Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (AAJLJ), which organized the ``Durban II Counter Conference'' in New York City April 20-24, 2009, to provide an honest and critical examination…
Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (AAJLJ), which organized the ``Durban II Counter Conference'' in New York City April 20-24, 2009, to provide an honest and critical examination of issues of racism, racial discrimination, genocide, xenophobia, gender discrimination and religious discrimination, in marked contrast to the hate-filled proceedings that occurred the same week in Geneva.
The Counter Conference commenced with remarks by my distinguished colleague from New York, Representative Carolyn Maloney, and included presentations by our parliamentary colleagues from Canada--Senator Jerahmiel Grafstein and former minister Irwin Cotler--and Israel's Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Daniel Carmon, along with prominent experts and human rights advocates from the academic and legal communities. The panels included topics that should be part of any serious discussion on racism, such as ``A Look at Religious Intolerance and Discrimination,'' ``Current Issues in Gender Discrimination,'' and ``Genocide in Darfur, Rwanda and the Congo.'' Too many of these topics are ignored in the UN and I am pleased that the Durban II Counter Conference focused on them.
I want to particularly recognize the lead organizers of the event-- AAJLJ president Stephen Greenwald, conference chair Robert Weinberg and conference vice chair Marc Landis, along with Ambassador Richard Schifter, former United States Representative to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. Ambassador Schifter delivered the keynote address at the conference, entitled ``The Third Totalitarian Threat,'' which I would like to insert into the Congressional Record.
The U.N.'s Challenge to Democracy--Address by Richard Schifter, former U.S. Representative in the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and former U.S. Deputy Representative in the U.N. Security Council to the Durban
II ``Counter-Conference'' at Fordham Law School in New York City on
April 20, 2009
If Adolf Hitler had lived to 120, today would be the day he
died. While he has, fortunately, not been bodily with us for
the past 64 years, his spirit, regrettably, is still alive
and very much alive in Geneva this week. As we have focused
on Durban II, we have appropriately remembered Durban I,
where anti-Israeli propaganda initially intertwined with
antisemitism. Whatever product the wordsmiths may come up
with, the dominant forces in Geneva will have seen to it that
the anti-Israel message of Durban I is reaffirmed.
There is no doubt that Durban I and Durban II are matters
of serious concern. Yet, as we examine the context in which
these UN-sponsored conferences are held, we must necessarily
come to the conclusion that the anti-Israel and antisemitic
phenomenon of these meetings is only the tip of the UN
iceberg. Or, to use another metaphor, we deal at this Durban
II meeting, as we did at Durban I, with only a symptom of the
debilitating disease from which the UN suffers.
The perfectly legitimate and highly worthy cause of
opposition to racism, which is the alleged reason for these
gatherings, was from the very start subverted by the
totalitarians that dominate the UN General Assembly and who
are making full use of the Assembly and its offshoots in
their continuing campaign against democracy, civil liberties,
and the rule of law. They are engaged in a campaign against
the basic principles of the Enlightenment, principles that
were enshrined in the UN Charter.
What we are witnessing now worldwide is the third major
totalitarian attack on these principles. In its modern form
the ideology of democracy and human rights emanated from the
Netherlands in the 17th Century and then spread to the United
States, England, France, Germany in the 18th and 19th
Centuries, and beyond that region in the 20th Century. It is
no longer a way of governing limited to the West. India, it
is worth keeping in mind, has for many years been the world's
largest democracy. Japan and South Korea are democracies and
so are many smaller non-Western countries.
It is indeed appropriate that we are meeting on the day
that marks not only the opening of Durban II, but also the
day once known in Germany as the Geburtstag des Fuehrers, the
birthday of the leader. For it was Hitler who led the initial
totalitarian attack on the Enlightenment, turning first on
the democratic process in his own country and then seeking to
bring all of Europe under his control.
In the course of the 20th Century we experienced not only
Hitler's attack on the Enlightenment, which led to World War
II, but also Stalin's repressive and expansionist policies,
which precipitated the Cold War. Both World War II and the
Cold War were conflicts resulting from profound differences
in ideology. And now, in the 21st Century, we, whose way of
life is based on the principles of the Enlightenment, are the
objects of the third totalitarian attack, an attack
undertaken, strange as it may seem, by an informal de
facto alliance of neo-fascists and neo-communists, an
alliance that unites Mahmoud Akhmadinejad with Hugo
Chavez.
