[News] How Israel orchestrated the real Geneva ‘hate fest’ against Black and Brown people

[Anti-Imperialist News]

May 14, 2009


<http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/the-facts-how-israel-orchestrated-the-real-geneva-%e2%80%98hate-fest%e2%80%99-against-black-and-brown-people/>The 
facts: How Israel orchestrated the real Geneva 
‘hate fest’ against Black and Brown people

by Arlene Eisen

On Saturday, April 18, two days before the United 
Nations Durban Review Conference (DRC) officially 
convened, anti-racist demonstrators from every 
continent and nearly every struggle in the world 
filled the streets of downtown Geneva. A sea of 
flags, banners and posters spoke for indigenous 
people from Bolivia, Mexico and Guatemala, the 
landless former slaves of Brazil, Tamils 
struggling for survival in Sri Lanka, a huge 
contingent of Dalits demanding an end to the 
caste system, Black delegates from the U.S. and 
other points in the Diaspora calling for 
reparations and freedom for political prisoners, 
Africans from the continent, many European 
migrants from the third world and their 
supporters and a variety of groups in solidarity 
with the Palestinian people. Some had handmade 
signs: “Zionism equals racism” and “Israel is an Apartheid State.”

At the rally, Doudou Diène, “Special Rapporteur 
on Contemporary forms of Racism, Racial 
Discrimination, Xenophobia and related 
intolerance” and a scholar from Senegal, spoke. 
He emphasized that racism is rooted in slavery 
and colonialism, including settler colonialism. 
He pointed out that the Israeli occupation of 
Palestine continues a tradition of settler 
colonialism and racism. The crowd applauded. Not a heckler was in sight.

Most of us at the demonstration had heard the 
news that the U.N. Office of the High 
Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) - the 
organizer of the Conference - had attempted to 
appease the United States and Israel by deleting 
language supporting reparations for slavery and 
self determination for the Palestinian people. 
But the Obama administration’s threat to continue 
the boycott begun by Bush and Israel in 2001 did 
not dampen the spirits of the demonstrators that 
afternoon. After the demonstration, various NGO 
caucuses met, many for the first time, attempting 
to prepare position papers that would pressure 
the DRC to be more responsive to grassroots 
anti-racist movements. We were about to learn 
that we had been thoroughly outmaneuvered.

Most were unaware that for nearly two years, 
hundreds of militant pro-Israeli activists and 
the Israeli Foreign Ministry had been 
coordinating their plans to sabotage the DRC. The 
fiercely pro-Israel 
<http://www.ngo-monitor.org>NGO-Monitor named at 
least 17 Zionist organizations that had been 
“monitoring and protesting” the Durban Review 
Conference since May 2007 - only a few months 
after the U.N. General Assembly itself had passed 
a resolution to convene the Durban Review Conference.


Role of the Israeli Foreign Ministry

On Sunday, Feb. 24, 2008, Israel’s Foreign 
Minister at the time, Tzipi Livni, announced 
Israel’s decision to boycott the DRC. On Feb. 25, 
Haviv Rettig Gur reported in the Jerusalem Post 
that some 30 Jewish organizations from around the 
world were scheduled to meet the following day 
with the Israeli Foreign Ministry “to coordinate 
efforts at preventing the Durban Review 
Conference from becoming an anti-Israel and 
anti-semitic hate fest.” According to the 
Jerusalem Post, at that meeting, with the 
guidance of the head of the NGO Unit of the 
Foreign Ministry, they formed a task force to 
coordinate efforts for Durban II.”

At the time, Bush was still president and all the 
2008 presidential candidates were competing with 
each other to be recognized as the staunchest 
Israeli ally. Israel had no reason to doubt U.S. 
backing when it took the lead in the 
international campaign to derail the DRC. Through 
every U.S. presidency, Israel has been the 
largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid - currently 
$3.1 billion in military aid and nearly double 
that in non-military grants. U.S. aid has built 
and maintained Israel’s army - the fourth most 
powerful in the world - the same army that has 
keeps a defenseless Palestinian population under 
siege, occupied for the last 42 years and 
expelled and dispossessed for the last 60 years.

