Jerusalem - Israel will boycott the United Nations conference
against racism to be held in April in Geneva, Foreign Minister Tzipi
Livni announced Wednesday.
Israel will not participate and will not legitimize the 'Durban 2'
Conference, she told North American Jewish community leaders
assembling in Jerusalem.
The country threatened already earlier this year to boycott the
event, if like the previous UN anti-racism conference in Durban, South
Africa of 2001 it would again focus excessively on the Jewish state to
the exclusion of human rights violations elsewhere in the world.
The conference this spring is to be a review of the 2001 conference
in Durban. In addition to Durban, two more World Conference Against
Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia were held in 1983 and 1978,
both in Geneva.
The last conference in the South African port city in September
2001 was widely seen as a failure, and was slammed for having singled
out Israel at the expense of a host of other countries with
contentious human rights records.
'The Durban Conference of 2001 became a forum for pernicious
accusations and incitement against Israel, attacks against Zionism
libeling it as a form of racism, denial of the unique and special
nature of the Holocaust, and a distortion of the meaning of the term
anti-Semitism,' a statement from Livni's office said.
'Although we had many reasons to believe that the Review Conference
will be a repetition of Durban 1, Israel announced in February 2008
that it would wait for an assurance that the incitement and gross
excesses of 2001 will not be repeated in the upcoming Review
Conference,' she said.
'Since then, unfortunately, we have not seen any proof that things
would be better.'
She charged that 'once again' anti-Israeli Arab and Moslem groups
were trying to control the conference's agenda and use it against
Israel.
A draft outcome paper submitted by Asian participants 'named or
singled out' no particular country except for Israel,' she said.
'During recent months, we expressed the hope that the language of
hatred will not repeat itself. We declared that we will not agree to
the singling out of Israel,' she said.
'Despite our efforts and those of friendly countries, for whose
position we are grateful, the conference appears to be heading once
again towards becoming an anti-Israeli tribunal, which has nothing to
do with fighting racism.'
Israel also called on other countries 'not to participate in a
conference which seeks to legitimize hatred and extremism under the
banner of the 'fight against racism.''
At the 2001 conference in Durban, Arab and Muslim states had
demanded the closing statement of the conference equate Zionism with
racism, said Israel's policies in the occupied territories amounted to
'ethnic cleansing' and used the term 'holocaust' to describe the
killing of almost 4,900 Palestinians in now eight years of mutual
violence.
Pro-Palestinian activists had also staged protests outside the
conference, in which they held up signs equating the Jewish Star of
David to the Nazi Swastika, chanted 'kill the Jews' and sold copies of
the notorious 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' a forged, early 20th
century anti-Semitic document.
The United States, followed by Israel, had walked angrily out the
conference.
Israelis have often complained of a strong anti-Israel bias in many
UN and other international forums, where it is outvoted by pro-
Palestinian, Arab and Muslim blocs.
USA
Your Talkback on this Story