“We condemn this rubber stamp document in the strongest terms possible,” B’nai B’rith Honorary President and Head of Delegation Richard D. Heideman said from Geneva. “The adoption of this document shows nothing has changed since 2001, no lessons have been learned – and the hope for a unified approach to fighting racism and intolerance around the world will again go unfulfilled.”
The 2009 declaration reaffirms the conclusions from the original Durban conference. That document asserted that Palestinians are subject to Israeli “racism.”
The expectation that this anti-Israel declaration would again be the outcome prompted Israel, Canada, the United States, Italy, Germany, Australia, Holland, New Zealand, Czech Republic, and Poland to withdraw.
Libya helped to seal the negative outcome of the conference. Chosen as the chair of the conference, despite a long history of supporting terrorism and violating human rights, Libya on Tuesday engineered the swift movement of the declaration from the drafting committee and adoption of the preparatory document of last week.
The 23 European Union nations, B’nai B’rith International’s delegates, and others, walked out during Ahmadinejad speech, in which he said that the foundation of the State of Israel rendered “an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering” in order “to establish a totally racist government in occupied Palestine.”
B'nai B'rith has a 50-person delegation monitoring the proceedings of the U.N. Durban Review Conference in Geneva. The international team is working to fulfill B’nai B’rith’s 165 year history and mission of combating anti-Semitism and intolerance, and in standing up for the human rights of and respect due Israel, the Jewish people and those who are in need of protection of their inalienable rights to justice and equality.
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