Most recently, Israel inflicted 22 days of 
relentless ‘round-the-clock bombing on the sliver 
of land of Gaza where 1.5 million Palestinians 
are caged. That bombing killed some 1,400 people, 
wounded 4,336 and terrorized the entire 
population. Israel perpetrated this crime against 
humanity with impunity, confident of the support 
of the Obama administration and most European allies.

Israel is aware that as a settler-colonial 
regime, its power rests on violence underwritten 
by the U.S. But U.S. support for Israel’s 
permanent war against the Palestinian people 
requires perpetuation of the myths: “Israel is a 
democratic, not apartheid state” and “Israel 
wants peace and is only defending itself against fanatic Arab terrorists.”

In Durban, the 2001 Worldwide Conference Against 
Racism (WCAR), sponsored by the U.N., cracked 
Israel’s hegemonic narrative of the “the Middle 
East conflict.” The final Durban Declaration and 
Program of Action (DDPA), signed Sept. 8, 2001, 
by all U.N. members except the U.S. and Israel, 
reflected the even-handed diplomacy of the 
world’s official state representatives.

“We are concerned about the plight of the 
Palestinian people under foreign occupation. We 
recognize the inalienable right of the 
Palestinian people to self-determination and to 
the establishment of an independent State and we 
recognize the right of security for all States in 
the region, including Israel, and call upon all 
states to support the peace process and bring it 
to an early conclusion.” (paragraph 63, 
<http://www.unhchr.ch/pdf/Durban.pdf>http://www.unhchr.ch/pdf/Durban.pdf)

Other paragraphs expressed deep concern regarding 
anti-semitism and Islamophobia and affirmed that 
the “Holocaust must never be forgotten.”

Despite the declaration’s moderation, the U.S. 
and Israel denounced it as “anti-semitic” and 
walked out. The corporate media echoed the 
pro-Israeli narrative that demonized the Durban 
Conference as an “anti-semitic hate fest.” Then, 
before the U.N. or any of the 150 countries that 
signed the declaration could defend it, the Twin Towers were bombed.

The Western corporate media sealed the reputation 
of Durban in a tomb of anti-terror, anti-Muslim 
hysteria. How convenient for the Zionists to 
resurrect the misrepresented ghost of WCAR in 
order to launch their campaign to discredit and 
derail the 2009 Durban Review Conference.


The Zionists’ comprehensive strategy

Before any reader jumps to the conclusion that 
this author is resorting to the traditional 
anti-semitic canard by creating a fictional 
“Zionist conspiracy,” please note that Michael 
Jordan, frequent contributor to the pro-Israel 
online news service JTA, openly bragged about the 
power of their plot. The cornerstone of the plan 
was to campaign for an international boycott of 
the conference and then to accuse any critics of being anti-semitic.

On April 28, 2009, 
<http://jta.org/news/article/2009/04/28/1004727/the-jewish-conspiracy-against-durban-ii-no-seriously>he 
wrote: “This time, however, the Jews actually did 
conspire, albeit openly, to sabotage the conference. [my emphasis]

“The World Jewish Congress[1] met with officials 
from 17 U.N. member states to push for a boycott. 
Hudson Institute scholar Anne Bayefsky banged the 
anti-Durban drum for months in the U.S. media, 
including the National Review, the New York Daily 
News and Forbes. And Israeli officials pressed 
their allies that intended to participate in the 
conference not to tolerate any anti-Israel resolutions.

“But for the most part, Durban II’s organizers 
and participants did not want to point the finger 
at the Jews for the anti-Durban effort for fear of being labeled anti-semites.”

The Jerusalem Post, Israel’s newspaper of record, 
reported frequently on the growing lobbying 
efforts to render the Durban Review Conference 
irrelevant by convincing the “world community” - 
read Europe and the U.S. - to boycott it. A Sept. 
28, 2008, article specifically detailed a 
concerted three-pronged strategy: 1) To call for 
states to boycott the conference; 2) To urge 
governments and private donors not to fund either 
the conference or the NGOs; 3) To organize and 
galvanize a pro-Israeli presence at the 
conference. While the article didn’t publicize 
it, the strategy also involved pressure from 
inside the U.N. - especially the U.N. Office of 
the High Commissioner for Human Rights - through 
staff members who were relatively pro-Israel.