The proceedings in Geneva at the Durban II meeting are
vivid proof to the world of what that new alliance seeks to
accomplish. Under the mantle of opposition to racism, it
seeks to attack the Western world and our basic concepts of
freedom. Its manipulation of significant human rights issues
is well illustrated by its approach to the issue of slavery.
It is only the wrongful transatlantic slave trade that is
attacked. The slave trade in East Africa, undertaken by non-
Westerners, including Arabs, is deliberately omitted. Nor is
there any mention in the Durban II drafts of the racist
aspect of the current conflict in Darfur, which Colin Powell
has correctly characterized as genocidal.
While there is a need for us to follow the Durban II
proceedings closely for what they reveal regarding the agenda
of the new totalitarians, we need also to recognize that
Durban II is just one forum of a much larger enterprise, an
enterprise that makes full use of the United Nations system
to advance its cause, the cause of the new totalitarianism.
Israel, I submit, is the canary in the coal mine. The new
totalitarians view as their enemies all those who are
committed to the way of life that emanated from the
Enlightenment.
I have been around long enough to remember the speech given
by Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia in 1936 at a session of
the League of Nations Assembly to appeal for action against
Mussolini's Italy, which had invaded his country. In his
speech he warned: ``It is collective security: it is the very
existence of the League of Nations. It is
the confidence that each State is to place in international
treaties. . . . In a word, it is international morality that
is at stake.''
The Emperor's words were heard but no meaningful action was
taken. The League quietly faded from the world scene as World
War II approached. It had failed in its mission. When the
League's successor, the UN, was created in 1945, it was hoped
that it would function far better than its predecessor. It is
now 64 years later. As we look at the UN Charter's very first
statement of purpose for the United Nations, that of
maintaining international peace and security, we can hardly
say that UN's record in that field has been a resounding
success. International morality remains at risk.
The world's inability to use the UN to advance the cause of
international peace and security does not mean that none of
the purposes of the Charter have been served by the UN
system. If we drop from Article 1 paragraph 1 of the UN
Charter, which refers to the maintenance of international
peace and security, to paragraph 3, we shall find the
statement of another purpose of the UN: ``to achieve
international co-operation in solving international problems
of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character,
and in encouraging respect for human rights and for
fundamental freedoms.''
While the Security Council was hamstrung by the Soviet
Union's ``nyet'' to efforts to maintain peace, the
democracies, constituting a majority of the General Assembly
in the early years of the UN, went to work to implement
paragraph 3. In 1946, following up on the Charter's promise
that the UN would promote respect for human rights, the
Assembly established the UN Human Rights Commission. Under
the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, the Commission promptly
went to work on drafting the document which became known as
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Universal
Declaration, reflecting fully the thoughts of John Locke, as
expressed in 1689 in his ``Two Treatises of Government'' and
incorporated a hundred years later into the French
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen and into the
U.S. Bill of Rights, spelled out with specificity precisely
what was meant by the term ``human rights.'' It is
appropriate to note that in 1948, when the Universal
Declaration was adopted by the UN General Assembly by the
affirmative vote of 48 of its 56 members, no member voted
``no.'' Eight members, 6 Soviet bloc states plus Saudi Arabia
and South Africa abstained.
In these early years of the UN's existence, the General
Assembly also created other entities whose task it was to
implement the UN's commitment to humanitarian work, such as
the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children
Fund, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees, all three of which have done highly useful work
in their respective fields and are functioning well to this
day.
The truly creative period of the UN General Assembly came
to an end around 1970. It came to an end as a result of the
extraordinarily clever maneuvering of the totalitarians
represented at the UN and the failure of the democracies to
match their clever manipulations. From the founding of the UN
until the 1960s, the Soviet bloc had consistently been
outvoted by the democracies at the UN. That was now to come
to an end.
As it was, the diplomats representing the Soviet Union and
its East European satellites at the United Nations lacked the
finesse needed to succeed in a parliamentary setting in which
mere bluster would not suffice to win votes. But they found a
close ally who had the skills needed to build a new majority
bloc in the United Nations General Assembly. It was Fidel
Castro.
Castro assembled a highly competent cadre of diplomats, who
took on the task of building an international network of
institutions that would operate in opposition to the United
States. Though he was clearly aligned with the Soviet bloc,
Castro got Cuba admitted to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)
and in due course turned the Non-Aligned and a parallel
organization, the Group of 77 (G-77), into mouthpieces for
the Moscow line.
