nference on Racism:Jewish Caucus Statement

["Max Sawicky" <sawicky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The political criticisms of this statement are
obvious enough.  I am interested in any responses
to the *factual* statements that people can offer,
if they were at the conference or if they have
spoken to someone who was there.

Please spare me the 'hasn't Israel done much
worse shit' routine.  I know it has.

mbs



Statement of the Jewish Caucus
on the NGO Process and Concluding Document

Durban, South Africa
September 1, 20001 World Conference against Racism

Jewish non-governmental organizations came to a World Conference Against

Racism after decades of commitment and involvement in the human rights
movement and the fight against racism in communities all over the
world.  We have carried our efforts to the hospitals, to the schools, to the
poor, to the needy of every race, creed and colour.  In our work, we
have also been ever mindful of those in need as survivors of the Holocaust
and their children, who bear the awful memories of hell on
earth.  But we have been sustained and nourished in our charitable acts
and activism by the reality of a Jewish homeland in Israel that is watchful
of the rise of neo-Nazism and antisemitism in all its forms,
that is a sanctuary both physically and spiritually for the Jewish
people.

We came to Durban as part of a community struggling to resist the
consequences of racism.  We leave as victims of an assault on the very
principles for which they have stood all their lives.  This Conference
Against Racism became a Conference For Racism.  It took the vision of
universal human rights standards applicable to all races, nationalities,
and religions in the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
excluded the Jew.  It took the vision of the equality of all nations
large and small in the words of the United Nations Charter and barred
the state of Israel.

Therefore, with profound sadness, the Jewish caucus rejects the text of
the NGO Final Document in its present form.  We must object both because of
process and content.

Process
>From the beginning of this process, there has been a constant attempt
to silence our voices and appropriate our victimization.    In the Asian
regional preparatory conference, it was made impossible for a UN accredited
Jewish nongovernmental organization to participate.

*      On Wednesday, August 29th, the commission on antisemitism was
invaded and shouted down by those hostile to our concerns.  We were able to
continue only by breaking up into six working groups.

The agitators continued their harassment by filing a complaint with the
organizing committee that our commission was invalid because we did not
continue in the plenary which they made impossible to conduct.   Further
they complained that our consensus was illegitimate because it did not
count the voices and the votes of those who would oppress us.

On Thursday, August 30th at a press conference we called, the very same
thing happened.  A group hostile to our concerns invaded the press
conference and shouted it down too, so that we were not able to
continue.  The din created by agitators chanting Zionism is Racism prevented
journalists from asking us questions.

Furthermore, there has been a steady stream of individual incidents of
people from our caucus being threatened, verbally abused and harassed
for no other reason than that they are Jewish and stood up for the rights of
the Jewish people.  The overall impression and effect was to make us feel
unwelcome and unwanted.

The grounds of this conference have been an arena of antisemitism, a
stadium of hatred.  We have seen the continuous circulation of virulent
antisemitic hate propaganda - Jews with hooked noses, blood dripping from
fangs, with pots of money surrounding the victims, distributed on the
grounds of this NGO Forum in officially-sanctioned booths of participants.
The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, along with other traditional antisemitic
literature, is on sale at this conference.  Antisemitic material that
violates international human rights standards as hate propaganda is freely
distributed.

The organizers of this conference have done nothing to prevent this
dissemination.  By this failure, they have shirked their responsibility.

Indeed, some of the organizers have actively participated in it.

Individual Jewish participants here were harassed and intimidated. At
the rally yesterday, there was a poster saying "Hitler should have finished
the job".  At another rally during the conference, a person
shouted "kill the Jews".   Within the Conference grounds, clothing is
freely distributed with the official NGO World Conference logo inciting
hatred and violence towards the Jewish state.  Marches and chants have gone
on almost continuously throughout the Conference of an antisemitic nature,
equating Zionism, the Jewish assertion of the right to self determination
with racism.

There have been consistent attempts not only to shut us up, but
appropriate our voice.  The word "antisemitism" which was coined in the 19th
century by William Marr of Germany to describe his opposition to Jews and
Judaism, and has consistently been used ever since as meaning hatred of
Jews, is now - in this document - taken away from us and said to mean
something altogether different.  This redefinition of antisemitism is an
attempt, like
Holocaust denial and Holocaust minimization, to deny our victimization.

