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4.2.12
WC: 191694

The Zionism-Racism resolution was followed by a deluge of anti-Israel sentiment in the General Assembly, the Security Council, and the UN Council on Human Rights. At the 1978 session, "several speakers drew a parallel between Zionism and apartheid," insisting that "those selective and racist regimes should be outlawed by the international community." In 1979, after the Cambodian genocide was already completed but before any major UN body condemned the genocide, there were more comparisons between Zionism and apartheid, with some delegates drawing a parallel "between Nazi policies against the Jews and Israeli brutalities against the people of Palestine."

When the General Assembly itself finally addressed the Cambodian genocide in a resolution, it did so in tepid terms compared to its treatment of Israel. The General Assembly simply noted "with great concern that the armed conflict in Kampuchea [Cambodia] and is seriously threatening the peace and stability of South-East Asia." In contrast, a resolution passed that same year "deplores the continued and persistent violation by Israel of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, and other applicable international instruments, and condemns in particular those violations which that Convention designates as 'grave breaches' thereof."

True to form, Chomsky related Cambodia to Israel, inverting the actual seriousness of the human rights violations and asserting that "condemnation of Cambodian atrocities, covering the full spectrum with the exception of some Maoist groups, had reached a level and scale that has rarely been matched, whereas the situation of the Arabs under Israeli occupation (or indeed, in Israel itself) is virtually a taboo topic in the United States."

The Zionism-racism resolution was ultimately rescinded in 1991 by a vote of the General Assembly, but it continued to animate U.N. actions, especially by the "Human Rights Council" of the U.N. (previously known as the UN Commission on Human Rights), which in 2001 convened the first of several "Durban Conferences" against "racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance." Its primary, if not exclusive, focus was on Israel. It virtually ignored racial genocides, slavery and other obvious manifestations of racism and discrimination. The final preparatory session was held in Tehran. All Israelis and all Jewish NGO's were excluded.

According to Irwin Cotler, the former Attorney General of Canada, who attended the conference, the air was filled with hate speech such as "too bad the Holocaust was not completed." The conference became a "festival of hate such that we had not experienced anywhere at any time before." It was "a state sanctioned culture of hate" which, to Cotler, "is the most dangerous form of anti-Semitism that we are witnessing in the 21st Century." And all of this was done under the Aegis of the U.N.! Even the U.N. High Commissioner for human rights—Mary Robinson, no friend of Israel—was appalled at what she was witnessing. The Arab Lawyers' Union distributed a booklet of anti-Semitic cartoons that could have been published by Der Sturmer. The Jerusalem Post reported Robinson's reaction:

"Waving a book of anti-Semitic cartoons distributed at the anti-racism conference in Durban, UN High Commissioner Mary Robinson - in a dramatic act of identification with

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