[R-G] UN Protects Israel From Racism Charges

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46524

RIGHTS:  UN Protects Israel From Racism Charges
By Nora Barrows-Friedman

BETHLEHEM, Occupied West Bank, Apr 16 (IPS) - As the wreckage from  
Israel's recent siege on Gaza continues to smoulder, international  
civil society organisations are assembling this week in Switzerland to  
address Israel's crimes of military occupation and racism.

But any discussion on Israel's actions in Palestine will be excluded  
from the formal framework at the Durban Anti-Racism Review Conference  
in Geneva Monday. Israel-Palestine has been deliberately eliminated  
from the official programme, structured by the UN Office of the High  
Commissioner for Human Rights (UN OHCHR). Civil society groups believe  
that the United States, countries within the European Union and Israel  
pressured the UN to omit a review of Israel's racial discrimination  
against Palestinians.

Hundreds of delegations from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and  
human rights organisations will converge in Geneva for the Durban  
Review Conference on Racism. The conference is a follow-up to the 2001  
World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa, that  
outlined an international legal and political concept to deal with  
global issues of race and human rights.

Immediately following that conference, the WCAR NGO forum recommended  
an international campaign of isolation towards Israel's  
institutionalised "brand of apartheid and other racist crimes against  
humanity."

The Durban Review Conference website states that the 2009 Geneva  
symposium is designed to "review progress and assess the  
implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action  
(DDPA)." Adopted by general consensus at the 2001 WCAR in Durban, "the  
DDPA is a comprehensive, action-oriented document that proposes  
concrete measures to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia  
and related intolerance. It is holistic in its vision, addresses a  
wide range of issues, and contains far- reaching recommendations and  
practical measures."

In order to assess and review any progress made since the 2001 WCAR in  
Durban, Palestinian human rights organisations planned several side  
events that were to take place within the schedule of the conference.

However, two weeks ago, the UN High Commissioner's office unilaterally  
cancelled all side-events pertaining to Palestine issues. Ingrid  
Jarradat- Gassner, director of the BADIL Resource Centre for  
Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights in Bethlehem, one of several  
Palestine-based organisations attending the Durban Review conference,  
tells IPS that BADIL and the other NGOs had organised a side-event  
specifically about how and why they see Israel as a "regime of  
institutionalised racial discrimination on both sides of the Green  
Line."

"As Palestinian NGOs and other NGOs working on the issue of Israel and  
its violations against the rights of the Palestinian people, we were  
expecting that there would be a possibility for us to organise these  
side-events during the official Durban review conference in Geneva,"  
Jarradat-Gassner says. "We were informed by the UN itself that this  
would be possible."

Jarradat-Gassner says that on Apr. 3, less than three weeks before the  
Durban Review Conference, the UN High Commissioner's office called  
BADIL's representative in Geneva into a meeting at the UN, and  
verbally informed her that all side-events pertaining to the specific  
issue of Palestine and Israel had been banned.

"We were not even informed in any sort of direct of official way. In  
fact, we have no record of the decision of the UN not to let us work  
on such side- events," says Jarradat-Gassner.

According to the UN's Durban Review Conference agenda, other side- 
events focusing on indigenous rights, women's rights and the link  
between racism and poverty will have an official platform.

Jarradat-Gassner says she knows there is a specific apprehension  
within the political UN body towards Palestine issues. In the draft  
document for the Durban Review Conference, she points out, there are  
particular recommendations for victims of HIV/AIDS, for victims of  
slave trade, Roma people, people of African descent, but, Jarradat- 
Gassner says, "there is not a single reference to Palestine,  
Palestinians or Israel in this whole document."

BADIL, Al-Haq (a Palestinian human rights organisation) and Adallah  
(the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel) wrote a joint  
formal complaint to the UN OHCHR, but have not received any reply. The  
UN OHCHR did not respond to IPS's request for a comment either.

Dr. Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human  
Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, tells IPS he had not  
known about the disallowance of side-events pertaining to Palestine/ 
Israel by the UN's OHCHR. "One has to assume it was part of an effort  
to meet the objections of the United States that the event was  
discrediting to the extent it engaged in 'Israel-bashing'." However,  
Falk points out, "U.S. leverage is probably greater than it has been  
because Obama is President and Washington has indicated its intention  
to rejoin the Human Rights Council."

Palestinian organisations say that banning these side-events is a  
significant disappointment in pursuing Israel's legal responsibility  
towards its actions in Palestine. Dr. Falk echoes this sentiment. "I  
believe that the strong evidence of Israeli racism during the recent  
Gaza attacks makes it strange to refuse NGOs organising side-events to  
address the issue," he tells IPS. "Also, the collective punishment  
aspects of the occupation seem to qualify the Israeli policy as a form  
of racism, combined with the rise of the extreme right, with (Avigdor)  
Lieberman as (Israeli) foreign minister."

Jarradat-Gassner says that within the framework of the Durban Review  
Conference, the issue of Palestine and Israel should be prominent.  
"There is an obvious link between colonisation and apartheid (in  
Palestine-Israel). If you have a settler-colonial regime that comes  
here to stay, and codifies into law its relationship of domination  
over the indigenous population, you are entering the field of  
apartheid...We are talking about what Israel has been practising over  
the last 60 years in Palestine."

Meanwhile, anticipating a limited platform for debate and discussion  
on Israel's actions in Palestine, BADIL helped structure a separate  
symposium along with international Palestinian human rights and  
justice organisations and sponsored by the Palestinian Boycott,  
Divestment and Sanctions National Committee.

Entitled the Israel Review Conference: United Against Apartheid,  
Colonialism and Occupation: Dignity & Justice for the Palestinian  
People, these Palestine- focused NGOs will have a platform to address  
international civil society two days before the Durban Review  
conference commences. Jaradat-Gassner tells IPS she hopes that the  
Israel Review Conference "succeeds to make mainstream the analysis of  
Israel as a regime of colonial apartheid that also uses military  
occupation. It's not easy to dismiss this sort of analysis."

Additionally, U.S. President Barack Obama's administration appears to  
have decided not to attend the Durban Review conference. In 2001, the  
United States representatives walked out of the first Durban  
conference when Zionism was defined as racism against Palestinians.

In the United States, progressive African-American organisations have  
expressed their disappointment and frustration that Obama has avoided  
the Durban Review conference. Ajamu Baraka, executive director of the  
U.S. Human Rights Network in Atlanta, Georgia, tells IPS that his  
organisation "takes the position that the Obama administration should  
participate and be willing to discuss all of the issues that will be  
addressed during the review process...A strong stand on this issue by  
the first African-American President of the United States would have a  
revolutionary impact on the global discourse on race." (END/2009)