Dubious aims perhaps

Editorial

The blood-curdling anti-Semitism that exemplified the Durban conference seven years ago is slated for a rerun next April.

In September 2001, the United Nations held its first World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, in Durban, South Africa. The conference lived up to its name in the most atrocious manner. Ostensibly a conference to tackle the panorama of intolerance in the world, the Durban conference devolved into a case-in-point of the potential for human hatred. The most crude anti-Semitic libels were spread, including distribution of classic catechisms of anti-Semitism such as The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

The draft statement for the 2009 Durban follow-up conference, issued last week by organizers, summarizes what they expect to be the outcome of the conference – and guess what? It's all the Jews' fault. We're not sure of the purpose of a conference when the outcome is determined half a year in advance, but this is hardly the most perplexing aspect of the case. The document calls Israel's Law of Return "a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity, a form of genocide and a serious threat to international peace and security."

And this is the language from conference organizers – a committee co-chaired by Libya, Iran, Pakistan and Cuba. We could not make this up: the countries organizing this international conference on racism and intolerance are among the gravest offenders of social justice and human equality in the history of human rights violations. And as they deflect attention from their own domestic atrocities by transubstantiating their sins onto Israel and calling for its crucifixion, the citizens of Libya, Iran, Pakistan and Cuba continue to live under the world's most repressive regimes, where minority rights are tragically absent.

Saner heads in the UN opted against a parallel conference in April for nongovernmental organizations, which was the source of most of the medieval-style Jew-bashing in 2001. But some "activists" at last week's preparatory meeting in Switzerland seem to have hope that such an opportunity for rage against Jews will indeed take place next spring. Moreover, given the stewardship of the conference, it hardly seems necessary for a parallel NGO conference to validate the Jew-hatred of its predecessor – the leader of one of the conference's co-chairing countries has called for the total annihilation of Israel and the other three countries are not noted for vast reservoirs of empathy toward the Jewish people.

The Conservative government has opted to keep Canada away from the follow-up conference and the Liberal opposition agreed. The New Democratic party agreed too, then changed its position. Ontario NDP MP Joe Comartin argues for a Canadian presence at the second conference, which has some validity in that our presence could offer a rare injection of common sense. But this reasonable position is undermined by the fact that Comartin is among the most atrocious of anti-Israel assailants in the House of Commons. Likewise, the most vocal extra-parliamentary proponents of Canada's participation are the Ontario Federation of Labor and the Canadian Arab Federation, both organizations whose position toward Israel is decidedly unsympathetic.

The debacle at Durban was not spontaneous combustion. Anti-Semitic publications and elaborate hate signage were prepared well in advance for what was clearly a premeditated attack on Israel and Jews. Despite the fastidious differentiations North American activists make between "legitimate" criticism of Israel and anti-Semitic guttersnipe, the rest of the world makes no such distinction. The Durban conference was a premeditated assault on Jews and the follow-up conference intends to pick up where Durban I left off.

But does it really matter? Do a cluster of misguided bigots misplacing blame for global injustice have a real impact on the body politic? In a world where a Durban conference can take place under the auspices of the United Nations, it is difficult to discern anti-Semitic cause and effect.

From a national security point of view, there is an issue that has been, as far as we can determine, completely ignored.

There is a panorama of 9/11 conspiracy theories, most of them involving Jews, and here's another: Is it possible that the Durban conference's timing, immediately before Sept. 11, 2001, was not a coincidence at all? Could it be that the global NGOs whipping up an anti-Semitic frenzy in Durban were intended to return to their places of origin at about the time of the terror attacks in order to spread a global pogrom in the chaos emanating from the 9/11 attacks?

This is not to suggest that participants in Durban knew of the impending attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, but were they unwitting players in a larger plan for mobilizing international anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism? That is one thing the world would do well to consider before the Durban reunion next April.

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