1. Lobbying for boycott

Virtually all pro-Israel forces were mobilized to 
press for boycott. During the presidential 
campaign, Obama shamelessly pandered to the 
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) 
- the influential lobbying organization. Yet he 
also had a huge political debt to Black voters 
and had encouraged his candidacy to be used as an anti-racist symbol.

Thus, many of his supporters were shocked Feb. 
27, 2009, just five weeks into his presidency, 
when Obama declared the U.S. would not attend the 
U.N. Durban Review Conference unless its outcome 
document were changed to drop all references to 
Israel, reparations for slavery and the 
defamation of religion. However, Obama’s 
spokespeople added that they would be prepared to 
re-engage if the negotiations brought about a 
“shortened” text of the document that met their criteria.

AIPAC immediately issued a 
<http://www.aipac.org/Publications/PressAIPACStatements/AIPACApplaudsObamaAdminBoycottDurban2.pdf>press 
release that applauded Obama’s boycott of the 
U.N.’s “celebration of racism and vile anti-semitic activity.”

Encouraged by the Obama administration’s open 
endorsement of Israel’s year-old boycott, Zionist 
forces intensified their campaign to widen the 
boycott to destroy any possibility of a 
successful conference. For example, on March 9, 
2009, The Jerusalem Post reported that Dr. Moshe 
Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress 
- an umbrella organization for many Zionist 
organizations - called on the European Union to boycott the conference.

While only a handful of European countries 
followed the lead of U.S. and Israel, the threat 
of a wider boycott accomplished another 
objective. On March 17, conference organizers 
announced their attempt to appease Israel, the 
United States and their fence-sitting allies by 
revising the Draft Outcome Document. They removed 
all references to Israel as a perpetrator of 
racial discrimination, cut out any mention of the 
Palestinians’ right to self determination and 
also excised all language related to reparations, 
an acknowledgement that the transatlantic slave 
trade was a crime against humanity and a proposal 
to strengthen the Working Group of Experts on 
People of African Descent. But fearing resistance 
from the Non-Aligned Countries, African countries 
and other Islamic countries, conference 
organizers balked at Obama’s final demand to 
totally renounce the hard-won Durban Declaration 
and Programme of Action (DDPA) of 2001.

2. Choking off funding for the conference

In addition to pressure for boycott and weakening 
the conference’s anti-racist program and 
documents, the Zionist strategy aimed to withhold 
funding from the U.N. conference itself and potentially hostile NGOs.

The U.N.’s budget only met part of the 
conference’s needs. The rest had to be raised 
from voluntary contributions from states and 
civil society, including major philanthropists 
like Ford and Soros Foundations. It is possible 
that Zionist pressure on the U.S. and other 
governments to withhold funds from the U.N. 
backfired. With no funds from the U.S., funds 
donated by Iran, Libya and others became more significant.

However, the campaign to starve the NGO Forum and 
any individual NGO that didn’t tow the Israeli 
line had more success. In October 2008, the NGO 
Monitor sent an open letter to U.N. Secretary 
General Ban Ki-Moon calling on him to “avoid 
providing official sponsorship or funding for 
another NGO Forum that is likely to be a venue 
used to promote hatred and anti-semitism.” 
Various other Zionist organizations - including 
the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the American Jewish 
Committee and Human Rights First, sent similar letters.

In 2001, the NGO Forum in Durban included 8,000 
people and lasted more than a week. U.N. and 
other financial support enabled many grassroots 
people to participate and radicalize the process. 
The forum’s political influence was significantly 
responsible for the U.N. DDPA’s endorsement of 
reparations, self-determination for the 
Palestinian people and generally strong stand 
against racism. Israel’s strategy for 2009 was to 
torpedo any NGO Forum with the potential of exerting an anti-Zionist influence.

