American Jewish Committee Sharply Criticizes UN Official's Endorsement of Arab Agenda for Durban

American Jewish Committee
Thursday, 9 August 2001

The American Jewish Committee today sharply criticized the UN Commissioner for Human Rights for encouraging Arab countries to press for inclusion of blatantly anti-Israel and anti-Jewish statements in the World Conference Against Racism final document.

"We find your insistence that the Palestinian–Israeli conflict be addressed in Durban deeply troubling. This issue is simply not germane to a conference on racism and the appropriate means to combat racism," AJC Executive Director David A. Harris wrote in a letter to UN Commissioner Mary Robinson. Mr. Harris noted that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is regarded by the United States and other governments as "fundamentally a political conflict, not a racial or religious" one, and thus beyond the scope of the Durban forum.

Reacting to Mrs. Robinson's speech today to the World Conference Against Racism preparatory conference in Geneva, Mr. Harris wrote that her statement "gave sanction to the continued, unproductive and distracting lobbying and negotiating on Middle East language that has afflicted the current Geneva prepcon and so many Conference planning sessions before it."

In addition, Mr. Harris criticized the UN official's "unbalanced rendering" of the dangers confronting both Israelis and Palestinians in their conflict, saying a passage in today's speech contained "a not-so-subtle undercurrent of condemnation of Israel's self-defensive and legitimate steps to combat terror along the lines of today's horrific suicide bombing in Jerusalem."

Mr. Harris also protested Mrs. Robinson's equation, as expressed in today's speech, of the "historical wounds of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust," on the one hand, and "the accumulated wounds of displacement and military occupation on the other."

"Drawing such an analogy can only be seen as diminishing the terrible legacy of 2000 years of hatred, oppression and slaughter of the Jewish people, culminating with the Holocaust," wrote Mr. Harris. Indeed, the Holocaust was "the most monstrous genocidal act of human history," and the act "that moved the conscience of the world to establish the United Nations," Mr. Harris said.

Mr. Harris told Mrs. Robinson that the "noble objectives" of the Durban conference were being undermined by the "sworn enemies of Israel who have relentlessly pressed" for inclusion of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the forum's agenda. Rather than "holding firm" against such efforts – alongside the United States, which insists that the conference avoid extraneous issues – the UN official's speech threatened to "prolong and exacerbate" the agenda dispute, Mr. Harris said.

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