Jews brace for Durban backlash after Israel bashed at conclave

WASHINGTON -- Israel faces a return to the dark days of international isolation, and Jews worldwide may be about to confront a new surge of international anti-Semitism in the name of human rights, Jewish activists in South Africa fear.

During the U.N. World Conference Against Racism's non-governmental organization forum, a resolution was adopted branding Israel an "apartheid, racist" state and accusing its government of "genocide and ethnic cleansing."

The United States and Israel withdrew their low-level delegations in response Monday, after concluding they would be unable to remove anti-Israel sentiment from the final official declaration.

A group of South Africans and Belgians -- representing the European Union -- as well as Norwegian, Namibian and Palestinian officials were working frantically midweek to find a compromise formula by the Wednesday night deadline to change the declaration's wording, but Jewish leaders said that even if they were successful, Israel had sustained major body blows at Durban.

"It's a return to the language and attitudes of 26 years ago," said Daniel Mariaschin, executive vice president of B'nai B'rith, referring to the 1975 U.N. "Zionism equals racism" resolution. "I don't know what's going to happen in the next few days but it's a major statement that the United States and Israel did not get the support they needed to block this effort months ago."

Support, in fact, did come from France and Canada. Prime Minister Lionel Jospin told his Cabinet that France's decision to withdraw could be made within hours if "comparisons between Zionism and racism were maintained" in the document, spokesman Jean-Jack Queyranne was quoted as saying Wednesday.

And the 15-member E.U., meanwhile, insisted that all the nations it represents would act as one bloc, and it was continuing to use that as leverage to try getting the inflammatory language removed. However, it had no immediate plans to walk out of Durban, as of Wednesday, the Bulletin's press time, according to a spokesperson.

No matter what ensued, however, many Jewish leaders insisted that the hijacked conference represented a new and potent strategy by the Palestinians. The goal apparently was to undercut Israel's legitimacy in the international arena, not just leverage its leaders into making more concessions to the Palestinians.

"Durban is a wake-up call," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who attended the conference. "Just as Arafat made a tactical decision that he will win by violence, he has made a decision that he will win by trying to totally delegitimize the state of Israel, Zionism and Jewish history."

Raising the apartheid charge was part of a "brilliantly designed strategy," he said. "There isn't a dirtier word here in South Africa, or to the rest of the world."

Jewish leaders say it is too early to tell how deeply the Arab effort at Durban will cut into Israel's world standing. But most agree that the successful hijacking of the conference points to a crisis in international support for Israel, as well as one more blow to the all-but-dead Middle East peace process.

It also reflects an increasingly anti-Semitic cast to the fight against Israel in world organizations.

When an Arab lawyers group participating in the nongovernmental organization conference distributed virulently anti-Semitic pamphlets, for example, the American Jewish Committee and others filed a formal protest with the conference steering committee demanding that the group be excluded for distributing hate material.

But the committee ruled that the material -- which included grotesque caricatures of Jews with fangs -- was political, not racial, and denied the AJCommittee request.

"Durban may be remembered as a litmus test for how individual countries and nongovernmental groups reacted to an expression of raw anti-Semitism," said David Harris, the AJCommittee's executive director. "And an awful lot of them failed that test. That is the frightening and lingering part of Durban."

The die actually had been cast long before the onset of the controversial anti-racism conference (which originally was intended to highlight discrimination, not generate it) and its discord over efforts to single out Israel for its "racist policies."

The conference itself also represented a potential community relations crisis for Jewish groups, as other communities lashed out against the U.S. boycott.

On Tuesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations accused Washington of "bowing to the pressure of domestic pro-Israel groups," and called Israel a "brutal foreign government that uses apartheid-like practices and policies to subjugate Palestinian Muslims and Christians."

Said a prominent Jewish activist here, "That's a theme we will see more and more of as groups react to Durban. Just as the Palestinians sought to pit other nations against Israel, their supporters here will try to pit other groups, including African-Americans and Christians, against Jews and others who have been vocal in their support for Israel.".

Durban also undercut Israel's efforts to explain its actions in response to Palestinian terror, said David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank.

"Israel has been trying to make the international case that it is the victim of systematic terror aimed at its existence," he said. "But here is an international forum saying, no, you are not the victim, you are the victimizer. That assault on common sense requires a strong response."

In the meantime, the Durban conference also has major implications for what remains of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

"This was a virtual declaration of war by Arafat," said a longtime Jewish activist here. "This wasn't just Arafat maneuvering for advantage in his negotiations with Israel; this was a case of enlisting international support for undermining the entire Zionist enterprise and declaring it something evil and illegitimate."

The new Palestinian campaign "reflects a Palestinian leadership that no longer has any real interest in working out a compromise with Israel -- if indeed it ever had any."

Most Jewish leaders agree; not all are unhappy about that message.

"The kind of flamboyant outrages that took place in Durban are constructive, because they will help people understand that the mood is foul, the situation is dangerous and appeasement is not working," said Daniel Pipes, president of the conservative Middle East Forum and a persistent peace process critic.

Pipes said that the impact of Durban will be negative "to the extent that it will tell people around the world who do not know much about the issue that Israel is a racist state." But Israel's isolation will not be as devastating as it was in the 1970s, he said, when nations around the world cowered before the Arab oil weapon.

And that impact may be offset by a new realism on the possibility of peace in the region.

"Israel and its friends deluded themselves for a decade into thinking they had found a way to end the conflict. Ending that delusion should be the first priority; Durban, as painful as it was, was a first step."

Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and a peace process supporter, agreed that Durban represents "a return to the bad old days. We now are facing a very hostile international environment, with countries like Syria and Iran determining international events."

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, predicted a silver lining to the Durban debacle. The waste of a session intended to deal with a critical worldwide problem will be apparent to other nations, he said.

The Palestinians, he predicted, will try to repeat their performance at upcoming conferences on women and children. "Hopefully, the pendulum will swing back. I believe there will be a sober reassessment. It will happen when a group of nations come forward and say, enough of this crap."