Barbara Kay: Shame on the UN for commemorating 25 years of toxic antizionism

As a child in the 1950s, I remember my idealistic heart swelling as my classmates and I belted out the stirring lyrics to the anthem, “United Nations on the March,” the only contribution the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich ever wrote for Hollywood, featured in the 1943 film, Thousands Cheer.

The song had many verses, all projecting a world finally cleansed of ancient hatreds, conflict and oppression. The one that sticks in my memory goes, “As sure as the sun meets the morning/ And rivers go down to the sea/ A new day for mankind is dawning/ Our children shall live proud and free,” segueing to the chorus, “United nations on the march with flags unfurled/ Together fight for victory, a free new world.”

Swathed in the song’s sentiments, the actual United Nations officially launched in 1945. Sadly, it wasn’t long before human nature, clashing national interests, ideology, bloc voting and — yes — “ancient hatreds” converged to mock the kumbaya rhetoric surrounding the UN’s founding. Every utopian scheme needs a scapegoat for its failure to achieve its impossible goal, and the UN found its handiest popular whipping boy in Zionism.

Israel is no match for the 57 Muslim-majority members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), who are collectively consumed by Zionophobia. Even the Muslim states that cooperate with Israel in real life automatically cold-shoulder the Jewish state at the UN. From 2015 to the present, the UN General Assembly has passed 187 resolutions against Israel, and 90 resolutions against all other countries combined. If it were not for the U.S. veto in the Security Council, crippling sanctions against Israel (under Chapter VII of the UN Charter) might have accomplished what hostile armies and terrorists have so far failed to do.

On Sept. 28, the UN General Assembly will sponsor an event to commemorate the 25th anniversary of its infamous 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, the birthplace of apartheid. It immediately emerged as a complete travesty of its mission: namely, to be the official debut of global attention to racism in general. In fact, it was a weeks-long orgy of Zionophobia and Jew hatred, and the launchpad for the false allegation of “apartheid” against Israel that has spread like an oil slick through western culture.

Last month, UN Watch and NGO Monitor held an informative and evocative webinar titled “25 Years After Durban: The lasting impact of the UN World Conference Against Racism.” The panel of experts had all been witnesses to the debacle, and their shock at the experience has kept their recollections vivid and their combative fervour animated.

Everyone knew what was coming.

Panellist David Harris, who was the chair of UN Watch back in 2001, was slated to be in Durban as a member of the official U.S. delegation, but supported the decision of his boss, Secretary of State Colin Powell, to withdraw over the ugly transmogrification of the conference’s mission. The U.S. and Israel left the conference at the same time.

Moderator Dina Porat, a historian who was a member of the Israeli Foreign Ministry delegation to Durban in 2001, recalled a Belgian delegate who left her “speechless” when he candidly told her that the focus on Israel was a cynical diversionary strategy to protect European countries from the awkwardness of public demands for reparations from their former colonies. Porat recalls him saying, “The simple solution was to pick on Israel and the Jews.”

Irwin Cotler, who in 2001 was a member of Parliament and who would later serve as justice minister, was part of the Canadian delegation. He told the webinar that his initial excitement about the conference was quickly extinguished by the “Orwellian” state of affairs he encountered: Jewish students assaulted and told to “go back to Poland,” slogans bruited in the streets calling for the dismantling of Israel as an apartheid state, placards announcing “Hitler was right” and that Israel was a “genocidal” state.

Durban, Cotler said during the webinar, “was a tipping point for the laundering of antisemitism at the UN. What emerged from Durban was the metastasized, newly legalized antisemitism under the cover of the UN.” Cotler left the conference in disgust, arriving home on the fateful morning of 9/11. Since then, he has written extensively about Durban’s pernicious influence.

Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, walked the webinar through 25 years of the Durban effect on non-governmental organizations. He said that Durban’s parallel NGO Forum adopted a declaration vilifying Israel as a “racist, apartheid state” and calling for its pariah status. NGO Monitor, he noted, was founded to counter the toxic antizionism. UN-laundered and encouraged by Durban, antizionism has characterized some of the world’s wealthiest and most politically influential NGOs, like Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross.

UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer also appeared on the webinar. He linked Durban to the infamous UN General Assembly’s 1975 “Zionism is racism” resolution, which was finally repealed in 1991. But its spirit lived on as a gathering ideological storm, whose inchoate fury was unleashed at Durban.

Israel and the U.S. are boycotting the Sept. 28 commemoration event, and UN Watch has launched a petition calling on other countries to condemn and boycott it as well.

It would be nice if Canada were to do the right thing and absent itself, just as it would have been nice if the founding of the UN had produced a “free new world.” The UN is inherently incapable of delivering on the latter, while Canada is perfectly capable of delivering on the former. Except, of course, that it would be out of (Liberal Party) character.

National Post

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