Community relief as government says UK will boycott the ‘festival of Jew-hate’
THE BRITISH government has confirmed it will boycott Durban IV, an event to mark the anniversary of an international conference that is widely regarded as a “festival of Jew-hate”.
The UK will join Australia, Canada, Israel and the US in not attending the United Nations conference, which first took place in South Africa in 2001 as a global “anti-racism” gathering.
The US, Israel and Canada walked out of the original 2001 event, citing a series of antisemitic remarks that had been made some participants. Several of those present also tried to equate Zionism with racism.
Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust was present and said she saw “copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion being freely handed out, swastika-adorned posters with crude caricatures of Jews with bloodied fangs outside the conference hall and leaflets with pictures of Adolf Hitler saying, ‘What if I had won?’.”
Shimon Samuels, Director for International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, attended the 2003 Durban gathering in Brazil and later wrote: “I stood in the Porto Alegre stadium and saw the banners that hung from the stands: ‘No Jews, Nazis, Yankees - No More Chosen
Peoples’. Over 76, 000 young people from over 100 countries were screaming: ‘Viva la Intifada Global’.”
The Board of Deputies, Jewish Leadership Council and Conservative Friends of Israel all wrote to Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab this year, requesting the UK not to attend.
On Sunday, a government spokesperson confirmed: “Following historic concerns regarding antisemitism, the UK has decided not to attend the UN’s Durban Conference anniversary event later this year.”
CFI Parliamentary Chairmen, Stephen Crabb MP and Lord Eric Pickles, said: “Confirmation that the UK will not attend Durban IV is extremely welcome. It is absolutely right that the UK is joining our close allies Australia, Canada and the US in condemning the infamous gathering.
“We applaud this latest decisive action from the UK government in opposing antisemitism in all its forms and wherever it occurs.”
Ms Pollock, who is also vice president of the JLC, said: “This is welcome news. Tainted with Jew-hatred, poisonous rhetoric about Israel and Holocaust denial and minimisation, the Durban process is no place to tackle racism. It is time for the Durban conferences to be consigned to history. The British government has done the right thing once again by taking a principled stance and refusing to attend.”
Arsen Ostrovsky, Chair and CEO of the International Legal Forum (ILF), said: “The British government should be applauded. The Durban 2001 conference was intended to bring the international community together to fight racism and xenophobia, but instead descended into an unhinged display of Jew-hatred and virulent antisemitism, setting the foundation for the mainstreaming of the kind of violent assaults against Jews we have witnessed on the streets of London.”
It is time for the Durban conferences to be consigned to the dustbin’