In preparatory meetings, each time NGOs called 
for an NGO Forum in Geneva in 2009, Jose 
Dougan-Beaca, the coordinator of the 
Anti-Discrimination Unit of the OHCHR, emphasized 
that an NGO Forum was impossible because of “lack 
of money and facilities.” Dougan-Beaca was 
responsible for conveying information in both 
directions between the NGOs and the OHCHR. But a 
delegate from Independent Jewish Voices of Canada 
who attended those meetings reported that he 
became a partisan advocate for the pro-Israel NGOs.[2]

The pro-Israel Magenta website published detailed 
reports of those preparatory meetings. Those 
reports confirm Ralph’s impression. In addition 
to citing financial constraints, Dougan-Beaca 
attempted to lower the NGOs sights for the 
conference by emphasizing the DRC was mandated to 
be a review conference, not intended to expand on 
the DDPA. Therefore it would be appropriate for 
NGO attendance to be much reduced and NGOs should 
not attempt to strengthen the DDPA.

In the end, rather than a fully funded official 
NGO Forum, barely 300 NGO representatives 
straggled into private venues away from the U.N. 
complex on the weekend before the DRC convened. 
And fewer than 1,100 authorized NGO delegates 
were able to come to Geneva at all. During the 
conference itself, pre-authorized “side events” 
that featured speakers on approved topics were 
supposed to meet the NGO need for a political 
platform. These side events reflected both Israel’s and the U.S. agenda.

Two weeks before the conference began, for 
example, the Office of the High Commissioner for 
Human Rights informed a Palestinian Refugee 
Rights Organization (Badil) that 
Palestinian-related side events would not be 
permitted. There was no such restriction on pro-Israel events.

It is important to understand that the campaign 
continues to financially strangle anti-racist 
NGOs that may criticize Israel. On April 26, the 
day after the conference adjourned, in a piece 
titled, “Geneva Walkout Isn’t Enough” 
(www.ynetnews.com), Diane Meskin praised the NGO 
Monitor’s campaign to cut off funding for all 
anti-Israel NGOs. She wrote, “The EU has much to 
do if it truly wants to fight anti-semitism, 
racism and the perpetuation of anti-Israel 
propaganda on the world stage. It must put its 
money where its mouth is and stop funding NGOs 
that use these funds to promote the 
delegitimization of Israel 
” She explicitly 
named funding organizations that must cut off 
named grantees - many of whom have supported a diversity of anti-racist causes.

3. Mobilizing a strong pro-Zionist (and disruptive) presence at DRC

Pro-Israel forces at the conference had their 
marching orders: Protect Israel from criticism of 
its most recent genocidal blitzkrieg and invasion 
of Gaza and gag any discussion of the occupation 
of Palestine itself. Uniformly, pro-Israeli 
groups worked to keep the focus on Iran, the 
holocaust, anti-semitism and Muslim complicity in 
Darfur. They talked about the persecution of the 
Roma and about Rwanda, but attempted to silence 
all mention of land seizures, the apartheid wall, 
separate roads, checkpoints, home demolitions, 
economic strangulation, mass incarceration, theft 
of water and all the other racist assaults on the Palestinian people.

Throughout 2008 and during the months of 2009 
leading right up to the conference, meetings of 
the Preparatory Committee in Geneva, Regional 
Meetings in Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia 
and among the Islamic States and Intersessional 
Meetings all invited input from NGOs. Those NGOs 
with closer ties to the grassroots were 
invariably poorly funded and could not afford 
travel and lodging in Geneva. Thus, NGOs more 
closely linked to governments - especially 
pro-Israel NGOs - had a disproportionate presence at the preparatory meetings.

For example, the pro-Israel NGO based in the 
Netherlands - I-CARE, funded by the Magenta 
Foundation - attended the preparatory meetings 
and posted detailed accounts of those meetings on 
their website. Many of those accounts describe 
some of the numerous attempts by pro-Israel 
organizations to sidetrack conference planning. 
The World Jewish Congress created the highly 
selective 
<http://www.icare.to/livereport/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=2&Itemid=3&lang=en>World 
Jewish Diplomatic Corps - young professionals, an 
“elite force on the ground to attend the 
Preparatory Meetings to argue for human rights.”