An important step on the way toward taking control of the
NAM and the G-77 organizations was for Castro to link up with
the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic
Conference. At its September 1973, where Castro sought to
line up the NAM with Moscow, he was initially challenged by
Muammar Qaddafi, who wanted the Non-Aligned to remain truly
non-aligned. It was at that point that Castro appears to have
realized how he could best attain his goal: he broke
diplomatic relations with Israel and added Israel to the
United States on his and the entire Soviet bloc's enemies
list.
Castro had no genuine interest in the Palestinian cause.
The purpose of his move in 1973 and in Cuba's key role since
that time in the anti-Israel effort at the UN was to build a
strong bloc at the UN of opponents of the United States. He
was aware of the fact that between 1959 and 1972, the
membership of the United Nations had increased by more than
60%, from 82 to 132. 35 of the additional 50 members belonged
to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which had been
founded in 1969, or were newly-independent African states, or
both. What Castro was well aware of was that by breaking ties
with Israel, he would be able to get Qaddafi's help in lining
up the votes of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
But there was still the question of how to reach out to those
African states that did not belong to the OIC.
It did not take the Castro and Qaddafi alliance very long
to find an answer to that question. Only weeks after the
September 1973 NAM summit, the General Assembly considered a
resolution that called for more pressure on South Africa to
end the apartheid regime. The clique that had begun to
manipulate the UN chose Burundi to offer an amendment which
referred to ``the unholy alliance between Portuguese
colonialism, South African racism, Zionism and Israeli
imperialism.'' The amendment was adopted by a two-to-one
majority. By linking Zionism with South African racism, many
of the non-Muslim states of Africa were brought into the new
alliance. This was the first shot in the drumfire that has
continued at the UN to this very day.
The government of Burundi of those days brought truly
unique qualifications to the discussion of racism. In the
preceding year, the army of Burundi, led by Tutsis, had
killed about 100,000 Hutus, for no reason other than their
ethnicity. I should add that Burundi is a vastly different
country today. In recent years its voting record on Israel-
related issues at the UN has been one of the better records.
Still, the Burundi initiative of 1973, undoubtedly initiated
by the antidemocratic clique, was the first effort to use the
issue of Israel to bring sub-Saharan African states into the
anti-democratic bloc at the UN.
In the memoir of his year at the UN, entitled A Dangerous
Place Pat Moynihan quotes from a letter that he had received
from Leon Gordenker, a professor of international relations
at Princeton and an expert on the United Nations, who had
called Moynihan's attention to the Burundi initiative in the
fall of 1973. In 1975 Gordenker wrote Moynihan to complain
about the failure of the United States to engage in a
concerted effort at the UN to win votes: ``Surely a
government that can negotiate with China and the Soviet Union
can organize enough persuasiveness to reduce the production
of pernicious symbolism and to win the support from sensible
regimes for human rights.''
In his memoir Moynihan explains the reason for this
failure: ``American diplomacy put overwhelming emphasis on
seeking friendly relations with individual other countries.
The institutional arrangement for this was the ambassador and
his embassy. To get an embassy was the great goal of the
career officer; having achieved it, his final object was to
be judged a successful ambassador by maintaining friendly
relations. Anything that interfered with this goal was
resisted by the system. In recent years, and notably in the
new nations, the one aspect of foreign policy that could most
interfere with this object was the voting behavior of so many
of the small or new nations in multilateral forums, behavior
hostile to the United States. In consequence the `bilateral
system' resisted, and usually with success, the effort to
introduce multilateral considerations into its
calculations.''
These words, let us note, were written in 1975. It is now
34 years later. They are as relevant today as they were then.
Our mission to the UN lacks the needed back-up in the
capitals of UN member states.
That back-up is needed because of the vastly different
manner in which our mission operates when compared to our
principal opponents. Once a Cuban diplomat is assigned to the
UN he stays there and, over the years, truly learns the
business of multilateral diplomacy. As he continues in the UN
system, he watches his counterparts from other countries
arrive, begin to learn the routine, and then depart as their
tour of duty at the UN comes to an end, and they are replaced
by a new set of diplomats who have to learn the UN routine
from scratch.
There is another aspect to the Cuban performance. While
there are missions to the UN that operate under specific
instructions from their respective governments, there are
many other missions that receive no specific instructions,
allowing their representatives at the UN to make their own
decisions on how to vote. It is that aspect of the UN system
that has been fully utilized in building the anti-democratic
bloc. For one, arrangements are made for missions to be
rewarded for their cooperation by being elected to positions
in the UN system that are of special interest to them. For
another, an informal job placement service operates at the UN
that enables relatives of cooperating diplomats to obtain
jobs in the UN Secretariat. As one diplomat once put it to
me: ``After you have been at the UN for a little while, you
start playing the UN game and you forget about your
country.''
