WASHINGTON, 1 September — The United Nations World Conference Against Racism began yesterday in Durban, South Africa. This marks the third time that the United States has declined to send a secretary of state to attend the world’s most important discussion on racism.
The Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine today held a briefing on the ramifications of the US decision not to attend the conference which is trying to revitalize global efforts against racial discrimination.
“The Bush Administration’s decision not to send (Secretary of State Colin) Powell (to attend the UN conference on racism in Durban) shows that the US continues to view itself as not having to bind with international law; while it insists everyone else adhere to it,” said Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, and author of “Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN”.
“This is the law of an empire — which it thinks allows itself to not have to participate in international law. Its commitment to Israel trumps any other human rights law on an international scale,” Bennis said.
“Since entering office, (President George W.) Bush has escalated America’s abandonment of international treaties: The IBM treaty, the Kyoto Treaty and now Durban.”
Bennis said this is standard American administration mentality, not a Republican phenomenon. “The Clinton Administration would not sign the land mines convention. No one else can have land minds, it said, except the US.”
Bush said he was concerned the conference would “pick on Israel,” Bennis was commenting on his “homey” choice of words to overlook the US’s arrogant absence at the UN conference.
“I think it is very serious that the conference will not take up a whole host of racist problems in the world. Israel may be on the top of the list, but it’s not the only country on the list,” she said.
“‘Zionism equals Racism’ is a sloppy formulation,” said Bennis. “Look at the Israeli Jewish population — 60 percent of the Jews are Arabs, 5 percent are Ethiopian — so race does not define the Israeli population.
“The bigger problem here is the Israeli reality of its oppression and occupation,” said Bennis. “In the United States, people do not know that there is a military occupation in the Occupied Territories. The education system in this country has miseducated the American people so thoroughly that they think they know everything there is to know.
“The problem today is that everyone in the US has been taught, since childhood, the three basic misconceptions about Israel: 1) Israelis are like Americans; 2) Israel is a democracy; 3) and that all Palestinians are terrorists.
“This misinformation is fundamental here,” she said. “It is infused throughout the American culture. What we need is a new movie version of “Exodus” to be written from the Palestinian perspective. That single movie fundamentally structured public opinion about Israel for decades,” said Bennis.
“I think it is more effective to say: ‘We stand against occupation, and we are for equal rights’ than ‘Zionism Equals Racism,’” said Bennis, explaining that the latter term had taken on too many negative connotations.
“The Israeli military occupation in Palestine is what we need to focus on. All talk of ceasefire and the Mitchell Plan is nonsense,” said Bennis, “because it’s the occupation that is the problem. The occupation is killing us all — Palestinians and Israelis — and we must end it.”