Reports by I-CARE’s representatives at those 
meetings reflect Israel’s particular concern with 
both the influence and composition of the 
<http://www.un.org/durbanreview2009/bureau.shtml>Bureau 
of the Preparatory Committee that had 
responsibility to “prepare the agenda and draft 
decisions for consideration by PrepCom and 
address all issues pertinent to its work 
” Ms. 
Najat Al-Hajjaji, the permanent ambassador from 
Libya to the U.N. in Geneva and past chair of the 
Human Rights Council, chaired the bureau. Bureau 
“vice chairpersons” from the Global South 
outnumbered delegates from Europe 11 to 7,[3] and 
the Cuban ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, 
Resfel Pino Alvarez, who is also the respected 
chair of the Non-Aligned Movement, was named vice-chairperson-rapporteur.

Two websites central to efforts to implement 
Israel’s anti-DRC strategy have been the 
<http://www.unwatch.org>www.unwatch.org, 
affiliated with the American Jewish Committee, 
and the 
<http://www.ngo-monitor.org>www.ngo-monitor.org, 
based in Jerusalem. The latter was founded with 
the objective “to end the practice used by 
certain self-declared ‘humanitarian NGOs’ of 
exploiting the label ‘universal human rights 
values’ to promote politically and ideologically 
motivated anti-Israel agendas.” They functioned 
as promoter, clearinghouse and publicist. Some 16 
months before the conference, the Dec. 22, 2008, 
Jerusalem Post reported that the World Union of 
Jewish Students formed a special task force of 60 
students who would travel to Geneva “to defend Israel.”

According to 
<http://www.unwatch.org>www.unwatch.org, there 
were a total of 314 newly-registered NGOs with a 
total of 1,073 delegates at the DRC and some 370 
delegates belonged to only two of the Jewish 
student unions that attended. If the delegates 
from all the myriad pro-Israel organizations and 
media are counted,[4] it is likely that more than 
half those who attended the conference in Geneva 
came with the sole purpose of building a 
pro-Israel presence and preventing any anti-Israel expression.


Response to the pro-Israel juggernaut

 From the first day of the conference we saw the 
waves of disruption of Ahmedinejad’s speech - 
coordinated in both the General Assembly and the 
NGO auditorium. Some 200 pro-Israel activists 
then attempted to block the entrance to his press 
conference. Similar disruptions of side events 
frustrated attempts to discuss Islamophobia. And 
large well-publicized panels and 
carefully-orchestrated rallies that featured 
famous Zionist celebrities were sympathetically 
reported by a compliant Western corporate media. 
Even within the U.N. OHCHR, at least one press 
officer gave pro-Israel statements to the 
press.[5] All this made many non-Zionist 
participants feel that pro-Israel forces had 
hijacked the conference with military-like planning and precision.

By the second day, NGO advocates for reparations, 
land for the landless, the rights of Dalits, 
self-determination for the Palestinian people and 
a myriad of other anti-racist demands began to 
regroup. But suddenly, the U.N. OHCHR announced 
that the “Outcome Document of the DRC” would be 
approved by consensus before the close of the 
second day of the five-day conference. There 
would be no opportunity to repair the damage done 
by the U.N. OHCHR’s appeasement of the U.S. and Israel’s demands.

Nevertheless, a group of African and African 
Diaspora NGOs, progressive Islamic NGOs and those 
in solidarity with the Palestinians, migrants and 
many others continued to meet informally and 
strategize. They vowed to continue the struggle 
for recognition of their demands in other venues 
- including, perhaps, a Durban 2010. Anti-Zionist 
Jewish organizations[6] - whose presence at the 
conference was totally eclipsed by the pro-Israel 
forces - had met earlier and were heartened by 
the growing strength of the BDS movement to press 
for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.


