Opinion

O EMPOWERS UN’S NEW ISRAEL-BASH

THE Obama administration is legitimizing the UN’s Durban Review Confer ence – a gathering that is guaranteed to become an orgy of Israel-bashing, filled as well with denunciations of the West’s efforts in the War on Terror as “racist”.

On Monday, a US delegation joined a Geneva planning session for the conference – a project so plainly vile that Canada has announced a boycott, and some Europeans may also pull out.

The US delegation walked out of the 2001 notorious hatefest posing as an anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa. That walkout, directed by Secretary of State Colin Powell, would have made a much bigger splash if 9/11 hadn’t happened shortly afterward.

Powell’s move was applauded by most Americans, with a few exceptions, like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who said in a sermon a year later that Washington had left Durban because “somebody dared to point out the racism” prevalent “both here and in Israel.”

And the “review” conference in April is on track to be just as odious – with direct assaults on free speech, the right to defend against terrorism and of course on the world’s eternal boogeyman, Israel.

What is Team Obama thinking?

“Our intent is to go and see if we can change it from the inside,” an American UN diplomat told me, adding that State Department participation at Monday’s prep session didn’t necessarily mean America would end up joining or helping to finance the conference.

Yet nations that usually go along with UN nonsense – Britain, France, even Italy – have indicated they’ll stay away unless the conference’s crude agenda changes dramatically.

Of course, the Europeans will likely change their minds, now that the United States has signaled its desire to engage in the process.

But there’s no hope for the administration’s “change from the inside”: The game is rigged – nations supporting the hateful spirit of the original Durban control a clear majority of the votes in the planning committee. Libya is the chairman, with co-chairs including human-rights luminaries like Iran, Pakistan and Cuba.

They’ve drawn up an 88-page draft for a final Durban II declaration full of radical provisions. One defines as racism any questioning of religious values (but naming only Islam as under threat); another calls for limiting free speech to avoid “defamation of religion,” and a third denounces as racist most of the anti-terrorist measures taken by Western countries since 9/11.

The document denounces only one nation by name as racist: Israel, over and over again. It decribes the Jewish state’s policies as apartheid-like, its Zionist laws as discrimination-based and its attitudes as xenophobic.

Can Obama’s charm offensive change anything? At Monday’s session in Geneva, an American diplomat made a passionate plea to tone down the anti-Israel rhetoric. A Palestinian delegate immediately suggested adding new anti-Israel provisions.

The most that Western democracies can do in this forum is nibble around the edges, cutting a provision here or a paragraph there. It will be the same old UN rope-a-dope game: After long negotiations – lasting until the final moments before the conference opens – the anti-Western principles will remain.

Meanwhile, America will be seen haggling over human-rights values with Moammar Khadafy, who brutally represses all foreigners in Libya (including Palestinians). As long as America is “engaged,” no European will walk out.

The result: Even if America decides at the last moment to “disengage,” it will have lent the process credibility. “It’s like negotiating with the Iranians until they get the bomb,” said the Israeli-based scholar Gerald Steinberg.

Which is the worst part of this Obama move. Everyone – Europeans, Middle Easterners, Russia, China – is waiting to see how Washington’s new style of constructive engagement works to solve real crises, like Iran. In Geneva, Team Obama picked a symbolic arena where engagement is sure to lose.

That is, of course, unless you think that the Durban ideals are good for human rights (or for anything). I doubt Obama does. If I’m wrong, he might as well name the Rev. Wright secretary of state.

Benny Avni is a UN-based columnist. beavni@gmail.com