There is more to it than that. I recall an incident from
the time in which I represented the United States in the UN
Human Rights Commission. Having done the needed parliamentary
work, I had gotten a resolution adopted that the Cubans had
opposed. Immediately following the vote, the Cuban
representative rose to accuse me of having bribed some of the
representatives so that they would vote with the United
States. After the meeting had adjourned, I asked colleagues
from other missions whether that really happens at the UN.
They all thought I was terribly naive. ``Of course it
happens,'' they said. ``The Cubans do it all the time. So do
the Libyans.''
I am sure you agree that we should not pay bribes to
ambassadors. But I have not found it easy to understand why
we were under specific instructions at the UN never to
suggest any relationship between U.S. foreign assistance and
UN voting. I recognize that we should understand why Egypt or
Pakistan
would vote against the U.S. at the UN, but why, for example,
should we not make it clear to the Philippines or Vietnam,
which during the current fiscal year receive about $100
million, each in U.S. foreign assistance that our resources
are limited and that these limited resources will, in the
first instance, be made available to states that are prepared
to reciprocate our friendship?
During my stay at the UN I also learned how the leaders of
the anti-democratic forces transmit their voting instructions
to their following. The explanation that democratic members
of the NAM or the G-77 offer to explain their anti-democratic
votes is that they vote the NAM or the G-77 ``consensus.''
That raises the question of how that consensus is reached.
I was offered an explanation by an ambassador from a NAM
state with whom I was having lunch. In the course of our
conversation he asked me whether I knew how the NAM consensus
was formed. When I told him that I did not know, he said:
``You know, we used to be on the other side.'' By that he
meant on the pro-Soviet side. He continued by telling me that
on the day preceding any meeting of the NAM caucus, which had
101 members at that time, the friends of the Soviet Union,
about 17 or 18 states, would have a special meeting. When
they were all assembled, a small group would enter the room,
always including Cubans. That group would then give out
instructions on how the assembled representatives should act
when they met the next day at the meeting of the full NAM
caucus. Each representative would be assigned a specific
task, to make a motion on a position to be taken by the NAM,
to be the first speaker in support of a motion, or to be the
second speaker in support. Then, the next day, when the full
caucus met, the whole scenario would be played out. My
colleague concluded his account of NAM procedure by saying:
``And there sits the silent majority and just goes along.''
To return to the events following the 1973 Burundi
amendment to the anti-apartheid resolution: as we so well
know, having developed the theme of correlating Zionism with
apartheid, the other side did not let go. At the
International Women's Year Conference in July 1975 in Mexico
City a resolution was adopted which called for the
elimination of Zionism, apartheid and racial discrimination.
The news from Mexico City focused, of course, on the emphasis
that had been placed on the rights of women. But it was in
that setting, a setting that emphasized the need for progress
for women that another totally unrelated step had been taken
in the Zionism is racism campaign. Then, in November of that
year that formula was made UN doctrine by the UN General
Assembly by its adoption of the ``Zionism is Racism''
resolution, by a vote of 72 to 35 with 32 abstaining.
Confirming the bargain that had been struck, the new
controlling alliance put together by Castro and Qaddafi
furnished 68 of the 72 affirmative votes. Brazil and Mexico,
Cyprus and Malta provided the remaining four. A majority of
the ``no'' votes was provided by the Western Group, but the
Western Group was joined by Latin American, Caribbean and
sub-Saharan African states. In addition, many of these non-
Western states abstained.
What deserves mention is that if Mexico had voted ``no''
rather than ``yes'' or if Colombia and Guatemala had joined
the United States in voting ``no'' rather than abstaining,
the resolution would have been adopted only if the General
Assembly had voted that the resolution was not ``important.''
That is so because with these minor vote changes, the
resolution would not have received the two-thirds vote
required by the Charter for important resolution. I am
mentioning these details to underline the validity of
Moynihan's observation that our side does not do the needed
parliamentary spade work at the UN. That is, as noted, in
sharp contrast to the extraordinarily effective work done by
the Cubans to this day. My guess is that they were well aware
of the two-thirds majority requirement and worked hard to
attain that result.