Setback and encouragement for anti-racist movements

At least 145 U.N. member states endorsed the 
Outcome Document by consensus. The very first 
paragraph reaffirmed the Durban Declaration and 
Program of Action as it was adopted at the World 
Conference against Racism in 2001. Moreover, 
delegate after delegate reiterated the praise 
that the South African Foreign Minister and 
spokesperson for the Africa Group gave to the DDPA:

“The DDPA is viewed as an inspiration that would 
define the 21st century as the century that 
restored to all their human dignity. It provides 
a solid and concrete basis for every country to 
develop its own measures to combat all forms of 
racism, and to strengthen the protection regime 
for victims of racism, racial discrimination, 
xenophobia and related intolerance.”

In the end, only 10 countries - all European or 
European-settler states - boycotted the DRC. At 
least 17 state delegates[7] expressed disapproval 
of the boycott in their official statements. In 
the language of diplomats, they denounced the 
boycott as revealing a lack of commitment to 
overcoming racism. More than 100 remaining 
delegates implicitly criticized the boycott orchestrated by Israel and the U.S.

Yet, pressure from the U.S. and Israel did 
succeed in preventing serious strengthening of 
the 2001 DDPA. For example, most delegations from 
Africa and the Africa Diaspora had been working 
for the DRC to adopt measures to provide 
effective tools for implementing a commitment to 
reparations[8] and establishing a “racial 
equality index” and timetables by which specific 
progress could be assessed. They also called for 
a Permanent Forum for People of African Descent, 
not simply a “panel of experts.”

But in the end, perhaps in order to prevent the 
majority of European countries from following the 
boycotters, the Outcome Document was silent on 
these issues. Moreover, Ban Ki-Moon and Navi 
Pillay explicitly repudiated Ahmedinejad’s 
speech, which had affirmed Palestine’s right to 
self-determination. Pillay admitted in her press 
conference on April 24 that she believed her 
denunciation of Iran was the price the EU 
demanded not to join the boycott. Except for 
Argentina, the 15 countries that explicitly 
denounced Iran were all European.[9]

Some 18 countries - none of them European - 
explicitly supported the Palestinian people’s 
right to self determination and criticized to 
varying degrees Israel’s denial of Palestinian 
rights.[10] Most of these, plus Azerbaijan and 
Pakistan, were among the 15 that called for 
stronger measures against Islamophobia. Finally, 
16 countries - all except Japan from the Global 
South - expressed concern for protecting migrants 
against racist attacks and the final Outcome 
document included protections for migrants that 
most European countries had opposed.[11] In sum, 
about half the delegates took definite stands in 
their speeches on the most controversial issues 
of the conference. Their stands demonstrate the 
endurance of North-South oppressor-oppressed relations.

Israel is a bastion of “European civilization,” a 
settler colonial state, on the edge of the 
African continent. To survive as a Jewish state - 
by definition an apartheid state - Israel is 
perpetually consolidating and expanding its 
narrative that turns the reality of its racist 
colonial project on its head. The global hegemony 
of U.S.-led imperialism is cracking. U.S. and 
European complicity with Israel demonstrates how 
white supremacist states will increasingly join 
forces and circle the wagons when threatened.

The U.N.’s Durban Review Conference once again 
dramatized a lesson many learned long ago: 
Appeasing settler colonial, neo-colonial and 
imperialist powers only emboldens them. The 
Palestinian Authority and other Muslim States 
(including Iran) agreed to a “consensus” document 
that omitted any mention of Israel or Palestine. 
The African and Caribbean States signed onto a 
“consensus” document that omitted mention of reparations.

But the U.S. never compromised in its 
unconditional support for Israel and opposition 
to reparations. Hopefully those NGOs and others 
who argued, “Let’s just focus on our issues. The 
Palestine-Israeli conflict is just a distraction 
from the real struggle against racism,” learned 
from Israel’s campaign to destroy the conference. 
Just as the U.S., Europe and those bribed by them 
are united in their project to maintain their 
hegemony, African and African Diaspora people, 
Asian and indigenous people - all colonized and 
formerly colonized people - need unity.


