Learning lessons from the antisemitic Durban conference

‘If 9/11 was the Kristallnacht of terror,” wrote distinguished Canadian Prof. Irwin Cotler, “then Durban was the Mein Kampf.”

In late August and early September 2001, thousands gathered in Durban, South Africa, for the UN-sponsored World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance. The conference’s name was promising, but the results, much like the terrorist attacks on the United States just three days later on September 11, have lingered over the past 20 years.

Marking two decades since the Durban conference, Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, an independent research institute that publishes analysis on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), their funders, and other stakeholders in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, hosted an online event on Wednesday, June 23. The event, “20 Years of Hijacking Human Rights - The Lasting Impact of Durban,” brought together experts “who discussed the enduring influence of the original Durban conference and NGO campaign to delegitimize Israel.”

Participants in the event included NGO Monitor founder and president and Bar-Ilan University Professor Emeritus Gerald M. Steinberg; Prof. Cotler, a former member of parliament in Canada, justice minister and attorney-general; NGO Monitor legal adviser Anne Herzberg; Ambassador Ron Prosor; and Aviva Raz-Shechter, Israel’s former permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva.

Twenty years ago, 1,500 NGOs gathered at the conference’s NGO Forum in Durban. During the proceedings, NGOs launched a strategy of isolating Israel through boycotts, legal attacks and accusations of apartheid. Opening the online event commemorating the conference, Steinberg said, “Durban became the most potent symbol of organized hate against Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.”

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Steinberg recalled the events of the conference and the lasting impact that it has made in the 20 years since. He pointed out that smaller versions of the Durban conference with a similar anti-Israel slant had taken place in other locations in the past, but the Durban conference was much larger and more significant, with more than 5,000 people and 1,500 organizations in attendance. Large, internationally known NGOs such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and FIDH, a French human rights organization, set the tone in Durban with their highly organized and professional staffs sending out a stream of anti-Israel propaganda throughout the conference. Human Rights Watch, said Steinberg, stood out as the most active organization, and prevented speakers identified with Zionism and Israel from speaking.

Activities outside the conference, explained Steinberg, such as organizing anti-Israel marches, were organized by South African NGOs linked to the PLO and other Palestinian organizations. Likewise, the distribution of antisemitic materials – including copies of the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, T-shirts emblazoned with a swastika and a Star of David, and placards proclaiming “If only Hitler had won” – was organized by the same NGOs.

“The NGO Forum,” noted Steinberg, “adopted a final declaration with no room for dissent. The action plan,” he explained, specified “the complete international isolation of Israel as an apartheid state.” Steinberg noted that these NGOs have continued their anti-Israel efforts over the past 20 years. 

“We can see it in the activities of Human Rights Watch,” he said, referring to a recent report produced by the group arguing that Israel’s policies toward the Palestinian population in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel meet the definitions of apartheid and persecution, using the word “apartheid” 200 times in its report. He added that the Durban NGO conference laid out the framework of the BDS movement, which promotes boycotts, divestment, and economic sanctions against Israel.

Steinberg also noted that the Durban conference was formally dedicated in part to the victory over the apartheid regime in South Africa. In that light, he explained, the NGOs consciously used the same mechanisms used in South Africa – such as boycotts – against Israel. 

“That is where BDS comes from,” said Steinberg. He added that the international legal frameworks used against South Africa during the apartheid period were also used against Israel, another tactic that continues to this day, with accusations against Israel for alleged war crimes being brought to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

STEINBERG EXPLAINED that the Durban NGO plan of action is being implemented every day. 

“Poisonous ‘Israel apartheid weeks’ featuring the same NGOs and their anti-Israel slogans are annual events on university campuses, inciting attacks on Jewish students and institutions. Under the banners of intersectionality and solidarity, and adding the term ‘Jewish supremacy,’ antisemitic attacks are at the highest levels since the end of the Holocaust,” he said. Moreover, the intensity of these attacks has increased and become more widespread with the advent of social media.

The antisemitic and anti-Israel tone of the Durban conference was carefully planned, Steinberg noted, and people who paid attention to the details were aware of what was coming. Moreover, the very fact that the UN Human Rights Commission, the host organizer, held its preparatory conference in Tehran in July 2001, where many of the details of the Durban conference were planned, made it clear that the conference would be a fundamentally anti-Israel and antisemitic event.

He explained that until that point, NGOs had largely positive reputations and were assumed to be politically neutral. The events of Durban proved otherwise. 

“As an academic,” said Prof. Steinberg, “I realized there was no focused research of the role of NGOs. No one was evaluating them.” NGO Monitor, under Steinberg’s direction, was born and began to prepare reports focusing on the activities of the anti-Israel NGOs. What initially started as a small project grew into a unique and widely respected research institute. NGO Monitor publishes fact-based research and independent analysis on organizations and their funders in order to promote transparency and accountability of human rights NGOs.

Over the last 20 years, NGO Monitor research has led to cuts of at least $72 million in funding to NGOs that promote BDS and antisemitism or have ties to terrorist groups. There has also been a significant shift in European and other governments’ approach to NGO funding as they have introduced vetting procedures and funding guidelines, in contrast to the automatic embrace of these organizations, known as the NGO “halo effect.”

It is important to understand not only what the anti-Israel NGOs are doing but what motivates them. Steinberg suggests that the answer lies in their strong political ideology, which espouses an anti-Western and post-colonialist perspective.

“Israel, in their view, is a modern extension of Western colonialism of the 18th and 19th centuries. It’s not just the issue of ‘occupied territories.’ The NGO community targets Israel per se as a Western implant in the Middle East. The Palestinians are not guilty of human rights violations because they’re victims by definition. That’s built-in to the NGO creed,” he explained.

The UN Human Rights Council is planning a conference in September 2021 to “celebrate” the anniversary of Durban. The United States, Canada, Australia, the UK and Hungary have announced that they will boycott the event. Nevertheless, numerous anti-Israel and antisemitic NGOs are already campaigning to revive the Durban agenda in the planned conference. In this and many other areas, the work of NGO Monitor continues for the foreseeable future.

However, there may be some room for a bit of optimism. Speaking at the NGO Monitor online event, Ambassador Prosor, Israel’s former permanent representative to the United Nations and head of the Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy, observed, “We see more and more countries that 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 that more to the world’s attention.”