Atlanta-Journal Staff
Tuesday, August 28, 2001


THE WORLD CONFERENCE on racism, by the numbers:

Cost: about $14 million

Attendance: 6,000 delegates from more than 160 countries

Draft declaration on U.N. Web site: about 36 pages

Planning: about 4 years

Conference length: one week

Countries targeted in declaration: One.

It's interesting, considering all the racism and intolerance around the world, that the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance beginning Friday in Durban, South Africa, could find just one country to target in its declaration: Israel.

Not surprisingly, Israel reiterated Monday that it won't attend the conference unless the anti-Israel references are removed. And we were more than pleased to hear that Secretary of State Colin Powell won't be attending. Powell's presence --- or the presence of any high-level U.S. delegation, for that matter --- would assign a legitimacy to the Durban deliberations that they do not deserve.

President Bush, meanwhile, is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't send a delegation; debate surrounding the conference has made that clear. But even if the United States passes on the conference, as it did in 1978 and 1983, it is making an important contribution: It is declaring, once again, that this country will not tolerate the blatant political manipulation of a conference whose purported intention is to make the world a better place.

Self-preservation clearly is the name of the game ahead of the conference. India is fighting to avoid a discussion of its caste system. China's trying to avoid a discussion of Tibet. Africa sought reparations for slavery from centuries past, yet avoids targeting the ongoing practice of slavery in Sudan. No one is discussing the persecution of white farmers in Zimbabwe. Muslim states push to denounce Israel while fighting to prevent any discussion of sexual orientation.

Easy targets and deep pockets --- capitalism, industry, developed nations and especially the United States --- will abound at the conference, but the sad truth is that this conference will produce no practical solutions and no valid critiques. While there are huge tragedies and injustices around the world, this $14 million boondoggle will not be the place to solve them.

The outcome will be to reccommend harsh legislation and reparations. They know this will cause backlash - that's why they are doing it.

If you ever read "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, there is a scene where young Newt Hoeniker has ants in a jar. He makes the observation that you can't make them fight each other unless you shake the jar. I could never write like Vonnegut - you have to read the book to get the full impact of that little vignette.

U.S. reps had urged a conciliatory tone
Rachel L. Swarns - New York Times
Saturday, September 1, 2001


Durban, South Africa --- Yasser Arafat denounced Israel as a racist colonial power at a U.N. conference on intolerance Friday night, just hours after one of his senior aides announced that the Palestinians would reject a proposed declaration that labeled Israel a racist state.

The reversal came after the Rev. Jesse Jackson said he had brokered an agreement to eliminate language in conference documents that the Bush administration considered offensive.

The language described the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza as a ''new kind of apartheid.''

In a handwritten statement drafted after the meeting between Jackson and Arafat, a senior Palestinian official suggested that the Palestinian Authority, which is led by Arafat, wanted to quell the furor surrounding the language.

The official, Nabil Shaath, the minister of planning and international cooperation, said the U.N. meeting --- the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance --- was ''too important to let it fail for whatever reason.''

Shaath wrote in his statement: ''We are not interested in raising an ideological issue against Israel. Therefore, we will not support statements against Zionism, nor are we going to support statements equating Zionism with racism.''

But hours later, Arafat backtracked, saying Israel was characterized by a ''supremacist mentality, a mentality of racial discrimination.''

''Our tortured Palestinian people, faced with this harsh treatment with this settler colonialism and racial discrimination, looks to this conference to stand by us, to stand by justice, to stand by international legitimacy, which is now being trodden upon by the Israeli government,'' Arafat said during a roundtable discussion on racism with the leaders of 14 countries.

The Bush administration refused to send Secretary of State Colin Powell to the meeting on racism, sending a mid-level delegation instead.

The heated debate over the issue has also touched off shouting matches here between Palestinian and Jewish delegates and has threatened to eclipse a meeting dedicated to tolerance and international understanding.

The back-and-forth over the Palestinian position overshadowed a day in which U.N. officials urged delegates to embrace South Africa's model of racial reconciliation.

Hoping to break the diplomatic impasse, several black American members of Congress met privately with Arafat.

The meeting was arranged by Jackson, who persuaded Shaath to write his conciliatory statement Friday morning.

But while the Palestinians were meeting with Reps. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.,) and Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas), Arafat learned of gunfire being exchanged between the Israelis and the Palestinians in the territory of Hebron.

> ON THE WEB: World Conference Against Racism: www.un.org/WCAR

Bitter Accusations
Rights Groups Split Over Condemnation of Israel
The Associated Press


D U R B A N, South Africa, Sept. 2 — A human rights forum coinciding with the World Conference Against Racism ended in rancor today when language equating Zionism with racism and calls for international sanctions against Israel was adopted in its final documents.


International human rights organizations rejected the forum's declaration, which was presented to the United Nations to be incorporated into that conference's document.
"Israel has committed serious crimes against the Palestinian people, but it is simply not accurate to use the word genocide and wrong to equate Zionism with racism," Reed Brody, the advocacy director for Human Rights Watch said.

Jewish and Christian groups walked out when it became clear paragraphs condemning Israel for genocide against the Palestinians would be adopted.

Palestinian Rights Dominated Meeting

The non-governmental organization forum included 166 rights groups from around the world, but the question of Palestinian rights dominated the meeting and other groups found it difficult to have their complaints heard.

