President Obama: Boycott Durban II!

A FORMAL PETITION TO
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA &
SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON

WHEREAS, The 2009 Durban Review Conference has been billed as a continuation of the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance previously held in Durban, South Africa; and

WHEREAS, The 2001 Conference failed to meet its stated objectives of addressing issues of international racism, xenophobia, and intolerance, mutating instead into a tribunal which demonized Israel, calling her a perpetrator of racism and intolerance in the Middle East; and

WHEREAS, The 2001 World Conference Against Racism Draft Declaration equated Zionism with racism, and charged that Israel’s so-called occupation of Palestine was racially motivated and therefore relevant to the Conference agenda; and

WHEREAS, A working draft of the 2009 Conference Declaration espouses similar anti-Israel rhetoric, stating in part that: a homeland for Jewish people and Israel’s law of return is racially based; Israel is guilty of apartheid; and that the historical accuracy of the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust is subject to debate; and

WHEREAS, the Conference organizers include violent dictators and virulent anti-Semites such as Muammar Al-Gaddafi of Libya, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, and Raul Castro of Cuba; and

WHEREAS, The George W. Bush administration made it a policy not to participate in the Review Conference or its associated preparations, and repeatedly voted against U.N. resolutions supporting or funding the Conference;

NOW THEREFORE, we the undersigned, call upon President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to denounce the U.N.’s relentless condemnation of Israel by officially boycotting Durban II and withholding funding from the Conference.