Transcript [00:00] I can still hear the chance at Durban. [00:04] Chance it said the struggle against [00:06] apartheid requires a dismantling of [00:09] Israel as an apartheid state. [00:19] When I first heard in the late 1990s [00:22] that there was to be a world conference [00:25] against racism in Durban, I actually [00:28] greeted this with anticipation if not [00:31] excitement. This was supposed to be the [00:33] first international human rights [00:35] conference of the 21st century in which [00:39] anti-racism was going to be its [00:41] organizing theme. And the conference was [00:44] to take place in [00:46] Durban, South Africa, the birthplace of [00:49] the anti-apartheid movement. And as [00:52] someone who [00:53] was active both as first a student and [00:56] then a law professor in the [00:58] anti-apartheid movement who was arrested [01:01] in 1981 [01:04] when I was in South Africa for seeking [01:07] to combat apartheid and for whom the [01:11] combating of apartheid thereafter on my [01:15] return to Canada and advocacy [01:17] internationally became an an organizing [01:20] theme including being part of Nelson [01:22] Mandela's international legal team. But [01:26] I must say that what happened at Durban, [01:29] if I can use an oft-abused Orwellian [01:33] metaphor, was turning everything on its [01:38] head. A conference that as I mentioned [01:41] that was to be a world conference [01:43] against racism turned into a conference [01:47] of racism and hate against the Jewish [01:50] people. A conference that was to herald [01:53] the promotion and protection of human [01:56] rights in the 21st century turned into a [02:00] conference that singled out one member [02:03] state in the international community, [02:05] namely Israel, and one people in the [02:08] international community, namely the [02:10] Jewish people, for selective opprobrium [02:14] and indictment. [02:16] And a conference that I mentioned that [02:18] was to mark the commemoration uh and the [02:22] struggle against apartheid [02:26] turned into a conference singling out [02:29] Israel [02:30] as an apartheid state. As we're meeting [02:33] and we're speaking I can still hear the [02:37] chance at Durban. The chance in the [02:41] streets of South Africa and in [02:44] particular in Durban. Chance that said [02:47] the struggle against apartheid in the [02:50] 20th century required the dismantling of [02:53] South Africa's an apartheid state, but [02:56] the struggle against apartheid in the [02:58] 21st century requires the dismantling of [03:01] Israel as an apartheid state. [03:12] I CAN STILL SEE THE PAMPHLETS, the [03:16] placards, the posters singling out [03:21] Israel not only as an apartheid state [03:25] but as a [03:26] Nazi genocidal state. [03:29] I can still see the [03:32] demonstrations in the streets. I can [03:35] still see the distribution of pamphlets [03:38] the protocols of the [03:40] elders of Zion. I can still see Jewish [03:43] students being assaulted by [03:47] demonstrators who were saying to them in [03:49] a demonstration in which I myself was [03:51] part of you don't belong to the human [03:55] race. Now, I participated in Durban as a [03:59] member of the Canadian delegation to the [04:02] official intergovernmental conference at [04:06] Durban. [04:07] I also [04:08] was witness to the parallel NGO [04:11] conference that was taking place at [04:14] Durban which produced its own odious [04:18] declaration and indictment at Durban [04:22] because I had been a long time member of [04:25] the NGO human rights movement prior to [04:28] becoming a parliamentarian and then [04:31] becoming in that capacity a member of [04:33] the Canadian governmental delegation. [04:37] And where as [04:39] a member of human rights NGOs, I was one [04:42] of the founders of what has come to be [04:45] known as the international human rights [04:48] Helsinki movement which then morphed [04:50] into [04:51] human rights watch and the like. It's [04:54] founder [04:55] or first was actually Helsinki watch. [04:58] And I also observed the student [05:01] conference that took place at at Durban [05:05] which replicated a lot of what I was [05:07] saying now with regard to the pamphlets [05:11] and posters of hate and incitement. So, [05:15] as I said, what happened at Durban to [05:19] use as I said that oft abused metaphor [05:22] was [05:23] Orwellian [05:24] inversion of everything we speak about [05:28] when we speak of [05:29] human rights, international law and the [05:34] like. [05:35] And it is what happened at Durban in the [05:40] aftermath of Durban that was truly [05:43] Orwellian. [05:45] I flew back from South Africa to [05:48] Montreal where we're now [05:49] uh meeting in my residence on September [05:53] 10th, 2001. [05:56] I awoke in this very residence on the [05:59] morning of September 11th to what became [06:03] the horrific 9/11. [06:07] And with that horrific 9/11 [06:11] came a whole series of lies, [06:15] indictments, [06:17] moral, legal, historical, normative [06:22] inversions. [06:23] Let me just say what happened in the [06:25] immediate aftermath of Durban. In the [06:28] immediate aftermath of Durban, which as [06:31] I mentioned occurred 9/11, and I [06:34] remember one of my colleagues who'd been [06:36] with me in South Africa right after 9/11 [06:40] called me that day and said to me, "You [06:42] know, Irwin, if [06:45] Durban, or as I put it better, if 9/11 [06:49] was the Kristallnacht of hate, the [06:53] Kristallnacht of terror, he said, [06:56] "Durban was the Mein Kampf. Durban was [07:00] laying the blueprint." [07:03] And in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, [07:08] in the continuation [07:10] of [07:11] the falsity of indictments which had [07:15] singled out [07:16] Israel and the Jewish people for [07:18] selective opprobrium and [07:20] in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the [07:23] Jews, the Jewish people, Israel is the [07:26] Jewish state, were blamed for 9/11. In [07:30] the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the UN [07:34] Commission on Human Rights met. Today it [07:37] is known as the UN Council on Human [07:39] Rights. [07:40] And in its meeting right after 9/11, [07:44] this repository [07:46] for the promotion and protection of [07:49] human rights adopted more resolutions [07:53] against Israel than the rest of the [07:57] international community combined. Now, [08:01] none of this is intended to suggest that [08:04] somehow Israel is above the law [08:08] or that Israel should not be held [08:10] accountable for any violations of human [08:13] rights and humanitarian law like any [08:15] other state. [08:16] And the Jewish people do not deserve any [08:20] particular privilege or preference [08:23] because of the horrors of the Holocaust [08:25] or the horrors [08:27] of Jewish history. But the problem is [08:30] not that Israel should seek to be above [08:32] the law. The problem is, and this is [08:35] what Durban manifested so expressly, is [08:38] that Israel is singled out and held to [08:42] be unequal before the law. Not that [08:46] Israel must respect human rights, which [08:49] she must, [08:50] but that the rights of Israel and the [08:52] Jewish people deserve equal respect. Not [08:57] that human rights standards should not [08:59] be applied to Israel. They must be. But [09:02] these standards must be applied equally [09:06] to everyone else. [09:08] But what happened at Durban and now as [09:10] I'm talking about in the immediate [09:12] aftermath of Durban was turning a [09:15] history and fact and law and human [09:19] rights [09:20] on its head. [09:22] I mentioned the UN Commission on Human [09:24] Rights. I mentioned also what happened [09:26] with 9/11, but there were other [09:28] manifestations of this, as I say, off [09:31] the abuse metaphor of this Orwellian [09:33] universe. Students met [09:35] in the immediate aftermath at Durban at [09:38] the University of Michigan [09:41] there was a [09:43] a motion passed at the [09:45] or proposed at the University of [09:47] Michigan which was to recognize a [09:51] two-state solution. Again, this is the [09:53] immediate aftermath of Durban University [09:56] community students coming together to [09:58] recognize a two-state solution in the [10:01] Middle East [10:02] if Israel were to become a democratic [10:05] state. Already problematic in and of [10:08] itself, but even this problematic [10:11] resolution was rejected at that [10:14] University of Michigan meeting for a [10:17] resolution condemning Israel as an [10:21] apartheid state launching then what has [10:24] come to be known as the boycott, [10:27] divestment, sanctions BDS movement of [10:30] today. [10:31] But perhaps the most egregious [10:35] egregious immediate outcome after [10:38] Durban, a shocking one. We have [10:41] forgotten it, but it is something that [10:44] talks about the institutionalization [10:47] of hate. [10:48] That took place when the contracting [10:51] parties to the 1949 [10:55] Geneva Convention, the hallmark of what [10:58] has come to be known as international [11:00] humanitarian