One of the examples Stuart Eizenstat used in his opinion article in the July Chronicle in his attempt to show that President Obama seeks a secure Israel was an assertion that Obama “withdrew U.S. participation in the Durban Review Conference in Geneva in 2009 because of its anti-Israel agenda.” The problem is what Eizenstat did not say.
The Durban I Conference in 2001 was the anti-Israel United Nations conference that drew up a draft declaration declaring that Zionism equals racism. In response to the anti-Israel bias, President George Bush withdrew U.S. participation.
In spite of this, when the Durban II conference was scheduled for 2009, Obama initially declared willingness to have the U.S. attend, and he directed the participation of U.S. State Department in preparation for this conference. Eventually, Obama withdrew U.S. participation, but he initiated participation in spite of the conference’s well-known anti-Israel agenda.
Perhaps more disturbing was that Obama gave the U.S. Medal of Freedom Award in July 2009 to Mary Robinson, who presided over Durban I.
Robinson’s U.N. Human Rights Commission voted to condone suicide bombing as a legitimate means to establish a Palestinian state, investigated the battle of Jenin in 2002 and called it a massacre, and never investigated a single Jewish death even though more than 1,000 Jewish innocents died from terrorism in Intefada II.
The story of Durban II and Obama is far different from what Eizenstat suggested.
Glendale
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