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August 24, 2001/Elul 5, 5761, Vol. 53, No.46
Will Powell attend racism forum?
MICHAEL J. JORDAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - To go, or not to go?
That remains the question for the Bush administration hardly a week before the U.N. World Conference Against Racism begins in Durban, South Africa.
Jewish activists assume that Israel will be singled out for harsh criticism at the conference, and are divided as to whether U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell should attend, should boycott and send a lower-level delegation, or should withhold all U.S. representation.
The State Department's verdict may determine if the conference - to run from Aug. 31 to Sept. 7 - ultimately succeeds or fails.
Powell indeed is the linchpin, analysts say: His appearance would give the proceedings a stamp of credibility, while his absence would indicate that the world's lone superpower believes Arab and Muslim efforts to turn the meeting into an anti-Israel vehicle have robbed the conference of its seriousness.
To enable Powell to attend, U.S. officials continue to work behind the scenes to remove from the conference agenda the anti-Israel vitriol and a proposed discussion of slavery reparations, according to a State Department official.
Early this week, the odds seemed to be that Powell would not go to Durban but would send a lower-level delegation.
Regardless, Jewish activists on their way to Durban to monitor the proceedings are resigned to the likelihood that Israel will take a rhetorical beating.
Among the broadsides expected in Durban, conference participants may: denigrate Zionism as racism; accuse Israel of being an apartheid state; exclude anti-Semitism from the various forms of racism; minimize the Holocaust as merely one of many instances of genocide rather than a unique event; and equate the suffering of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to that of Jews under the Nazis.
"We're going there with our eyes wide open, knowing that the next two weeks won't be a picnic," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an observer of numerous U.N. preparatory meetings.
The Reform movement's Religious Action Center wants Powell to attend - "as long as the possibility exists that the noxious language might be removed, or modified in a way which would make it acceptable," RAC Director Rabbi David Saperstein wrote in an Aug. 16 letter to Powell.
JTA correspondent Matthew E. Berger in Washington contributed to this report.
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