OPINION:
The rising tide of antisemitism is about to get another boost, courtesy of the United Nations’ squatting in New York City.
In September, the U.N. General Assembly will revive one of its ugliest traditions: branding Israel’s existence a form of racism.
The occasion is the 25th anniversary of an antisemitic hatefest held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. The United Nations is preparing to host a “Durban V.” It is the fifth time this century that the international body has sought to “reaffirm” the Durban Declaration, a document that purports to be the “U.N.’s blueprint to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance globally.”
Although New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his collaborators will likely be enthused, an unequivocal rejection offers an important opportunity for wiser bipartisanship.
In 2001, Rep. Tom Lantos, California Democrat — the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress — and Secretary of State Colin Powell joined forces to withdraw the U.S. from the Durban conference. Every subsequent American administration has boycotted each Durban sequel.
I attended the original Durban conference, representing an international Jewish legal organization. The streets were so thick with antisemitic incitement that police told Jewish delegates to stop gathering at the local Jewish community center; they could no longer guarantee our safety.
Frenzied crowds carried signs glorifying the armed “liberation” of Jerusalem, based on faith and Islam, and celebrating the shedding of Palestinian “martyrs’ blood.” Literature praising Adolf Hitler circulated freely, imagining a world without Israel.
Inside the official sessions, delegates adopted a declaration built on the core Durban lie: that Palestinians are “victims” of Israeli racism and Israel is the world’s singularly identifiable racist state.
This is the Durban playbook: delegitimizing the world’s only Jewish state by perverting the language of human rights.
In this inverted framework, Jewish self-determination becomes racism, Jewish self-defense becomes criminal, and the descendants of Holocaust victims are recast as the moral equivalents of their murderers.
The “apartheid” charge is the most grotesque inversion of all. No Jews are permitted in the so-called state of Palestine, while the millions of Arab citizens of Israel enjoy more rights and freedoms than in any Arab country.
Truth tellers have emerged along the way. In 1975, when the United Nations first passed its “Zionism is racism” resolution, U.S. Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan delivered powerful, chilling words that resonate to this day: “A great evil has been loosed upon the world. The abomination of antisemitism … has been given the appearance of international sanction.”
The initial conference ended three days before 9/11. I traveled directly from Durban to New York. No one who stood in both places could fail to connect the hatred in Durban with the terrorism that followed.
Yet the United Nations made Durban the permanent centerpiece of its “anti-racism” agenda.
That agenda keeps expanding. The latest draft “political declaration,” due for adoption on Sept. 28, demands “reparations,” emphasizes racism, “particularly in developing countries,” and calls for assorted wealth transfers.
“Durban II,” staged in 2009, was headlined by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the only head of government to show up. He opened the “anti-racism” conference by questioning the Holocaust and denouncing the “ugly face” of Zionism.
Durban III and IV, marking the 10th and 20th anniversaries, were held at the U.N. headquarters in New York. At these global spectacles, racists feigned outrage over racism, victims’ groups jockeyed to be more equal than others, and Palestinians engaged in identity theft, culturally appropriating the history of South Africans and Black Americans.
The boycotts have also grown. The U.S. and Israel walked out of the original conference; 10 nations skipped Durban II; 14 refused to attend Durban III; and 38 stayed away from Durban IV.
Still, the United Nations is pressing ahead with Durban V. When the General Assembly voted in November to convene it, lead advocate South Africa announced the messaging and declared flatly: “Israel is a racist state.”
In July, the assembly adopted an organizational resolution for the coming festivities. Iran, the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism and a remorseless exponent of anti-Jewish bigotry, relished the vote, reaffirming its “commitment to the Durban Declaration” while attacking Israel for “racial injustice.”
The bottom line: Durban V is one more attempt to turn the fight against racism into a fight against Jews.
As antisemitism surges under an “anti-racism” halo, the choice facing states and civil society has never mattered more. Durban V must be shunned — not celebrated, commemorated or reaffirmed.
To truly fight racism, nations must vote with their feet and stay away. Together, Americans know exactly how to respond to Jew hatred from Turtle Bay: “Not in our name.”
• Professor Anne Bayefsky is director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and president of Human Rights Voices.
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