaration that will be on the table at "The World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance," beginning Aug. 31 in Durban, South Africa.
Among the phrases under consideration is whether Israel - founded on an ideology "based on racial supremacy" - is an "apartheid, racist and fascist state" committing a "holocaust," "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" against the Palestinians in its "quest to create a Jewish settler state."
Also upsetting to Jews is use of the term "holocaust" with a lower-case "h" and portrayal of Jewish settlements on the West Bank as crimes against humanity.
"If this resolution were revived," said Harris Schoenberg, chairman of the U.N. caucus of Jewish nongovernmental organizations, "the terrible impact would be renewed demonization of Israel, and it could have a devastating effect on the small and exposed Jewish communities around the world."
Adds Amy Goldstein, national director of Israel, Zionist and international affairs for Hadassah: The Women's Zionist Organization of America: "This is a smoke screen to deny Jews a basic human right - the right of Jewish self-determination."
In the process, Jewish observers say the relative ease with which the huge bloc of Arab and Muslim states has been able to hijack preparations for the conference further erodes the image of the United Nations and underscores its need for reform.
It was essentially the same crowd that in May conspired to oust the United States from the Geneva-based U.N. Commission for Human Rights, and which repeatedly pushes for U.N. resolutions that lay all blame for the past 10 months of Middle East violence at Israel's feet.
Observers say that such actions reinforce Israeli perceptions of the United Nations as irrevocably biased and unworthy of a significant role in the Mideast conflict.
If so, that would seem to damage Palestinian interests: Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat routinely pushes for the "internationalization" of the conflict and a diminished role for the United States.
Now, however, growing numbers of U.S. and U.N. officials are speaking out against reviving "Z=R," the equation between Zionism and racism.
President George W. Bush's administration is threatening to boycott the conference if the Z=R resolution - which his father helped defeat in 1991 after 16 years on the U.N. books - appears on the conference agenda.
The United States boycotted the two previous world conferences on racism, in 1978 and 1983, for the same reason.
The Bush administration also opposes the efforts of an African bloc to denounce the legacy of slavery and push for financial reparations from the United States and European colonial powers.
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