NGO Monitor marks 20 years since Durban
Marking 20 years since the UN Durban Conference, Jerusalem-based research institute NGO Monitor hosted an online event on Wednesday, titled “20 Years of Hijacking Human Rights: The Lasting Impact of Durban,” bringing together experts who discussed the enduring influence of the original Durban conference and NGO campaign to delegitimize Israel.
In September 2001, thousands of nongovernmental organizations gathered at the NGO Forum of the UN World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa. During the proceedings, NGOs launched a strategy of isolating Israel through boycotts, legal attacks, and accusations of “apartheid.”
Participants included NGO Monitor president Prof. Gerald M. Steinberg, Prof. Irwin Cotler, a former member of the Parliament in Canada and Minister of Justice and Attorney General, NGO Monitor legal adviser Anne Herzberg, ambassador Ron Prosor, and Aviva Raz-Shecter, Israel’s former permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva.
Steinberg said, “Durban became one of the most potent symbols of organized hate against Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. We are now 20 years later, and the Durban NGO plan of action is being implemented in every direction.”
Cotler, who participated in the Canadian
delegation to the 2001 Durban Conference, noted: “A conference that was to commemorate the dismantling of South Africa as an apartheid state turned into a conference calling for the dismantling of Israel as an apartheid state.”
Herzberg said, “From the very outset, it was clear that antisemitism would be promoted rather than tackled and that demonization and delegitimization of Israel would be a central
feature.”
Prosor, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations and head of the Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy, observed, “We see more and more countries who are beginning to move and see Israel in the region as part of the solution and not just part of the problem. There’s a lot of respect for what Israel does, and we have to bring it more to the world’s attention.”