Jerusalem Post - 08.02.2001

 

The Jerusalem Post

'No movement' on ridding UN text of anti-Israel content

By Janine Zacharia and News Agencies

WASHINGTON (August 2) - Negotiations to remove anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist wording from a key UN document were making little progress yesterday, despite the UN human rights commissioner's indication that the prospects were promising.

"On certain issues very close to our heart in Israel and to the Jewish people there's been no movement at all in a positive direction," said Yaakov Levy, Israel's ambassador to UN offices in Geneva, where a two-week preparatory meeting for the World Conference Against Racism is taking place. The conference begins August 31.

The contentious wording includes an attempt to revive the 1975 UN attack on Zionism. The United States, which is taking part in the negotiations to draft the document, has threatened to boycott the Durban meeting unless the words are removed.

"Hopefully the text will be cleansed of any reference that brings back the memory of the infamous UN resolution equating Zionism with racism, which was rescinded later by the General Assembly in '91," Levy said.

Unlike many UN battles where Israel's only ally is the United States, Levy said he has been "getting support from many other countries and I would hope sympathy and understanding from many others who for their own reasons might not say it publicly."

The likelihood of ridding the anti-Zionist wording is improving, UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson had told Congressman Tom Lantos (D-California) by telephone from Geneva earlier this week.

Lantos told a House International Relations subcommittee hearing on the conference on Tuesday that Robinson said "the likelihood of defeating this blatant attack on the state of Israel is improving."

"But we concluded on the basis of many indications that the attack will take a somewhat different form and it will focus on settlements," Lantos added.

The House International Relations subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights heard from State Department officials and Jewish leaders their perspectives on the conference.

Legislators alternatively encouraged and discouraged the administration to take part. Jewish representatives condemned countries who are trying to hijack the conference by inserting anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish rhetoric and phrases that minimize the Holocaust by requiring references to "holocausts" instead.

Black legislators encouraged the Bush administration to attend and engage on the issue of slavery and reparations, another contested issue to be discussed in Durban.

Among those who testified yesterday were William Wood, principal deputy assistant secretary in the State Department's Bureau of International Organization Affairs, Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Richard Heideman, president B'nai B'rith International, and Michael Salberg, chair of the International Education Programs at the Anti-Defamation League.

"We support the views of the members of this subcommittee who have expressed the need for a world conference on racism...We also believe that the world needs a world conference against racism that would unite and not divide and focus on the way forward and not solely on the road already traversed," Wood said.

Hier said in his prepared statement: "I urge members of this important committee to do everything in their power to expose and defeat those who have hijacked the agenda of the Durban conference. Failure to do so, will not only further destabilize the Middle East, and legitimize anti-Semitism, but will betray the victims of racism around the world."

Twenty-one Jewish members of Congress circulated a letter this week to all other representatives yesterday urging them to speak out "against the attempt to undermine the Jewish religion and foment intolerance against Jews" at the conference.

The House Monday night voted overwhelmingly 408-3 in favor of Resolution 212, introduced by Lantos which "exhorts the participants to utilize [the conference] to mitigate rather than aggravate racial, ethnic, and regional tensions."