Briefing to the Foreign Press by Dep FM Melchior - 9-Aug-2001

Jerusalem, August 9, 2001

Foreign Minister Spokesperson Yaffa Ben-Ari: Good afternoon. It's with great pleasure that I'm introducing to you Rabbi Michael Melchior, who is the Deputy Foreign Minister, who is going to lead our delegation to Durban and he just came back from a conference in Geneva preparing the Durban meeting.

Deputy Foreign Minister Melchior: I came back here last night from Geneva where the last 'prep comm' before Durban is going on very intensively, and these hours are very decisive for the outcome; the 'prep comm' will end tomorrow. I gave orders to the Israeli delegation that tomorrow evening by six o'clock that's it if we want to reach an agreement. Then the Sabbath starts, and we don't want any violation of the Sabbath, and for sure not a government coalition crisis over this, which you know in this country has created more problems than any other issue.

I want to speak a little regarding the seriousness of the situation in general, and specifically to give a comment on what is going on in these hours and where we might be going from here.

First of all, in general. You know that there were four regional conferences, the last of the conferences was in Teheran, the Asiatic conference, where all the proposals were brought back from all the four regional conferences to Geneva, to the first of the three 'prep comms', and everything was put together into one big salad, which from our perspective was very, very serious. It was an upgrading of any language we've known before.

I want to be specific about one point, because I've seen also in the Israeli press, and also some places in the world press, a very big misunderstanding about this issue. There was never a proposal put on the table of renewing the equation Zionism=racism. That was never on the table, and because it was never on the table nobody could take it off the table, and therefore the headlines this week, which I saw in several newspapers, including Ha'aretz which had a front-page story and afterwards an editorial the day after, was totally senseless because it just never has been, and therefore never could be taken out, and I think it's important to stress that because there's a lot of misinformation going on.

What is in the proposals is much more sophisticated, much more serious than the equation. It includes the equation implicitly, but is on a much broader aspect of issues. What it is really saying is that everything which has to do with the birth of the State of Israel, with Zionism, with Israeli government policy, and in general with the Jewish people, its past, its suffering, and its future, is not legitimate. It's a total delegitimization of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. And that is why it is in many aspects much more serious than the Zionism=racism equation, which caused a lot of problems for the 16 years during which that equation existed, caused a lot of problems for Israel but also for the international community, the Untied Nations, and this is a well-known chapter.

I also want to stress that at this point, at this hour exactly now, I talked to Geneva five minutes ago, all the language is still there, not one expression has been taken out, nothing has changed on the ground. Nothing has changed, and I think it's important to say that. Again, the expressions are a broad range, using all the worst vocabulary which the world society knows to condemn Israel, its birth, its existence, and so on. It's 'ethnic cleansing', it's 'genocide', it's 'neo-apartheid', I don't know what the difference between neo-apartheid and old apartheid, but it's like neo-Nazism maybe, where I also don't know what the difference is. It's 'racism'; those are the expressions which are used in every context.

Again, and I want to be very clear about this - to condemn Israeli government policies is not anti-Semitism. Even strong condemnations of Israeli government policies - I myself had a long experience in condemning Israeli government policies, and I think that that's a very good thing, and a healthy thing in a democratic society. But there is a red line, and the red line is where you go over from condemning or a disagreement on a political level, to what I call an existential level of condemning, making Israel the Jew of the nations, making the condemnations and on an existential level delegitimizing Israel's existence. That is already going over the red line and becoming the new anti-Semitism. We are the new anti-Christ of the international community, or the devil of the international community. That is what was proposed in Teheran and brought back to Geneva, very specifically.

If you say, let's take an issue which is maybe the most discussed issue, the settlements. If you say to me that the settlements are not legitimate, or that they're bad for peace, over even that they're breaching the Fourth Geneva Convention, we can have an argument about that, and that's legitimate. That's not what's done here. Here it's taken an upgrading: 'The settlements are ethnic cleansing. The settlements are genocide.' First of all it's not true. It also makes it an existential conflict, which it is not.

The same has happened on the issue of the Holocaust. You know that issue very well; what happened was was that there was a very good paragraph about the Holocaust, they took the proposals from Teheran and made a mockery of the Holocaust. I don't think that the Holocaust should be in at all in any proposals if that is the way it's dealt with. It's trivialized by taking away the capital 'H', by putting an 's' on the end. It's put in the context of the Middle East, saying really that the real Holocaust is against the people of Palestine, and of course implying by that that the Jews deserved the Holocaust which was against them, because if all the Jews know to do is holocaust and apartheid and racism and so on, then they also deserve the Holocaust which was against them.

