October 18, 2008 – New York – The American Jewish Committee (AJC) has written to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to express deep concerns about deleterious developments regarding preparations for next year’s Durban Review Conference.

In their letter to High Commissioner Navanethem Pilay, AJC President Richard J. Sideman and Executive Director David A. Harris called on her “to make sure that the 2001 Durban debacle is not repeated and that the 2009 Review Conference remains true to its original principles., which we support.”

The full text of the AJC letter follows:

October 17, 2008 

Dear High Commissioner Pillay:

We write to express the American Jewish Committee’s deep concerns regarding the recent developments at the Second Substantive Session of the Preparatory Committee for the Durban Review Conference, currently held in Geneva.

As you know, the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, convened in September 2001 in Durban, became a forum to attack Israel, invoke the infamous allegation that Zionism is a form of racism, deny the uniqueness of the Holocaust, and distort the meaning of the term anti-Semitism. The final documents of the conference were eventually cleansed of most of the contentious language, but only after the U.S. and Israel withdrew from the conference. Worse than the official conference was the NGO Forum, in which participants openly expressed hatred toward Jews and Israel and sought to exclude and silence Jewish representatives. The Forum’s extreme declaration not only criticized Israel but sought to delegitimize its existence.  

Unfortunately, some of the forces that derailed the 2001 conference are now attempting to do the same to the Review Conference. On October 8, the Asian group submitted to the Prepcom a document that accuses Israel of “racial practices” against Palestinians, “a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity, a form of genocide,” as well as “aggression, acts of racism, and intimidation.” The Asian document reproduces almost verbatim the vitriolic rhetoric of the Tehran planning meeting in 2001 that led to the Durban debacle.

On the sidelines of the Prepcom, a group of NGOs, misleadingly presenting itself as the NGO Committee on Racism, is attempting to organize an NGO Forum for the Review Conference. The group is asking the UN to provide a venue and resources for such a forum, even though such assistance has not been authorized by the General Assembly. While we support in principle responsible NGO involvement in the Review Conference, we wish to caution against the repetition of the excesses of the 2001 NGO Forum.

The Durban conference of 2001 was a setback to the struggle against racism and racial discrimination. Rather than uniting the international community around this noble cause, it divided it. We respectfully call on you to use your executive and moral authority as High Commissioner for Human Rights to make sure that the Durban debacle is not repeated and that the Review Conference remains true to its original principles, which we support.

Respectfully,

Richard J. Sideman

David A. Harris