DURBAN REVIEW CONFERENCE
PREPARATORY COMMITTEE
STATEMENT ON BEHALF OF B'NAI B'RITH INTERNATIONAL AND COORDINATING BOARD OF JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS
16/17 OCTOBER 2008
READ BY KLAUS NETTER, BBI Geneva Representative
On behalf of B'nai B'rith International and the Coordinating Board of Jewish Organizations, allow me to express our concern about two matters raised in the draft output document.
Firstly, we cannot accept the selectivity involved in referring to one and only one geographical conflict in the entire world, namely, the Middle East conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, when the news media report manifold conflicts around the world, some of which do in fact have aspects of race.
Secondly, the repeated references to the allegedly racist policies under which the Palestinians are said to be suffering implies that Israeli Jews and Palestinians belong to two different races. The classification of Jews as a race was first legally enshrined by the Nazi Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which distinguised between Germans of a so-called Aryan race and a Jewish race. It is suprising that the ideas behind this racist Nazi ideology should find its place in a UN document designed to fight racism, racial discrimination , xenophobia and related intolerance. The distortion of an essentially national or territorial conflict into a racial one. debases the essence of the Review Conference and may even cause some countries to withdraw entirely.
Thank you, Mme Chairperson.
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