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Feb
27
The Obama administration has decided to boycott the so-called Durban II conference out of concerns for anti-Semitism.
Multiple sources on a conference call with the White House on Friday told JTA that the Obama administration had opted not to attend any further preparatory meetings ahead of the planned U.N. conference against racism in Geneva in April.
The conference reprises the 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa that devolved into an anti-Jewish free-for-all. Canada and Israel have opted not to attend the conference, and some U.S. Jewish groups had been pressing the United States to do the same.
Preparations for a draft document so far have seen Iran leading a coterie of nations blocking inclusion of anything that might guarantee Jewish protections – including mention of the Holocaust – while inserting draconian language guarding Islam against “insult.”
Here is the Jewish Week blog post from this morning that foreshadowed this move:
Recently the administration rejected the advice of the ADL and several other Jewish groups and announced it would send a delegation to preliminary talks laying out working papers and an agenda for the conference. While conceding that the conference was shaping up as a rerun of a 2001 session that turned into a festival of Israel bashing and outright anti-Semitism, administration officials expressed the hope they could change that and help turning Durban II into a conference that genuinely examined issues of racism and xenophobia worldwide.
That decision ignited outrage from the Jewish right, which accused the administration of selling Israel out, but most major Jewish leaders said they understood the decision and would support it – as long as administration officials stuck to the red lines they laid out in their initial statement.
In recent days it’s become clearer their effort to modify the conference has not worked; today there is talk in Washington that the administration may getting ready to walk away from the conference.
That could be the subject of a conference call with Jewish leaders later today.
I would guess a more official word from the White House or State Department (Hillary Clinton?) should be following. I’ll update this post when it does.
Update: Ben Smith has more at Politico where he identifies the White House aides who indicated the pullout and states that President Obama is expected to make a statement about the boycott sometimes this afternoon.
H/t to Jeffrey Goldberg’s piece at The Atlantic on speaking with Judea Pearl, Daniel Pearl’s father, about the upcoming conference.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 2:06 pm February 27th, 2009 in Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs, Israel, Jewish, leadership, Politics, Race, Religion, Social Issues
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5 Responses to “[update] U.S. to boycott Durban II due to anti-Semitic, anti-Western attitudes”
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It is about time.
Shalom Jill,
You know, I really wish we could just drop the whole antisemitism tag. Semites are people who live in what we broadly call The Middle East but does not include Iranians.
No one is talking about racism against Syrians or Saudis. The racism here is concerned with two issues that may be debated: anti-Palestinian and anti-Jewish.
Let’s call it what it is and toss the term antisemite on the trash heap of history where it belongs.
B’shalom,
Jeff
What a difference ten days makes.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aA8OrcAcDZ3c&refer=us
How about that? Bush & Obama. The same. Again. In any case, credit Obama for getting this one right, though I’m starting to wonder how much more of this the Bushatred crowd will tolerate.
@Jeff in #2 – you are right. That’s a very good point. I did simply re-use what was written – their description. I’m going to try to be more attentive to that, but I know you’ll keep me honest-thank you.
@Jeff in #3 – thanks very much for that link to the Bloomberg piece (for those who didn’t click on it, it talks about the Obama admin’s effort to participate in Durbin II but it’s dated 2/17).
There’s some funky struggling going on there and for me, it boils down to Clinton v. Samantha Power – NOT directly but in ideology.
I wrote about this a bit at The Moderate Voice last night – there’s some schizophrenic stuff going on. It’s not surprising – we’re talking about the Middle East. But if you look at how Obama is tackling other issues? There is a similarly schizo kind of approach – now, some of the situations are in and of themselves, pretty schizo so you know, you have to meet your client where he or she is “at” as we say.
But when you also emphasize transparency, and there’s a culture of 24/7 coverage? It just looks really…schizo.
With all due apologies to people who suffer from the disorder (and I know a few).