In 1998, the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed 2001 as the International Year of Mobilization against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. To actually draw international attention to these evils, which still very much exist all over the world, a conference - the World Conference against Racism - is to open at the end of this month in Durban, South Africa.
As with all such events, the agenda and the documents to be approved are worked out in advance, in this case in two years of sessions, culminating this week and next in a final preparatory one in Geneva. The product of all these meetings is a 108-point charter which, if endorsed at the Durban conference, would commit governments around the world to adopt legislation outlawing racism and all forms of discrimination based on ethnic and cultural identity as well as gender, ensuring that all victims of such discrimination have access to judicial remedies.
But there is a big "if" to this. The US has threatened to boycott the Durban conference unless Arab governments agree to remove wording from the draft declaration equating Zionism with racism. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, has effectively come out in support of the US, calling on Arab delegates to the Geneva meeting to end attempts to label Israel as racist. It would, she says, undermine the conference. She is wrong. The draft document is very specific in parts. The persecution of the Roma/Gypsies is gone into in detail. It similarly calls on all states not to allow "anti-Semitism", which as we all know is a standard Western code word for anti-Jewish activities and sentiments.
So why draw the line at Zionism? It is inherently racist. The philosophy is that Jewish people - and no one else - have a God-given right to a particular piece of land; any Jew, no matter where in the world he comes from, can settle there; yet those who have been there for countless generations but who are not Jewish - the Palestinians - can be marched out of their homes at gunpoint, see them bulldozed or confiscated, and be forced into exile. Then, how can anyone pretend that Zionism is anything other than racist? Substitute Jews for Germans and Palestinians for Jews and no one would argue the point. The proposed Durban Declaration itself effectively condemns Zionism in its first point: "All human beings are born equal in rights and dignity. Any doctrine of racial superiority is, therefore, scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust and dangerous, and has no justification whatsoever."
Zionism is based on the idea that Jews are inherently superior. It has to be specifically condemned. There is no doubt that the conference is invaluable. The issues are extremely important: trafficking in women and children; migration and discrimination; gender and racial discrimination; racism against indigenous peoples; protection of minority rights. The draft document even recognizes the existence of Islamophobia and anti-Arab violence. But a document that spells out almost every other form of racism, yet deliberately ignores one of the most obvious and enduring because it does not suit a superpower is fatally flawed. It is dishonesty and is no basis on which to fight racism.