Pro-Palestinian groups effectively lobbied a majority of groups attending the conference to equate Zionism - the movement to establish and maintain a Jewish state - with racism. Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories was also decried as colonialism - a potent political label in much of the world.

The document brands "Israel as a racist apartheid state" and calls for an end to the "ongoing$ iwraeli systematic perpetration of racist crimes, including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing."

The forum also recommended that the United Nations reinstate a resolution equating Zionism with racism, the establishment of a U.N. committee to prosecute Israeli war crimes and the complete isolation of Israel as an apartheid state.

Shawqi Issa, spokesman for the Arab caucus at the forum, said he thought the document was "a very good one."

"It's just facts. The Israeli government is a racist government … and the Israeli government is an apartheid government. These are facts, and we can prove it," he said.

"This is what should be from the (non-governmental organization). They are not like the governments. They are here to protect the victims of racism," he said.

U.N. Official Regrets Zionism Language

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who has worked to allay the controversy over the condemnation of Israel at the world racism conference, criticized the declaration, saying she regretted the language equating Zionism with racism.

Palestinians have the right to protest their victimization, but "it is not appropriate that text emerged that revictimizes and is hurtful in itself," said Robinson, who is also secretary-general of the U.N. conference.

Brody said most of the forum's document was an eloquent condemnation of racist and discriminatory practices around the world, "it's just unfortunate that the use of inaccurate and intemperate language may overshadow all of that."

Stacy Burdett, an associate director with the Anti-Defamation League, said Jewish groups were discriminated against from when planning for the forum began to the moment it ended.

"They've invalidated themselves. A conference against racism has turned into a conference promoting racism," Burdett said.

A spokesman for the Israeli delegation to the U.N. conference said despite attempts by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Robinson to ensure similar language does not end up in the official conference's final document, there was still a risk.

"I hope people at the conference will notice what happened and take it as a warning, a warning of what should not happen at the U.N. conference. Hate language is taking over," spokesman Noam Katz said. "It totally contradicts the aims of the World Conference Against Racism, to fight racism and promote tolerance."


Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

DURBAN, South Africa (Reuters) 9/3/01 - The United States angrily pulled out of a U.N. racism conference on Monday in protest of attempts by delegates to single out Israel as a racist state.

Israel swiftly followed suit, announcing in Jerusalem that it too was withdrawing from the meeting that runs until Friday.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a statement:

"Today, I have instructed our representatives at the world conference to return home."

His statement was issued simultaneously in Washington and in Durban, South Africa, where the conference against racism was in its fourth day.

In Jerusalem, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told reporters: "We have instructed our delegation in Durban to come back home. We regret very much the very bizarre show in Durban. An important convention that's supposed to defend human rights became a source of hatred."

He called the activities at the conference an "unbelievable attempt to smear Israel."

The United Nations called the conference to map out an international strategy for tackling racism around the world, but attention had focused heavily on the Middle East.

Pressure to address the Palestinian-Israeli conflict had increased with 11 months of violence that erupted following a breakdown in peacemaking.

More than 700 people -- 551 Palestinians and 157 Israelis -- have been killed since a Palestinian revolt erupted last September after peace talks had hit deadlock.

CONFERENCE SAID TO BE "HIJACKED"

"It seems that despite extraordinary efforts by the American government reaching back many months, it will prove impossible for the American delegation to continue participating at this conference," Congressman Tom Lantos, a U.S. delegate, said.

"Those who have made it their goal to hijack the conference for their propaganda purposes apparently have shown in the course of the day a degree of rigidity and unwillingness to compromise," the Democratic Party lawmaker told reporters.

Diplomats had desperately tried to find middle ground between Israel and the United States, which objected strongly to the draft declarations, and Arab and Islamic states which wanted Israeli action in the West Bank and Gaza Strip condemned.

Draft conference texts had referred to Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories as "a new apartheid" and a "crime against humanity."

Norway, which brokered the 1993 Oslo interim peace accord between the Palestinians and Israel, had been asked to seek compromise wording acceptable to Arabs and Israel and Washington.

The United States and Israel had said they could simply abandon the conference. Powell stayed away over the issue.

Earlier in the day Israel hit back at its Arab critics, accusing them of encouraging racial hatred and seeking to hijack the meeting for political ends.

The head of the Israeli delegation, Ambassador Mordechai Yedid, said references to Israel in draft texts were "the most racist declaration in a major international organization since the Second World War."

HARSH WORDS FOR ARAFAT

The envoy had especially harsh words for Palestinian President Yasser Arafat who had told the conference on the opening day that Israeli actions in the occupied territories amounted to "ethnic cleansing."

He said Arafat had delivered a message of hate.

Yedid, a senior foreign ministry official, said the conference had been convened to combat the "pernicious evil" of racism but this goal was being sacrificed to a political agenda.

He said that the loser if the conference failed would not be Israel but the millions of victims of racism around the world who were looking to Durban for a sign of hope.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who left Durban on Saturday, had said that the whole event might fail unless the rows over slavery and the Middle East were resolved.

Demands by many African states for an outright apology and reparations from former slave-trading countries for 400 years of human trafficking had been resisted by Washington and several -- but not all -- European states which fear a rash of possible litigation.

IT'S A REVERSED FYLFOT (SWASTIKA)

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