On the 20th anniversary of the UN’s Durban Declaration on racism, the UNsays that racism is reverberating in “echo chambers of hate.”
While we applaud the UN’s efforts to combat racism, and we note that the UN’s statement placed anti-Semitism prominently as one of the rising forms of hate, the sad truth is that it is the UN itself — at least when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — that has become an “echo chamber of hate,” fomenting the kind of vitriolic and violent anti-Semitism the world witnessed earlier this year, during the Hamas-Israel conflict in May.
The delegitimization of the very notion of the State of Israel — ironically entrenched at the UN during that Durban conference 20 years ago — has legitimized anti-Israel hate everywhere.
While the infamous “Zionism equal racism” UN resolution adopted in 1975 was reversed in 1991, in 2001 it once again became the de facto approach. What this has meant for Jews worldwide, regardless of any individual Jew’s connection the Israel, is increasingly to be seen as a legitimate target of hate. When chasidic Jews in New York’s Diamond District are violently attacked because Israel is at war, there can be no explanation other than anti-Semitism — fueled by a 20-year campaign in the global community to delegitimize Israel.
If the UN is truly committed to combatting anti-Semitism, let it begin by dismantling its own echo chamber.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