law, met for the first time [11:04] 52 years later in 2001. And where the [11:09] contracting parties [11:11] meeting for the first time [11:14] contracting parties of the Geneva [11:16] Convention [11:17] singled out one state in the [11:21] international community for opprobrium [11:24] and indictment for its violations of [11:27] international human rights and [11:28] humanitarian law. That state was Israel. [11:32] Again, as I mentioned, I'm not saying [11:35] that Israel, like any other state, [11:37] including any democracy, should not be [11:39] held accountable for any violations of [11:41] human rights international, but for the [11:43] international community [11:46] the treaty bodies to the Geneva [11:48] Convention, the benchmark of [11:50] international humanitarian law, to come [11:53] together for their first meeting since [11:56] the adoption of the Geneva Convention 52 [11:59] years earlier, and condemn only one [12:01] state [12:03] tells you something [12:05] about that kind of moral, [12:07] legal, and evidentiary inversion. And [12:12] all this that occurred in the immediate [12:14] aftermath, as I mentioned [12:17] in Durban [12:19] laid the groundwork [12:21] for what has become in the last 25 years [12:26] an increasingly [12:29] metastasizing [12:32] globalizing [12:34] and now unprecedented [12:36] explosion of anti-Semitism. [12:39] As we meet right now [12:42] we are witnessing [12:44] the following. I mentioned [12:46] when I was [12:48] Canada's first special envoy for the [12:50] combating of anti-Semitism in 2021, [12:55] 5 years ago [12:56] I mentioned then as we were about to [12:59] commemorate the then 20th anniversary of [13:02] Durban, I mentioned then that we were [13:04] witnessing the highest level [13:07] of incidences of anti-Semitism since [13:10] audits of anti-Semitism began in the [13:14] 70s. I mentioned then that we were [13:16] witnessing the highest level of crimes [13:20] that had taken place in the 20 years [13:22] then after [13:24] Durban. [13:25] But that is nothing to what is [13:29] now taking place [13:31] also in the aftermath [13:34] of the unspeakable mass atrocities [13:38] of October 7th. When I say unspeakable [13:43] mass [13:44] atrocities, [13:46] I'm referring then [13:48] to not only the mass murder [13:52] of some 1,200 civilians [13:56] on October 7th, that would be bad [13:59] enough. [14:00] I'm speaking about horrific torture, [14:04] maiming, and mutilation [14:07] of unfathomable [14:10] mass rape of, as I said, unspeakable [14:14] mass [14:16] atrocities. And even worse, [14:19] almost without precedent, the [14:22] celebration [14:24] of those mass atrocities while being [14:27] themselves committed, the celebration of [14:30] them [14:31] by their perpetrator, [14:33] Hamas, [14:35] which is not only [14:37] a terrorist organization under Canadian [14:40] law, under international law, [14:43] but is a [14:45] genocidal [14:46] anti-Semitic [14:48] terrorist statelet, not because I say [14:51] so, [14:52] but because Hamas says so in its 1988 [14:57] charter and beyond. [14:59] And where in the aftermath of October [15:02] 7th, and beginning already on October [15:05] 8th, [15:05] Hamas pledged itself to committing [15:08] October 7th, and I quote, again, [15:11] and again, and again, [15:14] until Israel's annihilation. [15:17] One would have thought, indeed believed, [15:21] that this would have resulted in uniform [15:25] condemnation by certainly the community [15:28] of democracies if not the international [15:30] community. One would have thought that [15:33] this would have resulted not simply in [15:35] condemnation but in action by the [15:38] international community. On the [15:40] contrary, what we witnessed in the [15:43] aftermath of October 7th was the denial [15:47] even [15:47] that these atrocities took place [15:51] or support for them [15:52] or justification for them or even [15:55] astonishingly celebration of them in the [15:59] public square [16:01] in the political squares in the campus [16:04] community and the like. And so, as we [16:08] meet now, what I said 5 years ago on the [16:12] 20th anniversary [16:14] of Durban and its legacy appears now [16:18] even mild by comparison. Because as we [16:22] meet today, we are not only witnessing [16:26] as I said an unprecedented [16:28] ex- global explosion of anti-Semitism, [16:32] an unprecedented [16:34] explosion of anti-Semitism in my [16:36] country, Canada, in my city, Montreal, [16:41] where we are witnessing not only the [16:44] highest level of incidences of [16:46] anti-Semitism, [16:48] all that would be bad enough, but what [16:51] we are witnessing is an unprecedented [16:55] explosion [16:56] of anti-Semitic [16:58] hate crimes. Well, to give just one [17:01] example, and hate crimes are [17:04] identity-based crimes. They're [17:06] community-based crimes. They reverberate [17:09] within and amongst the whole uh [17:12] community. And what we are witnessing [17:14] now [17:15] as we meet is where Canadian Jews [17:19] representing 1% of the population of [17:22] Canada [17:23] are the targets of 72% [17:28] of anti-Semitic hate crimes. And where [17:31] Canadian Jews [17:33] are 25 times [17:35] more likely [17:37] to be the target of a hate crime than [17:40] any other community. Again, I'm not [17:44] saying we should not be combating the [17:46] community of hate and protecting all [17:49] targets of hate crime. Whether these [17:52] targets be Asians, whether they be [17:56] Muslims, whether they be blacks, whether [17:59] they be Iranian, whoever the targets of [18:01] hate crimes. But as I said, we have to [18:04] appreciate from an empirical point of [18:08] view, from a evidentiary point of view, [18:11] from a legal point of view, if we are [18:13] going to [18:15] combat what is happening, we have to [18:17] understand what is happening. And we [18:20] have to understand that Canadian Jews, [18:23] as I said, are 25 times more likely to [18:26] be the target of a hate crime than any [18:29] other community. And we have to [18:31] understand the globalization of this. We [18:33] have to understand that what happened in [18:36] Australia, the Bondi Beach massacre, as [18:39] come to be known, the worst terrorist [18:43] hate crime in Australia. Well, in [18:45] Canada, we have a Bondi Beach just [18:49] waiting to happen. [18:51] And what we have to guard against is [18:55] virtue signaling [snorts] [18:57] by our leadership. What we have to guard [19:01] against is performative [19:03] tweets that say, you know, this is not [19:07] our Canada. This is not what Canada is [19:10] all about. Well, I regret to say it has [19:13] become [19:14] our Canada. [19:15] And it is not only a threat to Jews [19:19] because as we have learned only too well [19:23] that while it begins with Jews [19:26] it doesn't end with Jews. [19:29] And so in terms of the actions to be [19:31] taken and with this I close. Number one [19:36] the community of democracies has to [19:38] understand [19:40] that this unprecedented global explosion [19:43] of anti-Semitism is not simply, though [19:46] it is, threatening uh to Jews, but that [19:49] it is toxic [19:51] to democracies. I said 10 years ago [19:54] together with my colleague uh Ahmed [19:57] Shaheed, who was then the special UN uh [20:00] rapporteur for freedom of religion. We [20:03] spoke then [20:04] of how anti-Semitism was toxic to [20:08] democracy. We repeated this on the 20th [20:12] anniversary uh of Durban. Now, as we [20:15] mark the 25th anniversary, we have to [20:19] recognize that it is not only [20:22] toxic uh to democracies, but it [20:25] represents a clear and present danger to [20:29] our democracies. That it represents a [20:32] standing threat to the individual and [20:36] collective security of the inhabitants [20:40] of uh democracies. That it represents a [20:44] clear and present threat to the [20:47] international uh community. So, that is [20:50] the first thing. And that is why it is [20:52] so necessary [20:54] for the community of democracies [20:57] to take action. And I want to commend uh [21:00] UN Watch and uh its executive director [21:04] Hillel Neuer to just recently having [21:07] called for the international community [21:10] for the community of democracies as we [21:12] mark the 25th anniversary of Durban to [21:16] condemn [21:18] the declarations that took place at [21:21] Durban to condemn the legacy of Durban [21:24] to refuse to participate in the UN [21:29] communities [21:30] 25th anniversary celebration of Durban a [21:35] hauntingly [21:37] mockingly inversion as I said of every [21:40] form of fact evidence law morality and [21:46] the human rights narrative which brings [21:48] me to [21:49] a third action a point and this has to [21:53] do with what Kofi Annan the UN [21:55] Secretary-General told me when I was [21:57] Minister of Justice some [22:00] 20 [22:02] five years ago when he said to me that a [22:05] United Nations [22:07] that does not put [22:09] the combating of anti-Semitism at the [22:12] forefront of its agenda is a United [22:16] Nations [22:17] that has breached its past [22:21] and