(Communicated by Foreign Ministry Spokesperson)
September 2, 2001
(Communicated by the Foreign Ministry Spokesperson)
Israel regrets that a world conference, whose declared purpose
was to discuss ways of dealing with a universal phenomenon that
causes suffering to millions throughout the world, focused
instead on a specific political conflict that has nothing to do
with racism.
At the same time, Israel expresses its satisfaction that the
draft clauses containing accusations and incitement against
Israel and against the Jewish people were removed from the
concluding statements of the conference. In doing so, the world
rejected the attempts made by extremist Arab states to control
the content of the conference and to pervert its ends, by turning
it into a platform for denigrating Israel. The draft adopted at
Durban in our absence, following our walk-out together with the
United States, is not ideal, and we objected to it. However, it
is substantially different from the venomous resolutions that the
extremist states wished to pass. At the conference, the
non-democratic states failed in their attempt to dictate chapter
and verse on the subject of human rights to the enlightened
world, and were unable to thereby turn the conference into a
theater of the absurd.
The well-timed walk-out by the United States and Israel
constituted the turning point that encouraged many other states
to protest the Arab and Muslim attempts to take over the
conference and helped get the conference back on a constructive
track. Israel succeeded in its efforts to convince countries from
every continent to join together in defeating this intention of
putting Israel on trial.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres stated Saturday night that, for the
first time, the automatic majority against Israel was broken.
This can be attributed to Israel's striving for peace as well as
to its firm stand on the most basic principles. Minister Peres
expressed gratitude to the United States for its unequivocal
backing of Israel and noted the cooperation of the European Union
states and the support of a large bloc of countries in Latin
America, Asia, Eastern Europe, North and Central America and the
Pacific.
Deputy Foreign Minister, Rabbi Michael Melchior, stated that the
entire world rejected with disdain the spirit of hatred that
stood behind the Arab attempt to win international support for
hatred of Jews and the delegitimization of Israel.