Taking on so grand a topic as "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment" is above my pay grade, so to speak, especially as a member of only disorganized Catholicism.
Even so, I must take on at least those parts of the debate I do know something about, namely Durban and human rights groups. Beinart's piece filled me with dismay, not only because it will likely further polarize and divide a community one depends on these days for upholding the values of Judeo-Christian civilization -- "the West" in the face of growing illiberalism and violent challenges -- but because once again, the facts are presented incorrectly on Zionism=Racism and the Durban World Conference Against Racism.
Jewish and non-Jewish liberals castigate Jewish conservatives and Zionists for saying incorrectly that "Zionism=Racism" was in the final declaration of the failed UN World Conference Against Racism. No, it was not literally, as in a Google word-search, in this document -- a factoid that some pounce upon with even malicious glee in their quest to prove Zionists out of touch and hidebound.
But here's the thing. As I've written before, Israel is still singled out alone among nations in this document . No other state is mentioned in this fashion as Israel is, in par. 63, where Palestinians are referenced under the rubric "Victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance" and Israel is mentioned twice. Yes, antisemitism is also referenced, as is the need for security by the state of Israel -- all to the good. Yet Palestinians are still singled out in a way that implies they are victims of an alleged state-sponsored racism, and in a way that no other victims' group is. So the Zionists have a case on this point, and the liberals are wrong, unfortunately for their cause. Read the document, in order to understand why, if this is the political result, the UN has insufficient credibility to broker the peace.
It's important to remember the context of pre-911 2001. By that time, it wasn't an act of civic courage to keep "Zionism=Racism" out of an international UN document. That's because by that time, it was very much officially repudiated. The Soviet Union, which maintained Z=R as a staple of foreign policy propaganda, had collapsed in 1991, and Russia, a Permanent Council successor, dropped it, as did their allies. The old propagandistic UN resolution was in fact revoked in December 1991, the only such UN resolution to get such abrogation. Kofi Annan, then UN Secretary General, said that the Zionism=Racism canard was a "low point" for the UN. So UN officials knew, years before Durban, that this propagandistic formula was no longer acceptable as "collective political will of states" and could no longer be defended, whatever their personal sympathies.
Very early in the Durban regional and international negotiation process, Zionism=Racism was dropped and the Organization of Islamic Conference knew not to push it, politically. But it crept in through the back door, and that back door came in the form of the sometimes state-sponsored chanting of the discredited NGO forum groups of the slogan "Israel=Apartheid State," and came in the form of the proposal to single out Israel as the only state mentioned in the document. The former was the reason for why a group of NGOs which I helped to lead disassociated themselves from the UN-sponsored NGO forum; the latter was the reason for why the U.S. rightly walked out of the Durban conference. Both the dissident NGO position and the U.S. position were positions of liberalism and consistency of universality -- not a Zionist position, or "influenced by Zionists". If states with notorious state-sponsored racist practices were going to get a pass in this document (Chechens, Bahais, and Dalits could all make credible claims regarding state-sponsored racism), not to mention many country situations where state neglect rather than a conscious state policy were at issue, why single out Israel?
To her credit, High Commissioner Mary Robinson, convener of the World Conference Against Racism, kept Zionism=Racism out of the negotiation process -- but as I noted, this was the expected norm at the time, and not the chief political task for this conference, which was more subtle and complicated. What she did not do was keep the demonization of Israel out of the document, and keep out the sole singling out of Israel. Arguably, as a UN official with limited capacity to influence states, she could not do more on this. There is endless speculation about her own sympathies and her own role behind the scenes. What's operative, however is this: the states were responsible for negotiating this document, and the EU, upon whom rested the civic duty of keeping out the unfair obsession about Israel once the U.S. walked out, did not sufficiently rise to the challenge -- albeit getting in the concepts of Israel's security and antisemitism-- and other good actors -- a few East European or Latin American or other small states -- were too weak.
Final documents at the UN generally hew to the thematic; singling out Israel is a practice which mars a number of UN institutions, from the General Assembly to the Commission on the Status of Women to the UN Human Rights Council. This discredited, politicized practice, producing a storm of resolutions, committees, missions etc. every year appears not to have had a whit of influence on the Israeli government.
When I have this discussion with people who weren't in Durban about what is actually in the final document and what happened there, I find that very rarely, their claim that the Zionists are "wrong" or that the document was free of hate (it wasn't) are thereby remedied. Showing them these tedious facts of the paragraphs in the final document and explaining the political climate doesn't make an impact. And I suppose that's because this issue goes to the heart of the strife and division in the Jewish community in the U.S., but also to a recurring issue for liberals and the UN in general -- the idealistic idea to get achieved through international institutions what you cannot achieve at home in your own community or with your own government.
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