Laboring at the UN Conference on Racism


I've returned from the Labor Day weekend in the US and found that the world is pretty much how I left it the last time that I wrote an editorial. Israelis are hunting down Palestinian terror groups and terrorists are doing their best to kill Israelis. The Palestinian Authority has done the absolute minimum to reduce the violence and Israel is acting as a sovereign state should in defending its citizenry.

That set the backdrop to the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance being held in Durban, South Africa from 31 August to 7 September 2001. The agenda was a laudable one, to discuss issues ranging from racial intolerance and slavery to human rights. Slavery, and possible reparations or apologies, was a potential blockbuster issue.

However, the agenda has been hijacked to be a referrendum on Israel's practices vis-a-vis the Palestinians. Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasir Arafat has used the conference as a platform to openly denounce Israel's practices, calling Israel an aparteid state and worse. Israel and the US walked out on the conference as it continued to descend into a personal attack on Israel - Arafat has all but declared in an open forum that it doesn't consider that Israel has a right to exist. When compromise language that would have all but resurrected the canard of Zionism equals racism, the Israeli and US delegation walked.

The European Union representatives, although they were not happy with the proceedings have stuck it out - so far. They are considering withdrawing from the conference because the event has turned the way it has.

This should have been foreseen. The participants in the conference are not the paragons of human rights. Many of the UN's member states regularly practice racism, xenophobia, and intolerance of other religious, social, political, sexual orders. Sudan, India, and China are regularly mentioned as violating human rights or failing to accept that their citizens deserve equal protections under the law.

Yet, they are some of the very nations that are standing judgment on Israel. Something is very wrong when the inmates are running the asylum.

The copyright of the article Laboring at the UN Conference on Racism in Middle East Politics is owned by lawhawk. Permission to republish Laboring at the UN Conference on Racism in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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