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June 18, 2004/Sivan 29 5764, Vol. 56, No.39
U.N. to hold anti-Semitism conference
RACHEL POMERANCE
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - The first United Nations conference on anti-Semitism is a serious step forward, but the real test will be its outcome, Jewish groups say.
The daylong conference for non-governmental organ-izations, set for June 21, came at the behest of Shashi Tharoor, the U.N.'s under-secretary general for com-munications and public information.
Hundreds are expected to attend the seminar, where addresses by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and major Jewish leaders are expected to place unprece-dented attention on anti-Semitism for a U.N. forum.
"The very fact that they are having an all-day conference to address this subject at a time when the institution was not willing or able to condemn it is an important message," said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who will address the conference.
Last fall, Ireland drafted the first resolution to explicitly condemn anti-Semitism but - to the chagrin of Jewish officials - withdrew it due to fierce opposition from Arab and Muslim states.
The U.N.'s one-sided resolutions and discussions against Israel not only delegitimize the Jewish state but let "anti-Zionism become a legitimate mask for anti-Semitism," said Felice Gaer, director of the American Jewish Committee's Jacob Blaustein Institute for Human Rights.
"In a way, Annan is trying to restore the credibility of the United Nations as a body that has a universal concern to prevent the promotion of hate bigotry, discrimination, for everybody," Gaer said.
While praising the effort, Jewish officials hope the seminar results in an action plan.
"We hope that the secre-tary general will use this platform to announce concrete steps that the U.N. is ready to take in order to fight anti-Semitism," said Arye Mekel, Israel's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations.
Others say it's up to Jewish groups to plant those seeds.
The Conference of Presi-dents of Major American Jewish Organizations re-cently called on the General Assembly to adopt a resolution condemning anti-Semitism, similar to one passed at an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe conference on anti-Semitism held in Berlin in April.
Malcolm Hoenlein, exe-cutive vice chairman of the Presidents Conference, will reiterate that plea and call for internal monitoring of U.N. agencies that occasionally fall prey to anti-Semitism. He cites, for example, statements involving Holocaust denial by members of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.
At the June 21 seminar, the World Jewish Congress will plug consensus points worked out at a meeting of dozens of Jewish NGOs last week.
In his statement, WJC president Edgar Bronfman is to call for a General Assembly resolution con-demning anti-Semitism; an annual U.N. report listing anti-Semitic incidents and plans to combat them; and the appointment by Annan of an assistant to deal with the question of anti-Semitism, said the WJC's executive vice president, Elan Steinberg.
Bronfman wants to ensure the seminar is not a "one-shot event," Steinberg said.
Eve Epstein, an adviser to the U.N.'s Department of Public Information, which is coordinating the event, said she thinks the seminar "signals the U.N.'s willing-ness to influence the world's NGO's - which have, in large measure, been so unwilling to confront the issue of anti-Semitism, and indeed have sometimes contributed to its resurgence."
Epstein stressed that she was expressing her personal opinion, not that of the public information department.
"This conference is an answer to Durban," she said, referring to the U.N.'s 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, which erupted in a frenzy of anti-Semitic rhetoric and activism.
Since assuming his post a few years ago, Tharoor has considered ways to combat rising anti-Semitism, Epstein said.
Anne Bayefsky, an adjunct professor at Columbia University Law School, wrote in the Wall Street Journal: "The U.N. is an organization founded on the ashes of the Jewish people, and whose core human rights principles were drafted from the lessons of the Holocaust. The inability of the organization to address seriously one of the very evils it was intended to prevent is a scandal of global proportions."
The United Nations held a meeting last fall in which mental health experts discussed anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and religious intolerance. But most Jewish officials found the meeting, which lasted only a couple of hours, wholly unsatisfactory.
The June 21 meeting is a serious attempt to address the problem, they say.
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