Substance

The NGO declaration accuses Israel of the worst crimes known to
humanity, a new form of apartheid (paragraph 80), colonialism (paragraph
80), war crimes (paragraph 80), racist crimes against humanity
(paragraph 98), genocide (paragraph 80), and ethnic cleansing (paragraph
80), massive violations of human rights and humanitarian law (paragraph
99). Israel is called a racist state (Paragraph 82). The text calls for the
reinstitution of the 1975 UN resolution equating Zionism with racism
(paragraph 161), a resolution Secretary General Kofi Annan called
"lamentable".  He said: "Its negative resonance even today is difficult
to overestimate."  The declaration further asserts a Palestinian right of
return to Israel and condemns the Israeli Law of Return as part of the
Apartheid regime in Israel (Paragraph 161).

The Jewish caucus says that all of these components of the declaration,
singly and together are designed to delegitimize and have the effect, if
accepted, of delegitimizing the State of Israel as a Jewish state and to
deny to the Jewish people alone amongst the peoples of the world their
right to self determination, and, in consequence, the right to preserve
their religious and cultural identity.  These accusations, singly and
together, form a new antisemitism, directed against Jews around the
world, and are, themselves, a form of racism, incitement to hatred and
violence.

The accusations made against Israel are accusations made against the
state and not individuals.  They are a form of collective accusation of
guilt, rather than individual accusations of crime. The Jewish community is
well familiar with collective accusations of guilt, having been told for
centuries that the Jewish community, as a community, killed Jesus
Christ. The accusations made against the Jewish state of colonialism, war
crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, ethnic cleansing and acts of
apartheid are of the same nature, blaming a whole community for the most
heinous crimes.

Palestinians are at war with Israel.  They have walked away from the
negotiating table, and have chosen to pursue this war at this
Conference. They are asking this Conference to deny the right of Israel to
exist as a Jewish state.  Their attempts are both direct and indirect.
Wild,
unsubstantiated accusations against the State of Israel for the worst
crimes known to international law are indirect attempts to delegitimize and
deny the right to exist of the Jewish state.

It is, of course, legitimate to criticise specific Israeli practices and
policies in the context of a global survey, country by country, of such
practices and policies.  However, when Israel, virtually alone, is the
target of such criticism, the targeting becomes political rather than
principled.  Selective criticism directed to Israel when far worse
offender countries are ignored is a form of discrimination against both
Israel and the Jewish people.

The Jewish community is a survivor community, the remnants of the
attempted extinction of the whole Jewish people in the Holocaust. To accuse
falsely the Jewish state of genocide, war crimes and crimes against
humanity,
the very crimes inflicted on the Jewish community not that long ago, is to
mock and ridicule their suffering.  The charges themselves are hurtful, a
trivialization of the victimization the Jewish community has suffered.

Criticism of a wrong policy or practice should be commensurate with the
wrong inflicted.  Insofar as any Israeli policy or practice is racist,
that policy or practice should be criticised in terms that are specific to
the wrong.  The rhetoric used against Israel in the declaration is
totally disproportionate to whatever acts may have been committed.  Any
wrongs that have been inflicted are wildly inflated to justify the
starting position of the critics, that the State of Israel should not exist.

The Jewish caucus does not take the position that criticism of policies
and practices of Israel are beyond bounds.  There are many legitimate
criticisms that can be made and are being made every day within Israel of
government policies and practices.  However, just as not every criticism is
illegitimate, not every criticism is legitimate.  Some criticism is
beyond the pale, criticism directed not at what Israel is doing wrong, but
to
the fact that Israel exists.  The charges in the declaration of colonialism,
war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, acts of apartheid, ethnic
cleansing, the characterization of Israel as a racist state, the
assertion of a claimed Palestinian right of return and a call for a repeal
of the Israeli Law of Return are all of this nature.  They are an incitement
to hatred and violence, the evidence that anti-Zionism is
antisemitism.

They are the continuation of the war against Israel by other means,
in disrespect for the purpose of this conference, the foundations of the
United Nations, human rights standards and vocabulary, and the true victims
of the awful crimes of which Israel is falsely accused.

Now we are faced with a vote where majority rules.  However, human
rights can not be compromised by the tyranny of the majority.  We reject any
vote that votes away our human rights.  We had hoped that people with whom
we
have had common cause in their struggle for rights would have sided with
us when are rights are threatened and trampled as they have been here.  We
welcome and thank those who have.  We express our profound
disappointment and dismay to those who have not.