Durban II Accuses Israel of "Genocide" and "Apartheid" -- UN Watch First to Respond

http://www.unwatch.org Demonization of Israel at Durban II UN Conference on Racism, October 2008 Preparatory Session.

At the October 2008 preparatory session for Durban II, a Tehran-sponsored Asian text painted Israel as the enemy of humanity, accusing it of committing genocide, crimes against humanity, and a new kind of apartheid.

As a result, the current UN draft declaration for Durban II attacks the idea of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people, describing it as fundamentally racist.

European states and others kept silent.
UN Watch was the first to respond.

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Palestine
Israel is not a democratic country

If you talk about the measures of the occupying power in my country against my people we start by the apartheid wall

...the whole international community agreed to integrate the issue of Palestine into this document

...the issue of Palestine will be there and will continue to appear in this document...

Syria
I want to highlight paragraph ten in the OIC document which talks about the plight of the Palestinian people and other Arab peoples under occupation in the Middle East, who have been subjected to unlawful collective punishment, torture, economic blockade, and arbitrary detention.

Syria
In particular, OP 68 which talks about the racial discrimination exercised against the Palestinians as well as other inhabitants of the Arab occupied territories.

UN Watch Intervention, 10 October 2008
Durban Review Conference
Delivered by Hillel Neuer

May I congratulate you, Mr. Chairman, on your assumption of this important task, to address concrete measures to combat all manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and to implement the undertakings of the international community toward this end.

We wish to comment on the various proposals, and to offer several of our own.

In undertaking such task, this committee must be guided by the principles of the United Nations Charter of 1945, which guarantees human dignity and the equal rights of men and women, and the equal rights of all nations, large and small.

Equally must our committee be bound by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, which was enacted, as stated in its Preamble, in wake of the contempt for human rights and the barbarous acts that outraged the conscience of mankind.

Indeed, those barbarous acts—six million acts of murder, which formed the Nazi genocide against the Jews—were preceded by a propaganda campaign, designed to promote hatred, to demonize and dehumanize the intended victims. With that in mind, Article 4 of the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination condemned such propaganda and prohibited states from inciting to racial hatred.

Before us today are proposals from the Asian groups submission. We just heard Iran and Syria propose paragraphs 68 and 69, which accuse Israel of, and I quote, practices of racial discrimination against the Palestinians and other inhabitants of the Arab occupied territories. [end quote] Related provisions accuse Israel of racial practices against Palestinians, and of committing a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity, a form of genocide, as well as aggression and acts of racism.

This text appears is new, appearing in a document just issued. Yet all here who are familiar with the events of the 2001 Durban conference will immediately recognize this text, because they are a reproduction, virtually verbatim, of the 2001 Tehran Declaration....

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