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A Blast from the Past: The Upcoming Durban III Conference (September 2011)
(Institute for Contemporary Affairs-Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Alan Baker - The 2001 Durban World Conference against Racism was abused by Muslim, Arab and other states and anti-Israel non-governmental organizations to single out Israel in what became an anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hate-fest, permanently tainting the name of the Durban conference. As such, the conference failed to deal with the genuine problems of racism. The damage caused by the singling-out of Israel at the Durban conference laid the groundwork for a concerted campaign in the international community to delegitimize the State of Israel. The UN and its High Commissioner for Human Rights have attempted to re-legitimize the Durban process through a Review Conference (Durban II) in Geneva in 2009, but the anti-Israel and anti-Zionist slanders were repeated at the opening session by the President of Iran, and several key states boycotted the conference. The conference outcome document reaffirmed the Durban I declaration, singling out Israel. A further attempt to re-legitimize Durban will take the form of a ten-year anniversary commemoration of the Durban conference at the UN in New York on 22 September 2011. This event will coincide with the Palestinian attempt to have the UN recognize and accept a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, in violation of the peace negotiation process. This juncture of events confirms and endorses the interconnection between the Durban process and the ongoing international campaign to delegitimize Israel. Amb. Alan Baker, Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, is former Legal Adviser to Israel's Foreign Ministry and former Ambassador of Israel to Canada. He served as Deputy Head of Israel's government delegation to the Durban I conference.