that will be betraying [22:24] its future [22:26] and so at this point as we witness the [22:30] situation in terms of Durban and its [22:33] legacy in terms of the mis- [22:36] metastasizing fallout of anti-Semitism [22:40] in the Durban legacy of hate we must [22:44] appreciate that anti-Semitism tragically [22:49] I mentioned all this about how it's [22:51] toxic and threatening to democracies and [22:54] the individual collective security of [22:56] each of the democracies but [22:59] anti-Semitism [23:01] is tragically being laundered [23:04] under the protective cover of the UN, [23:08] under the authority of international [23:10] law, [23:11] under the culture of human rights, [23:13] under the very struggle [23:16] of anti-racism itself. [23:18] And so it's our responsibility [23:22] to exercise fidelity [23:26] to the United Nations and its founding [23:28] principles. It's our responsibility [23:32] to do as UN Watch is doing, but to do as [23:35] an international community, to unmask [23:39] and to expose [23:42] this Durban legacy of hate, [23:45] which was the precursor to the [23:47] unprecedented explosion of anti-Semitism [23:51] that we are now [23:53] experiencing, to ensure [23:56] that we don't continue to launder [23:59] this legacy of hate under the protective [24:02] cover [24:03] of not only the United Nations and its [24:06] General Assembly, but under the very [24:09] institutions, [24:11] human rights institutions of the UN, [24:14] intended to promote and protect human [24:17] rights, like the UN Human Rights [24:19] Council. [24:21] And that we ensure [24:23] in one of the worst Orwellian inversions [24:25] of all, that we do not see [24:28] anti-Semitism [24:30] laundered [24:31] under the very cover of anti-racism, [24:36] laundered under the very cover [24:39] of [24:40] apartheid, anti-apartheid, laundered [24:44] under the very cover [24:46] of the moral and legal inversion of the [24:50] genocide [24:52] lie [24:53] and libel. [24:55] And one final thing, [24:57] I have to admit [24:59] that I was amongst those who when I [25:01] greeted [25:03] in the late 1990s [25:05] the prospective world conference against [25:09] racism to be held in Durban with [25:11] anticipation if not excitement as I [25:14] mentioned. [25:15] I was ignoring [25:17] I was [25:18] amongst those in the international [25:20] community who were ignoring that there [25:23] were four regional conferences in the [25:26] run-up to the Durban world conference [25:29] against racism. The last of those four [25:32] regional conferences took place in [25:35] February 2001 in Tehran Iran. [25:40] And that last regional conference issued [25:44] the worst declaration [25:47] of indictment of Israel and the Jewish [25:52] people since [25:54] the Holocaust. Since the end of the [25:57] Second World War, it was in Iran in [26:01] February 2001 [26:03] that the seeds were set forth to what [26:06] was going to happen in Durban [26:08] in September 2001 when Iran adopted a [26:14] seven-point scurrilous indictment [26:19] of Israel and the Jewish people with all [26:22] the false indictments that I've been [26:24] mentioning throughout this discussion [26:26] that manifested itself at Durban that [26:29] has metastasized since Durban that find [26:33] expression today. And so we have to hold [26:37] this concerted axis of evil. When I say [26:41] concerted axis of evil, that of Iran [26:45] of Russia and China who are gaining [26:50] exculpatory [26:51] immunity [26:53] and basking in a culture of impunity [26:57] as we singled out one member state of [27:00] the international community, which [27:02] however imperfect a democracy it happens [27:05] to be, nevertheless is a [27:09] democracy. I'm referring to Israel with [27:11] its fierce independent press, with its [27:16] independent [27:18] judiciary, with its free and fair [27:22] elections, with its engaging [27:25] civil society. That is the one that has [27:28] been singled out for selective [27:31] opprobrium and indictment. The axis of [27:34] aggression continues to operate in a [27:37] culture of impunity led by Iran. This [27:41] same Iran was the inspiration for what [27:46] then became the Durban legacy of hate. [27:49] And now, as we mark this Durban 20th [27:54] anniversary of this Durban legacy of [27:56] hate, we have to expose it, [27:59] unmask it, combat it, and hold it [28:04] accountable [28:05] in the name of the community of [28:08] democracies and in the effective pursuit [28:12] of international justice and [28:15] international peace. [28:17] Thank you.
