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Rabbi Quits U.N. Racism Summit over
'Zionism': U.K. Paper
LONDON, August 24 (IslamOnline & News Agency) - A Jewish leader in Britain has pulled out of a key role in the world racism conference to be held in Durban, South Africa from August 31st to September 7th, a British daily reported Friday.
The leader of Britain's Jewish population, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, said that a draft declaration for the racism conference unfairly criticizes Israel, denigrates the Holocaust and equates Zionism with racism, reported the London-based Independent newspaper.
Rabbi Sacks was part of the Eminent Persons Group at the conference, which is headed by former South African president Nelson Mandela, and includes former American president, Jimmy Carter, and former Russian president, Mikhail Gorbachev.
The group is intended to give "moral authority" to the United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.
Sacks decided to boycott the conference in protest to the final draft of the declaration, which he claims demeans Jewish suffering by referring to the Nazi Holocaust of World War II with a lowercase "h", compares Zionism to racism and condemns Israel's policy towards the Palestinians.
Sacks said Thursday that if the document was not changed, it would "injure the fight against racism and damage the moral authority of the United Nations."
For its part, the Cairo-based Arab League announced Thursday that it will defy the United States and push ahead with plans to have Israel condemned as racist at the conference.
Arab League foreign ministers announced - after a special meeting on the Middle East conflict in Cairo on Wednesday - that they would campaign for Zionism to be recognized as a form of racism at the U.N.-sponsored conference.
A communiqué said that the meeting had confirmed "the need to condemn Israeli practices against the Palestinian people" in the nearly 11-month-old Palestinian Intifada (uprising) in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which has left 734 dead, including 566 Palestinians and 146 Israelis.
The United States and the European Union have in the past rejected any move to include language in the draft documents suggesting that Zionism - the movement that led to the creation of Israel- is a form of racism.
Washington has threatened to boycott the conference if it condemns Zionism, or demands reparations for the descendants of victims of slavery.
The U.S boycotted the last two racism conferences in 1978 and 1983 for the same reasons.
However, the Arab League's Secretary General, Amr Mussa, has said the success of the South African meeting for Arab countries depended on their ability to advance their position.
He and the foreign ministers in the 22-member grouping will meet on the opening day of the meeting to "coordinate their positions," the communiqué said.
The debate over the concept of Zionism as racism goes back to a 1975 U.N. resolution that equated Zionism with the kind of racism that bolstered South African apartheid, but the resolution was repealed under U.S. pressure in 1991.
Human rights organizations have appealed to U.S. President George W. Bush to send a high-ranking delegation to the conference regardless of the language used in its drafting, emphasizing the importance of the American presence at such a significant international event.
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