Israel became an apartheid state where Hitler became fashionable — not during WW II. But in our own time.
9/11 overshadowed Durban.
That’s like saying Neil Armstrong wasn’t important because astronauts later spent more time in space.
Like saying: The hatred unleashed in Durban, South Africa a few days before 9/11 wasn’t important because terrorists later did worse.
Or like saying: 19 centuries of murdering Jews wasn’t important because of the enormity of the Holocaust.
On the eve of Sept. 11, 2001, a pivotal UN conference was called an anti-racism conference. It was executed as an anti-Semitism conference, leaving its Jewish participants shocked, indeed shellacked. Weeping. Even physically endangered.
World Jewry has never been the same since the Durban conference 20 years ago.
A UN conference became “a festival of hate,” anti-Jewish hate, complete with some 20,000 anti-Semites imported for the occasion.
Banners were raised that said, “Hitler was right.” UN conference organizers would not take them down.
Copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were freely distributed.
Durban laid the groundwork for Boycott, Divest, Sanction.
Straight out, anti-Semitic insults were hurled at the Jewish participants.
Groundwork for this festival of hate was laid by and in Iran.
How that happened — how Jews were closed out of the pre-planning meetings by UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson — the chief organizer of the conference — is set forth in this week’s front page report, “Durban was the Mein Kampf.”
We found this report utterly absorbing. It is one of the longest reports the IJN has ever run.
The template of anti-Semitism now afloat in the world was set in place in Durban, South Africa, Sept. 2-9, 2001.
“To me 9/11 was now the Kristallnacht of terror and Durban was the Mein Kampf,” said one participant.
All of these participants were national Jewish leaders from the US, Canada and Latin America. They were seasoned diplomats, not scare-mongerers.
Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, had hoped to become the first female Secretary General of the UN. Her Durban conference killed that.
“The resurrection of ‘Zionism is racism,’ everything we’re struggling with today, that script was written and finalized under the supervision of 3,6000 NGOs [at Durban],” says one former Jewish delegate today. “There’s no BDS movement without the building blocks of demonization of Israel in the global scheme of things at Durban.”
The report is not pleasant reading. It is important reading. Riveting. “The indictment of Israel as an apartheid state was born in Durban,” says a former delegate who later became the justice minister of Canada.
“I was approached by the chief of police of Durban and told the following: ‘Rabbi, please, I’m asking you, do not try to go from here to the Jewish community center today.’ ‘Why not? It’s like two-and-a-half blocks away.’ He said, ‘We cannot guarantee your safety.”
There is another Durban conference this year. A few are boycotting it, among them: the US, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and the UK. Not a large number.
This is the world we live in today.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
