Fighting racism does not help fight antisemitism - and Durban IV will prove it yet again

A mantra of the anti-Israel Left is that the only way to fight antisemitism is to throw Jew-hatred into a pile of other bigotries and fight them at the same time.

It is a serious mistake.

The people who style themselves as anti-racist are often antisemites themselves.

We saw it in the British Labour party. Every member of that party would swear that they are anti-racist, anti-bigotry - and yet the private message boards of that same Labour Party were filled with antisemitism that was straight out of Nazi Germany. 

We saw it with the Black Lives Matter movement, whose original platform accused Israel of "genocide."

We saw last year a spate of Black celebrities who started pushing antisemitic messages on social media, with little pushback from the "anti-racists." The anti-Jewish incidents during the "anti-racist" riots last year also were swept under the rug by the activists. 

Jews are expected to act in solidarity against racism, but "anti-racists" are not expected to show any similar solidarity against antisemitism. 

Which means that the premise of the idea that fighting racism will fix antisemitism is clearly incorrect - more often than not, the opposite occurs.

Now it looks like there might be another case of antisemitism being excused in the name of anti-racism. As I reported last week, the Biden administration embraced the 20th anniversary of the antisemitic Durban "anti-racism" conference - which was the worst example of Jew-hatred being openly accepted in the name of anti-racism in this century. 

The upcoming UN-sponsored "Durban IV" conference is attempting to marginalize the antisemitism of the 2001 Durban conference by concentrating on "people of African descent" (notably, not African people - nothing about the slave trade or other atrocities happening to Black people in Africa.)

The UN resolution on the Durban IV conference is titled, "A global call for concrete action for the elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and the comprehensive implementation of and follow-up to the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action."

The first half of that phrase is praiseworthy. The second half is antisemitic, because the Durban Declaration included language that singled out Israel as being guilty of "racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia [or] related intolerance."

Here's what will happen: Some Jewish groups will object to Durban IV, and "anti-racists" who claim that the battle against antisemitism and racism are the same will tell those groups that if they do not support Durban IV, then they are racist as well. 

Calling Jews "racist" is the new antisemitism.

The "anti-racists" will accept every other minority group as having legitimate grievances - but not the Jews. Unless Jews are attacked by skinhead neo-Nazis, their concerns are minimized and ignored. 

Unless there is a major campaign to pressure the Biden administration to boycott the Durban IV conference as Obama did for Durban II and III, there is a significant danger that Biden will assume that the anti-racist message outweighs the historic antisemitism of Durban. 

Jews, the biggest victims of bigotry in history, are being systematically excluded from conversations about bigotry. It is not an accident.

 

---

---