This is very serious. I'll give you a picture of what's happening there but let me just elaborate on what the consequences will be. If these proposals go through, I see that this will be a major blow in four areas.

Number one, it'll be a major blow to Israel and the Jewish people, and I must say there's a very unison opinion amongst the Jews also on this, I don't remember since the Soviet Jury campaign I don't remember all the Jewish organizations synchronized and working very very hard from left and from right equally to try to avoid this blow against the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

Number two, sacrifice of this will be the fight against racism. Of two reasons; first of all, the meeting in South Africa was really supposed to be a rejoicement over the victory over apartheid, was supposed to be the whole world convening in one language in unison against the evils of racism and xenophobia, discriminations, which not least come out of what happened in the Second World War to the Jewish people, that this is a fight which knows no borders, where everybody has to deal with, every community, every country, and the international society has to have a fight against this evil which creates levels of races in the world. That fight will be destroyed. The whole conference in Durban will be totally destroyed because of this issue which was put on the table, but not only on the practical level will the fight against racism which was supposed to emerge from Durban be destroyed, but also on the philosophical level; if you call everything racism, if to close a balcony in Gilo is ethnic cleansing and genocide, then you take out - and the same with the Holocaust - you take out any kind of moral imperative which are in these expressions. You empty them, you neutralize the moral imperative of these expressions of absolute evils, and you trivialize them in a way that where there is no possibility to work and to really mobilize against these evils because of the trivializations.

That is why every group since the Holocaust who have wanted again to open for themselves or for the world new evils not only against Jews but every extremist group of racists and so on have always have a certain application of denial or relativization or minimalization or trivialization or the Holocaust as part of their program, because you cannot in a world post-Holocaust say and understand the full implication of the Holocaust and then open for new crimes against humanity.

And therefore, that is always returning and with still-growing strength, the trivialization of the Holocaust. This is done here, also - very clearly. Trivialization of anti-Semitism, turning around an absurdity and in the word anti-Semitism you probably all know comes from Central Europe, about 130 years old is the expression. It was a swap of the word anti-Jew. To be anti-Jewish was not very 'in' at that time in 1870 in Germany, so they had to find a new word, a decent, 'in' word, to be an anti-Semite. That was an 'in' word and it was accepted by everybody that that was a respectable thing to be. That was where the word anti-Semite comes from, everybody knows its historical context and how it's been used to the last 2500 years.

As a curioso, over the last years sometimes when we've taken up the issue of anti-Semitism the Arabs have said, 'Well, we're also Semites', which is true, but it has nothing to do with the issue. Here they have taken this curiosity and put it into absurdum. They're said the real anti-Semitism is the Zionist practices against the Palestinian Semites. That's anti-Semitism. Now, all of this put together is part of the 120 pages which was suggested now for Durban.

I said two things which will be the result, there are two more things I want to mention. The ability of the UN to work efficiently in the world seen from many different issues will be totally destroyed because Durban will be the key word afterwards which will be put on the table at every single conference, no matter if you talk about population explosion or if you talk about bird-watching. They will put Durban on as an issue at every single international conference. It'll be the new code which will encourage the new hatred and incitement against the Jewish people, and we'll see that it will destroy and divide the world and it will destroy any UN effort in the future for all kinds of good purposes, that will be the code.

The last of the obvious victims will be any kind of hope and possibility for the peace process in the Middle East. I want to be very clear - my own opinion is, and I hope it's the opinion also of my government, that we want to be back at the negotiation table as soon as possible. There is, according to my opinion, no other alternative; not for the Palestinian people and not for the Jewish people, and to find a reasonable and decent compromise. But you can only find a compromise if you keep and stick to the conflict being a conflict as a national conflict, as a territorial conflict. Then you can sit around the table and divide territory. But if you take it out of that framework, which is now the will of some of most the Islamic states and some of the Arab states which is on the table now for Durban. Taking it out of a territorial conflict, of a national conflict, and putting it into an existential framework, then there is no possibility to be back again and negotiating.

