How the UN’s 2001 ‘anti-racism’ conference in Durban helped shape today’s hatred of Israel

"Durban is South Africa’s third most populous city. Situated on the Indian Ocean, it is the country’s busiest port and home to some of its loveliest beaches.

But for many, Durban has become synonymous with something entirely different, and far more sinister. Twenty-five years ago at this time, it hosted two major gatherings under the umbrella of the UN-sponsored World Conference Against Racism.

One was the official governmental conference, attended by virtually every UN member state – at least until the United States and Israel withdrew because of a concerted effort to turn the conference into an anti-Israel, antizionist onslaught...

While it was unfortunate that more countries did not join Washington and Jerusalem in leaving, some of those that remained, notably the European Union members, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, fought to prevent the worst language from being incorporated into the final text. Perhaps ironically, precisely because they needed to justify their decision to stay rather than walk out, they had to show some results.

But they also fell into a familiar negotiating trap in UN settings: anti-Israel antagonists propose extreme language in the knowledge that ‘compromise’ with the Europeans will eventually follow, yet still emerge with enough intact to claim victory.

The other gathering, the nongovernmental forum, attracted about 3,000 NGOs and roughly 8,000 participants. And this is where some of the darkest rhetoric about Jews and the Jewish state came roaring back to life...

Small in number, Jewish delegates were hounded, harassed, intimidated, threatened, and isolated. They encountered copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious forgery from the tsarist era that has caused incalculable damage to the Jewish people since its first appearance in 1903.

They faced posters and T-shirts emblazoned with the words ‘What if Hitler had won?’ The answer: ‘Israel would not exist.’

They heard Israel accused of an extraordinary catalogue of crimes – from apartheid to ethnic cleansing, from racism to war crimes...

Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in the United States Congress and another attendee, commented: ‘It was the most unabashed display of anti-Jewish hate that I have seen since that period [referring to the Holocaust].’...

And Anne Bayefsky, a professor of international law, noted: ‘I feel besieged. There’s antisemitism and hate literature at the World Racism Conference … Some of the Jewish delegates are hiding their accreditation badge.’...

Durban should be regarded as a watershed, whose reverberations echo to this day...

In 2001, only two countries withdrew from the governmental conference. When Durban II convened in 2009 to review the state of affairs, ten countries stayed away. Two years later, at Durban III, 14 countries were absent. And at Durban IV, in 2021, 38 countries refused to show up.

For those seeking to understand where we are today, going back 25 years to the infamous, game-changing World Conference Against Racism in Durban would be a good place to start."