Ruth Wedgwood: Zionism and Racism, Again ... Durban II
[Ruth Wedgwood teaches international law at Johns Hopkins University and is a member of the Hoover Institution’s task force on law and national security.]
It took the Obama administration some time to get the full picture. But in the end it has apparently realized that U.S. participation in the United Nation’s Durban Review Conference on Racism, set for April 2009, otherwise known as Durban II, would be a fool’s errand. The first Durban confab held in South Africa, just before the events of September 11, 200l, should have been warning enough. A potentially serious discussion on the challenges of multi-ethnic societies was brazenly transformed into a show trial of Israel and the United States, prompting Secretary of State Colin Powell to lead the American delegation in a dramatic walkout.
After sampling the preparations for this misguided sequel in a mid-winter visit to Geneva, the American delegation had no good news to report. There were consultations galore with other states taking part in the Durban process, but the conceit that staying involved in the “process” could improve the outcome soon fell apart. The United States has been forced to announce, at least for the moment, that it will not have any part in the Durban follow-up unless a different agenda is put on the table.
Durban II is a diplomatic case of back to the future. The thinly disguised ambition of the participants is to rebrand the Israeli state as a criminal form of racism and apartheid. The other focus is to condemn “Islamophobia.” This neologism is not found in the Oxford English Dictionary, but it is intended as a potent tool to limit the criticism of the political attitudes and behavior of Islamic states, as well as any critical exegesis of the teachings of Islam itself.
The maneuvering at Durban II has not taken place in a vacuum. Indeed, it has gained strength from a recent UN “reform” that ran off the rails. In 2005, Western governments proposed a new, and smaller, Human Rights Council, to replace the desultory meetings of the older UN Human Rights Commission. The hope was to have a Universal Periodic Review that would assure that all states were examined, and that rights-respecting regimes took part. But “agency capture” is a well-known phenomenon in any political setting, and a gallery of nasty regimes was elected to the Council through the bloc-voting and regional solidarity that pervades the UN. In this setting, Libya became chair of the committee, setting the agenda for the renewed Durban Conference, and Cuba, Iran, and Russia were among the vice-chairs.
In a sense, then, the misspent energies of the new Human Rights Council have made Durban II largely redundant, even from the viewpoint of the most severe critics of Israel. For the last three years, the UN Human Rights Council has made Israel its obsessive focus. Special sessions are called, and special rapporteurs are regularly dispatched with one-sided missions to address the allegations mounted against the Jewish state. Though each country will eventually undergo a three-hour review of its own in the Universal Periodic Review process, these are as often filled with speeches of congratulation as cogent criticism. With Israel as the placeholder for the Council’s spare time, there is little reason to address the repression in Burma, or the civil war in Sri Lanka, or the unchecked cholera epidemic and government violence in Zimbabwe, or the political violence in Kenya...
Read entire article at World Affairs
It took the Obama administration some time to get the full picture. But in the end it has apparently realized that U.S. participation in the United Nation’s Durban Review Conference on Racism, set for April 2009, otherwise known as Durban II, would be a fool’s errand. The first Durban confab held in South Africa, just before the events of September 11, 200l, should have been warning enough. A potentially serious discussion on the challenges of multi-ethnic societies was brazenly transformed into a show trial of Israel and the United States, prompting Secretary of State Colin Powell to lead the American delegation in a dramatic walkout.
After sampling the preparations for this misguided sequel in a mid-winter visit to Geneva, the American delegation had no good news to report. There were consultations galore with other states taking part in the Durban process, but the conceit that staying involved in the “process” could improve the outcome soon fell apart. The United States has been forced to announce, at least for the moment, that it will not have any part in the Durban follow-up unless a different agenda is put on the table.
Durban II is a diplomatic case of back to the future. The thinly disguised ambition of the participants is to rebrand the Israeli state as a criminal form of racism and apartheid. The other focus is to condemn “Islamophobia.” This neologism is not found in the Oxford English Dictionary, but it is intended as a potent tool to limit the criticism of the political attitudes and behavior of Islamic states, as well as any critical exegesis of the teachings of Islam itself.
The maneuvering at Durban II has not taken place in a vacuum. Indeed, it has gained strength from a recent UN “reform” that ran off the rails. In 2005, Western governments proposed a new, and smaller, Human Rights Council, to replace the desultory meetings of the older UN Human Rights Commission. The hope was to have a Universal Periodic Review that would assure that all states were examined, and that rights-respecting regimes took part. But “agency capture” is a well-known phenomenon in any political setting, and a gallery of nasty regimes was elected to the Council through the bloc-voting and regional solidarity that pervades the UN. In this setting, Libya became chair of the committee, setting the agenda for the renewed Durban Conference, and Cuba, Iran, and Russia were among the vice-chairs.
In a sense, then, the misspent energies of the new Human Rights Council have made Durban II largely redundant, even from the viewpoint of the most severe critics of Israel. For the last three years, the UN Human Rights Council has made Israel its obsessive focus. Special sessions are called, and special rapporteurs are regularly dispatched with one-sided missions to address the allegations mounted against the Jewish state. Though each country will eventually undergo a three-hour review of its own in the Universal Periodic Review process, these are as often filled with speeches of congratulation as cogent criticism. With Israel as the placeholder for the Council’s spare time, there is little reason to address the repression in Burma, or the civil war in Sri Lanka, or the unchecked cholera epidemic and government violence in Zimbabwe, or the political violence in Kenya...