Endnotes

[1] 
<http://www.worldjewishcongress.org>www.worldjewishcongress.org 
identifies the WJC as an international 
organization which represents organizations in 80 
countries from Argentina to Zimbabwe. It has 
headquarters in New York City, a research 
institute in Jerusalem and affiliate offices in 
Brussels, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Geneva, 
Johannesburg, Moscow, Ottawa, Paris and Sydney. 
The WJC Office in Geneva hosted the 
“International Jewish Caucus at the DRC” even 
though it had called for states to boycott the 
conference at its January 2009 Plenary.

[2] Diana Ralph. “No Anti-Semitism at Durban II: 
Canada Should End its Boycott.” Outlook Magazine. 
Vol 47 #1, Jan/Feb 2007, pp. 17-18.

[3] From Africa, the vice chairs included 
representatives from Cameroon, South Africa and 
Senegal; from Asia: India, Indonesia, Iran, 
Pakistan, Turkey; from South America: Argentina, 
Brazil, Chile; and from Europe: Armenia, Croatia, 
Estonia, Russia, Belgium, Greece and Norway.

[4] Some of the Zionists organizations with 
delegates in Geneva were World Jewish Congress, 
American Jewish Congress, European Jewish 
Congress, Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs 
Council, Canadian Jewish Congress, International 
League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, The 
Simon Wiesenthal Center, B’nai Brith Canada, 
B’nai Brith International, International 
Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, Human 
Rights First, Rabbis for Human Rights, Hadassah, 
Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Jewish Council 
for Racial Equity, Union of Jewish Women of South 
Africa, Institute for Advancement of Human Rights, American Jewish Committee.

[5] Pierre Hazan, a staff member of the Office of 
the High Commissioner for Human Rights, author of 
a pro-Israel book on the Six Day War and fellow 
of the Congressionally-funded U.S. Institute of 
Peace, mocked the DRC as “an immense ritual of 
collective atonement and social purification.” 
(quoted by www.news24.com April 17, 2009)

[6] There may have been others, but this author 
is aware of representatives of Neturei Karta, an 
Israeli-based group of orthodox Jews who believe 
Zionism is antithetical to Judaism (see 
www.nkusa.org), Independent Jewish Voices based 
in Canada (ijv at magma.ca) and the International 
Jewish Anti-Zionist Network-IJAN that identifies 
Israel as a settler colonial state. (http://www.ijsn.net/home/)

[7] Brazil, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Organization of 
Islamic Councils, Indonesia, Iran, Lesotho, 
Namibia, Nigeria, Norway, Spain, Sri Lanka, 
Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda and Uruguay. U.N. 
Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, U.N. High 
Commission for Human Rights Navi Pillay and a 
number of others explicitly criticized the boycott.

[8] Twelve countries explicitly advocated for 
Reparations: Angola, Barbados, Cuba, Guyana, 
Haiti, Iran, Jamaica, Libya, Namibia, Suriname, 
Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Many others suggested that 
former colonial countries had the responsibility 
to ease poverty, forgive debt and assist in the 
economic development of the Global South.

[9] Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, 
Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, 
Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom.

[10] Bahrain, Cuba, Egypt, Guyana, Indonesia, 
Iran, Kuwait, League of Arab States, Lebanon, 
Libya, Morocco, Nicaragua, Palestine (PLO), 
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates

[11] Argentina, Burkina Faso, Cuba, Ecuador, 
Greece, Haiti, Honduras, Japan, Jordan, 
Mauritius, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Senegal, Tanzania and Turkey.

Arlene Eisen is a writer based in San Francisco, 
who, since the 1960s, has been active in 
anti-imperialist struggles. Most recently she 
edited Second Lines, the newsletter of the 
Peoples’ Hurricane Relief Fund, traveled to South 
Africa where she joined a project to document the 
Black Consciousness Movement and participated in 
the United-Against-Racism-U.S.A. delegation to 
the U.N. Durban Review Conference in Geneva. She 
can be reached at 
<mailto:arlene_eisen at sbcglobal.net>arlene_eisen at sbcglobal.net.




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