FM: 31 countries to boycott anti-Israel Durban IV

The Foreign Ministry expects 31 countries to boycott Wednesday’s United Nations event marking the 20th anniversary of the World Conference Against Racism, which was marred by antisemitism and anti-Israel bias.

The Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday 10 countries that have not yet made their plans public plan to boycott the conference, in addition to the 21 that have announced they will not be attending.

Ukraine announced on Tuesday that it will not take part in Durban IV, according to American Jewish Committee CEO David Harris.

The other 20 countries are Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, the UK and the US.

This week’s event, known as Durban IV, has the theme of

“Reparations, racial justice and equality for people of African descent.” Critics have called on the UN to entirely scrap the Durban Conference on Racism and form a new conference.

No Western country has sent a high-level representative, meaning a government minister, to speak at the conference – though the EU has – nor has any volunteered to lead a roundtable, which Israel views as a success at labeling the event as antisemitic.

At the original Durban Conference in 2001, the parallel NGO Forum adopted a decision labeling Israel an apartheid state, and activists distributed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and flyers praising Hitler.

The 2001 Durban Decision, which the draft resolution for Wednesday’s conference reaffirms, singled out the Israel-Palestinian conflict, not mentioning any other specific conflicts as racist.

During the 2009 and 2011 Durban Review Conferences, then-president of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denied the Holocaust, calling it a pretext for Israeli oppression of Palestinians.

On Sunday, under the banner “Fight Racism, Not Jews: The UN and the Durban Deceit,” Israel’s Ambassador to the United States and the United Nations Gilad Erdan, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, former US attorney-general Michael Mukasey, Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight and others spoke at a conference organized by Touro College, Human Rights Voices and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) in a powerful head-on plea to countries to pull out of the Durban IV conference and to stand up to today’s antisemitism.

The virtual counter-event, which drew thousands of viewers, featured an eye-opening series of speakers from diverse religious and cultural backgrounds talking about what happened in Durban 20 years