Congressman Mark Kirk (R-10th) quoted in RJC statement:
RJC Calls for "Clear, Principled, and Final" Durban 2 PositionEquivocating and Flip-Flopping Must Stop
Washington, D.C. (April 14, 2009) The Republican Jewish Coalition today called on President Obama to end the guessing game about whether the administration will follow through on its pledge not to participate in the United Nations' discredited World Conference Against Racism (Durban 2) next week in Geneva.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz [1] reported Sunday: "Senior U.S. officials in Washington and New York are leaning in favor of participating" in Durban 2. Yesterday, the State Department issued a statement that applauded revisions that have apparently been made in the working group draft statement upon which the conference will be based. The statement concluded by expressing the hope "that the United States can re-engage the conference process with the hope of arriving at a conference document that we can support." [2] The Jerusalem Post reported that "the wrangling over the contents of the draft outcome document for the Durban review could continue throughout the week, leaving the US presence up in the air until right before the conference begins." [3]
This is very disturbing news for American Jews and others who support Israel, since it raises the prospect that the Obama administration will renege on its previous commitment to boycott this conference. Durban II is a follow-up to the original Durban conference of 2001, and is expected to be a venue for the same kind of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and anti-Western tirades that led President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell to withdraw the U.S. from the first conference.
Yesterday, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV) wrote to Secretary of State Clinton to warn that "the latest working group draft statement is still fundamentally unacceptable. The very first clause reaffirms the hate-filled declarations of the 2001 Durban Conference, which singled out only one country in the world for condemnation - Israel." The bipartisan pair urged Clinton to "reaffirm" the Obama administration's "pledge not to attend the hate-filled Durban conference." [4] The RJC strongly agrees with this bipartisan congressional sentiment.
Concerns that the 2009 conference would devolve into an anti-Israel gathering have been further fueled by the news that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamadinejad will join the proceedings. Ahmadinejad's long history of Holocaust denial and genocidal threats against Israel make his plans an ominous signal as to the real trend in Geneva.
The latest administration signals leave an impression of a new diplomatic team determined to turn what could have been an opportunity for principled leadership into a fiasco that promotes disarray within the UN's democratic bloc.
We urge President Obama to act quickly and unambiguously: End this guessing game and affirm the pledge he made to be resolute in opposition to anti-Semitism in the international arena by issuing a clear, principled, and final statement that the United States will not participate in this dangerous and discredited conference.
[1] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/
[2] http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/
[3] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/
[4] http://blogs.jta.org/politics/
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