A day after the General Debate at the 76th UN General Assembly began, the international body turned the spotlight on the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the controversial UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, which was dominated by clashes over the Middle East and the legacy of slavery.
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More than 30 countries are boycotting Wednesday's commemoration, according to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which urged more countries to join them "in continuing to fight racism, bigotry, and antisemitism."
The original Durban Conference in 2001 singled Israel out as racist, with draft resolutions saying Zionism is a form of racism. The legacy left by the first Durban conference, where Israel was labeled an "apartheid state," and, according to many of the speakers, Zionism was linked to racism in the lexicon of left-wing groups, was also evident in the follow-up conferences in 2009 and 2011.
The International Legal Forum (ILF) said in a letter to UN ambassadors and foreign ministers that the recurring event has "descended into an infamous hotbed of unbridled Jew-hatred, antisemitism and vilification of the State of Israel."
Israel's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Gilad Erdan on Wednesday noted that the boycott of the event by so many UN member states was a major accomplishment for the Jewish state. "The Durban conference was rotten to its core and therefore any event that commemorates it is the fruit of the poisonous tree," he said. "I am glad that many more countries have realized this, and I will continue to fight this fight until the UN realizes that the Durban stain has to be erased."
"We doubled the number of countries that will boycott the hate conference!" Erdan wrote on Facebook, adding that "31 countries will boycott the shameful event ... more than twice the number of countries that boycotted the Third Durban Conference in 2011."
Erdan said that in recent months, "I've talked to dozens of ambassadors, leaders and activists, harnessed the Jewish organizations for the struggle and worked in collaboration with the US" to get this boycott in motion, and asked people to "share [the post] so that the world hears the truth."
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