The Obama administration is facing growing protests against American participation in the Durban II conference scheduled for April, which is expected to repeat the anti-Israel tone at the 2001 conference held in Durban, South Africa. This year’s meeting retains the name but will meet in Geneva.
Elie Wiesel, Minister of Welfare Yitzchak Herzog (Labor), the Anti-Defamation League and the Republican Party Jewish Coalition are among dozens of public figures and groups rallying support for an American boycott of the Durban Review Conference, sponsored by the United Nations.
The parley is scheduled to begin at U.N. headquarters in Geneva in mid-April, overlapping with Holocaust Remembrance Day. Libya is leading the conference’s preparatory committee, and Iran is a deputy leader.
Herzog called on United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is scheduled to visit Israel next week, to boycott Durban II.
The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) urged their representatives in Congress to demand that the U.S. withdraw from participation in the Durban II conference. The Obama administration has reversed the policy of the Bush government, and officials have said they would consider attending Durban II in order to work against anti-Israeli resolutions. The U.S. walked out of Durban I because of the singling out of Israel for alleged racism, and Canada already has stated it will boycott this year’s convention.
"President Obama's decision to send a U.S. delegation to the planning sessions for Durban II is an extremely disturbing change in American foreign policy regarding Israel,” RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said. The government has not yet decided whether to attend the April conference.
Anne Bayefsky, who heads the Eye on the U.N. watchdog group, wrote in Forbes magazine this week under the headline The Obama Administration Sacrifices Israel, “State Department officials and a member of the American Durban II delegation claimed the United States had worked actively to oppose efforts to brand Israel as racist in the committee drafting a Durban II declaration. The trouble is that they didn't.”
She explained, “The U.S. delegates had made no objection to a new proposal to nail Israel in an anti-racism manifesto that makes no other country-specific claims.”
Bayefsky also pointed out that a Palestinian Authority proposal for “international protection of the Palestinian people throughout the occupied Palestinian territory” effectively claims that Arabs are victims of alleged Israeli racism and that the U.N. should protect them.
She said that the PA call “for ... implementation of international legal obligations, including the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the wall..." is an attempt to change an "advisory opinion" into a "legal obligation."
“It is impossible to argue that their [American] silence was unintended,” Bayefsky wrote. “Over the course of the week's negotiations the American delegation had objected to a number of [other] specific proposals. They had no trouble declaring ‘we share reservations on this paragraph,’ in the context of a demand to criminalize profiling. They ‘called for the deletion’ of provisions undermining free speech like the suggestion to ‘take firm action against negative stereotyping of religions and defamation of religious personalities, holy books, scriptures and symbols.
“Their silence when it came to Israel was, therefore, deafening. It also had the very concrete result of not placing the Palestinian paragraph in dispute, and the diplomatic rule of thumb is that paragraphs that have not been flagged as controversial cannot be reopened for discussion, as negotiations finalize an end product.
The American delegates also remained silent when the preparatory committee, with Iran’s urging, rejected a European Union (EU) for condemnation of Holocaust denial.