I have described how the Zionism is racism campaign got
started. Now let us move fast forward to December 22, 2007,
when the UN General Assembly had before it a resolution that
authorized the allocation of about $7 million to fund the
operation of a committee, chaired by Libya, whose task it was
to prepare Durban II. The resolution passed by a vote of 105
to 46. The fact that the ``no'' vote fell only slightly short
of one-third plus 1 is important because the resolution
raised a budgetary question and resolutions that raise
budgetary questions require a two-thirds majority for
adoption. If we had picked up 7 of the 41 abstentions or
absences, Durban II would not have been funded.
Now let us take a look at how Durban II came about by
comparing the December 2007 vote to the Zionism is Racism
vote of November 1975. Here is what we find:
(1) Most of the Western states once again voted ``no,''
although a few, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, and
Switzerland switched to ``abstain.''
(2) The 25 Western states have now been joined by 18 East
European states, some of which had voted ``yes'' in 1974.
Others had not been in existence then, having been republics
of the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia. Three Asian UN members
also voted ``no.'' They were South Korea, the Marshall
Islands, and Palau.
(3) Most of the Latin American, Caribbean and African
states that had voted ``no'' on ``Zionism and Racism'' in
1975 voted for funding Durban II in 2007.
As we make this comparison between the 1975 vote and the
corresponding 2007 vote, we need to note that in the interim,
in 1991, the Zionism is Racism resolution was repealed by a
vote of 111 to 25. The repeal was the result of a major
effort, undertaken by the then Assistant Secretary of State
for International Organizations, John Bolton. The substantial
margin of victory for our side was also the result of the
fact that the Soviet bloc had dissolved, the Soviet Union was
disintegrating, and the anti-democratic coalition at the UN
was in utter disarray.
But this disarray did not last long. The anti-democratic
forces at the UN quickly regained their footing and were soon
again in full operation. While they used to fly the flag of
the Non-Aligned Movement in earlier decades, they now sail
under the flag of the Group of 77. There is only one
significant difference between the NAM and the G-77. China
does not belong to the former, but belongs to the latter. In
fact the G-77 calls itself now the ``Group of 77 and China.''
China has become an increasingly significant player in the
anti-democratic camp at the UN.
China, incidentally, is one country that has no history of
antisemitism. On the contrary, Chinese intellectuals see
parallels between their ancient culture and the ancient
culture of the Hebrews. China has also excellent trade
relations with Israel. But at the UN, China consistently
votes against Israel. It does so because it is an integral
part of the group of member states that use the UN to
embarrass the democracies.
As we watch the totalitarians at work in Geneva, using the
UN umbrella in their attacks on the basic principles on which
the UN was founded, it is understandable that there are many
observers who are prepared to give up on the UN. The response
that I want to offer to these pessimists is that while we can
clearly identify the symptoms of the disease from which the
UN suffers, it is a disease from which it can be cured. What
is needed is for the governments of the democracies,
particularly of the United States, to engage in more
effective parliamentary work at the UN.
Let us take a look at the roll calls on the two votes that
I have cited the 1975 Zionism is Racism vote and the 2007
Durban II funding vote. On the first of these the ``no'' vote
was 32.7%. On the second it was 30.5%, an insignificant
difference in the percentages. As we look at this almost
imperceptible change in percentages, we should note that the
Freedom House categorizations for 1975 and 2007 show a wholly
different pattern. In 1975, Freedom House classified 27% of
the UN membership as free. In 2007 the percentage of free
countries was 46%, a major increase.
Why was that difference not reflected in the votes on the
two resolutions? Our side had indeed picked up Eastern
Europe's new democracies. But we had lost the support of many
Latin American, Caribbean, and African states, most of them
fellow-democracies. The additional votes cast for our side
were not the result of any diplomatic effort on our part.
They reflected the political beliefs of the new East European
democracies. The democracies whose votes we lost, on the
other hand, were lost as a result of a failure on our part to
engage them fully on UN issues, combined with the
extraordinarily clever manipulation by the other side.
So, as we watch Durban II unfold, let us keep in mind that
effecting change at the UN is not a hopeless cause. The
percentage of UN member states that Freedom House classifies
as ``not free'' is down to 22%. Under these circumstances
should it not be possible for the democracies to return the
UN to the principles spelled out in the Charter? I submit it
can be done if the United States Government will commit
itself to spend the time and energy needed to attain that
goal. And it is our task, as citizens, to urge our Government
to do just that.
Let me conclude my remarks by expressing the thanks of all
of us assembled here to those whose idea it was to arrange
for this counter-conference and who did the necessary
organizational work. All of us who believe in the fundamental
principles on which the United Nations were founded need to
stand up against those who are fully engaged in efforts to
subvert them. That is what this counter-conference is doing.
And we shall overcome!