Israel Fears Another 'Anti-Semitic' UN Conference on Racism

Nearly every nation in the world agrees that racism, in general, is a bad thing.

What keeps the world from joining forces to tackle the problem is a bitter disagreement over definitions of racism, specifically when talking about Israel, and that doesn't look likely to change anytime soon.

Israel said over the weekend that it will likely boycott a United Nations conference on combating racism set for September after the U.N. General Assembly decided to bill the meeting as another follow-up to the first U.N. racism conference held 10 years earlier in Durban, South Africa.

That Durban meeting turned into a diplomatic slug fest when Muslim and African nations led a majority of U.N. members supporting an official declaration calling Israel racist for its treatment of Palestinians, overwhelming opposition from the United States, many European countries, Israel and others.

After months of trying to change the agenda of the first follow-up to Durban last year in Geneva, the United States and several other countries decided to skip it altogether. And after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave a speech there calling Israel a "cruel and repressive racist regime," the European nations who did show walked out.

For Israel, last week's Christmas Eve General Assembly vote to make next year's conference "Durban III" suggests the diplomacy won't get any smoother or more productive this time.

"Under the present circumstances, as long as the meeting is defined as part of the infamous 'Durban process,' Israel will not participate in the meeting scheduled to take place in U.N. headquarters in New York in September 2011," Karean Peretz, spokeswoman for the Israeli mission to the U.N., said in a statement.

"The Durban Conference of 2001, with its anti-Semitic undertones and displays of hatred for Israel and the Jewish world, left us with scars that will not heal quickly," she added. "Israel is part of the international struggle against racism. The Jewish people was itself a victim of racism throughout history."

Canada has already said that it will boycott the conference, and the U.S. seems likely to avoid it as well.

The U.S. voted against holding Durban III, and Ambassador Susan Rice said the Obama administration doesn't want to see the "ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism" of Durban I commemorated.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York led nine fellow Democratic senators and seven Republicans in calling on the administration to announce right away that it won't participate. In a letter to Rice, the senators added that they were especially angry that a potential "forum for anti-Semitic and anti-American demonstrations" would be scheduled for New York just days after the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

"We all witnessed how extreme anti-Semitic and anti-American voices took over Durban I and Durban II," Gillibrand said, "and we should expect the same thing to happen with Durban III."