Bethlehem: Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni announced on Wednesday that Israel would not be participating in the upcoming United Nations (UN) Durban II conference on racism.
Livni said the Israeli Foreign Ministry “will not legitimize” the conference, which she says has become “a forum for pernicious accusations and incitement against Israel.”
The conference is a follow-up to the September 2001 Durban “World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.”
According to Livni, the 2001 conference “became a forum” for “attacks against Zionism, labeling it as a form of racism, denial of the unique and special nature of the Holocaust and a distortion of the meaning of the term ‘anti-Semitism.’”
Livni made the announcement in front of the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities of North America on Wednesday, according to a news release from the Foreign Ministry received by Ma’an.
The UN General Assembly will convene the Durban Review Conference in Geneva in 2009, the UN announced two years ago.
“Once again, extremist Arab and Muslim states wish to control the content of the conference and derail it from its original mission,” Livni claimed on Wednesday.
“During recent months, we expressed the hope that the language of hatred will not repeat itself; we declared that we will not agree to the singling out of Israel, and we will object to incitement and condemnation of Israel,” Livni insisted.
“In view of this situation, Israel will not participate and will not legitimize the Review Conference, which will be used as a platform for further anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic activity,” the foreign minister said.
However, Livni claimed that Israel “is fully aware of the importance of the international fight against racism, xenophobia and related intolerance.”
The Israeli foreign minister called on the international community not to participate in a conference that, according to her, “seeks to legitimize hatred and extremism under the banner of the ‘fight against racism.’”
Source > Ma'an News | nov 19
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