What is Durban IV All About--What You Should Do About it?
Canada has acted responsibly and withdrawn from the planned 20th anniversary event celebrating the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, because the truth is, the Conference was the birthing ground for a global campaign of Antisemitism which has continued and expanded to this day. Launched in Durban, South Africa, where apartheid had been experienced, one would have thought that intelligent people from governments around the world and the NGO social justice sector would not have been so duped as to label Israel an apartheid state. Money, influence, and evil have their way and racism was not conquered in Durban!
Durban IV, as with Durban I, in 2001 and subsequently Durban II and III, will revisit, and likely re-invigorate the hateful discriminatory declaration that sought to isolate Israel, demonize and demoralize her. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement was launched, the University of Toronto inaugurated its Israel Apartheid Week of slander and lies, and things have escalated from there. Today, the truly uninformed as well as the misinformed, and the antisemitic enemies of Israel and the Jewish people, accept the propaganda and push the agenda that Israel is evil and doesn’t have the right to exist.
In Canada this is also being played out in our federal election with a coordinated effort by over 50 NGOs to “sell” the political candidates on the notion that they must stand against Israel and support “Palestine’ to earn votes. The VotePalestine website is rife with lies and vacuous statements about the suffering Palestinian people. That there are serious refugee issues as in Afghanistan, wars and terrorism in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Nigeria, and elsewhere is a side show to the only cause these antisemites consider—the eradication of Israel. Like the Nazis who wanted to eradicate the Jews, these folks have no alternate plan than to eliminate Israel, “from the river to the sea,” nothing for health and education of Arab children, building infrastructure and agriculture for the people they so rabidly claim to defend. Their sole goal, as in the Hamas charter, is to end the one and only Jewish state. Is this not racism? These are the folks you’ll meet at the UN conference; these are representative of the NGOs that in a parallel forum in 2001, condemned Israel. These are the foes of justice, peace, equality, anti-racism.
Already 13 other countries have also withdrawn in advance of the September 22nd celebration in NY at UN headquarters. We need to see this fakery event cancelled. There is no social justice in promulgating antisemitism. Here is what you will see on the website for this conference: "Just as the United Nations stood up against apartheid, you can be certain that we are at your side in the struggle to end all forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia."
Wouldn’t it be nice if it were so, but just as the UN Human Rights Council has never defended human rights nor denigrated the perpetrators of human rights violations, but year after year sanctions Israel, so this conference is expected to reinforce the Durban Declaration which as described by UN Watch, “has been used to promote racism, intolerance, antisemitism and Holocaust denial, and to erode freedom of speech and Israel’s right to exist.”
Read Key Facts about Durban IV. Do not be accepting of lies, be informed.
Read about the 30 European Parliamentarians launching a Campaign to withdraw from Durban IV. Be active, take action.
Watch NGO Monitor’s Professor Gerald Steinberg in conversation with the Hon. Irwin Cotler and others, explaining the failure of Durban I and “20 Years of Hijacking Human Rights – The Lasting Impact of Durban.”
Read of Celebrate Israel Campaign launched by the International Coalition for Israel—Samoa and Venezuela first off the mark:
“The objective of this online celebration which is being hosted by the International Coalition for Israel (ICI)* is to demonstrate worldwide support for Israel at a time when the United Nations is making its own plans to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the failed Durban World Conference against Racism.” “Holocaust survivor and former US Congressman Tom Lantos has rightly called it “his worst experience of antisemitism after Nazi-Germany.”