Congressional Hearing - 07.31.2001

 

 

July 31 Hearing: 
UN World Conference Against Racism

U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on International Relations
Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights

Washington Post coverage
New York Times coverage

Statements: 

• Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Subcommittee Chair
• Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean, Simon Wiesenthal Center
• Richard D. Heideman, President, B'nai B'rith International
• Michael Salberg, National Commissioner, Anti-Defamation League

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The Washington Post

Threat to Boycott U.N. Race Talks Praised, Attacked

August 1, 2001

By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer

A congressional subcommittee hearing on the World Conference Against Racism opened yesterday with praise for President Bush's threat to boycott the event if the issue of Zionism as racism is on the agenda.

But as soon as Chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) finished her opening statement, the subcommittee's ranking member, Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.), denounced the president's plan to avoid the conference if another contentious issue, reparations for slavery and colonization, is part of the discussion.

Support for and opposition to the president's stance broke neatly along racial lines among the eight attending members of the House International Relations subcommittee on international operations and human rights. The hearing, in the Rayburn Building, was the first public congressional meeting on the United Nations conference, scheduled to start Aug. 31 in Durban, South Africa.

Ros-Lehtinen, who is white and of Cuban descent, questioned how reparations would be applied more than a century after U.S. slavery officially ended in the 1860s. But her most forceful blast was against the effort to equate Zionism in Israel with racism.

"There is perhaps no other issue which threatens the legitimacy and effectiveness of the World Conference Against Racism as does the hostile anti-Semitic/anti-Israel language shepherded by such countries as Iran, Iraq and Syria," she said.

McKinney, who is black, said the two issues were a smokescreen for what she perceived to be the president's desire to avoid the subject of race.

"I am becoming concerned that they really don't care about racism," McKinney said. "I think the administration's opposition to WCAR is a clear example of their indifference to racism."

William B. Wood, a State Department deputy assistant secretary, assured McKinney that the president supported the racism conference but said he worried that the issues in question would overshadow other pressing concerns.

Those worries deepened after a preparatory meeting in Geneva late Monday, when a non-governmental body helping to organize the conference proposed to condemn Israel for its "escalation of the third holocaust perpetrated" against the people of Palestine.

That proposal drew harsh criticism from U.N. High Commissioner Mary Robinson, who is presiding over the two-week-long meeting.

At the subcommittee meeting, critics of the proposal repeatedly used the word "hijack" to describe "attempts by some Arabs" to steer the conference against Israel.

"It is terribly wrong when, amongst all nations on this planet, only one, the state of Israel, is singled out," Rabbi Marvin Hier said in his testimony to the panel. "Of course, Israel is not above criticism, but how credible can this conference be when nations with horrible human rights violations . . . escape any criticism?"

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The New York Times

U.S. Pushes to Refocus Racism Conference

August 1, 2001

By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, July 31 — State Department officials said today that they have been engaged in a strenuous and complicated diplomatic effort to persuade other nations to omit two contentious issues from the agenda of a coming United Nations conference on racism — whether Zionism is racism and whether nations should pay reparations for slavery.

The officials said the outcome of the negotiations would determine whether the Bush administration takes part in the conference, scheduled to open on Aug. 31 in Durban, South Africa.

"We want to go," a State Department official said today. "But not at any cost."

This week, a small corps of American diplomats is in Geneva attending sessions with conference planners about the agenda. However, the real negotiations, one administration official said, are expected to occur behind closed doors during the next few days as the diplomats press their argument that the inclusion of the two agenda items would subvert the conference and impede any progress.

"It's our policy that we can't go to this conference unless we get these matters resolved somehow," a Bush administration official said today.

The draft agenda, which includes language calling for reparations and equating Zionism with racism, was drawn up at several regional conferences called to prepare for the Durban meeting. Officials said the portion concerning Israel had emerged from a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, held in Iran.

The question of whether the United States will send an official delegation — and, if it does, at what level — has engaged not only the State Department, but several American civil rights groups, Jewish organizations and members of Congress. It has also revived a contentious debate about whether the notion that Zionism is racism can be a legitimate discussion topic or whether it is, as the United States has long contended, a rhetorical device for opponents of Israel to bludgeon Israel.

The United States first condemned the effort to equate Zionism with racism in 1975, even as the United Nations General Assembly approved a motion affirming that notion. The United Nations repealed that resolution in 1991.

International conferences also often become forums for a variety of international and parochial political agendas and concerns. The United States did not attend United Nations- sponsored conferences on racism in 1978 and 1983 because it disagreed with the language of the agenda.

This time, the debate over Zionism and reparations on the agenda has the potential to stir up several problems including exacerbating friction between black and Jewish groups. That seemed evident today at a congressional hearing over whether the United States should attend.

Blacks, both members of Congress and others who testified at the hearing, said it was imperative that the United States participate in the conference to demonstrate its concern over racism. Jewish lawmakers and representatives of Jewish groups expressed deep concern over the inclusion of language in a draft agenda that characterizes Israel's settlements as "crimes against humanity" and describes Zionism "as a movement based on racial superiority."

Representative Cynthia A. McKinney, a Georgia Democrat and member of the House International Affairs Committee, which was conducting the hearing, said the Bush administration's reluctance to attend smacked of racism.

"I have to wonder if the Bush administration's position on the World Conference on Racism is just politically dumb or if it is perhaps indicative some something more malignant," she said. "Is the Bush White House just full of latent racists?"

Representative Tom Lantos of California, also a Democratic member of the committee, criticized Ms. McKinney's remarks about Mr. Bush and outlined his own opposition to the conference. Mr. Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, said the United States should not attend the conference unless the agenda was changed.

"We have a group of countries hellbent on hijacking a noble and worthwhile event into yet another forum for Israel-bashing and for the most extreme form of anti-Semitism to gain global notoriety," he said.

On Monday, the House overwhelmingly passed a non-binding resolution sponsored by Mr. Lantos calling for the agenda to be changed before the United States agrees to attend. Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer, Democrats of New York, among others, have written to the White House urging that United States insist on having the language about Israel changed.

Testifying before the committee today, William B. Wood, the acting assistant secretary of state for international organizations, said the offensive language about Israel was especially inflammatory.

He also said that while no one should doubt the profound regret the United States feels over the "abomination of slavery," the administration opposes the idea of reparations.

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