You don't negotiate with the devil; he can't be a half-devil. You don't negotiate with apartheid. If the whole of the being and existence of Israel is apartheid, racism, is the devil, is the anti-Christ, is ethnic cleansing and genocide, if that is our whole being in existence, not only in the territories but as the beginning and the creation of the State of Israel, than there can be no negotiations with that entirety, there can only be a justification of violence and terror and eventually to wipe out this entirety from the face of the Earth, because that is what you do with Apartheid and racism an the absolute evils of the Earth, and that is why those Arabs who are pushing for this language know very well that the consequences of this is not only that Israel is bashed, but the consequence of this is that there is no possibility, that there's nothing to go back ever to the negotiation table about. Because the conflict is transferred from its territorial framework to an existential framework where it's either they or us who survive, as they sometimes say in some expressions.

So this is the seriousness, in its full scope of the debate. I want to say that there are different groups in Durban - there are going to be a lot of people in Durban, I think according to the plans we're talking about an invasion of some between 12 and 18,000 people who are coming to Durban, there are several conferences going on, some of them parallel, there's a students conference, there's an NGO conference - the NGO conference is not less disturbing than the main conference. I want to quote for you just one paragraph just so you understand how serious this is, of the NGO suggestions. They are working on this also now in Geneva, but it's not getting any better. NGOs - you know there are many respected NGOs who are not less important today than parliaments of the world, this is something we sometimes misunderstand, the NGOs put the agenda of the world in many ways in more efficient ways than many parliaments. I'll quote just one chapter, and believe me it's not the only one. This is a proposal which is ready now for Durban.

"Stop the escalation of the third Holocaust perpetuated by the Israeli government and its settler community against he people of Palestine and intervene in this escalation of war and remove the United States of America and the United Kingdom from initiating a flimsy peace process, as they are entirely and fully responsible for the escalation of this war carried by the Israeli regime against the people of Palestine. The United States of America and the United Kingdom are responsible for imposing an Israeli state in the lands of the Palestinian people, and have continued to fund and support the expansion of this state. Their intervention has proved to be biased towards the expansion of the Israeli state, and the extermination of the Palestinian people. We call for the declaration of Israel as an apartheid, racist, and fascist state."

And so on. Just to give you some examples of what kind of language we're dealing with; there are, again thousands of NGOs; there are, I think, 4,000 NGOs who are preparing their arrival in Durban. I don't know if they will all come, but this is what we're up against.

Now, there's been a heavy reaction against this. We worked intensively for a long time, most intensively over the last 4-5 months, together with other governments in the world to stop this, and I must tell you that the positive part, if I can say a positive impression from Geneva is, that after my talks there I have not found one non-Islamic country in the world which is willing to go along with the Arab/Muslim proposals. There are also some Islamic countries, but they are telling us that very very privately in four eyes, that they are not satisfied with this development, and I think that there is a beginning of a first Arab understanding that they will not be able to, in this, especially as the Africans say, arrogant way decide the world agenda at this occasion. For the Africans, this is a very, very important conference. This is their initiative, it is their victory, it is their history, their past, and their future which is at stake there, and they will just not accept, and we've heard it in very clear terms over the last couple of days, also said publicly, not only privately, said publicly that they will not let the, again, Middle East conflict turn their issue into a farce.

This feeling is getting more and more clear in Geneva as in these hours I expect that a deal, if you can call it that, on the other big issue, the other big conflicting issue which was the slavery issue, what they call the past issue, that the deal on that issue is being closed now, and I can say with very great certainty that during these hours that issue will be out and solved, which will leave only this issue on the table as the only issue. The American have come with a language which I understand is acceptable also to the Africans, and even these 'last words' which were words of apology and these words, they're finding now the last words which are providing a good solution apparently which everybody is satisfied with, when it comes to the very important issue of the past and slavery.

As the Israeli government, we want this to be a successful conference. We want to join in in the world fight against racism, we want to be promoters of this fight. We have a long experience of 2,500 years of prosecution - they've even invented new words to describe massacres against Jews just because they're Jews: words like 'pogroms', for example. These are experiences which we can bring with us to the fight against any kind of discrimination and racism. That's where we want to be. We will not accept that the Arab countries again derail the conference. We will not accept also any compromise which is at the expense of the Jewish people. There are now attempts for compromises; involved in these attempts is the high commissioner, who I met with a long meeting on Tuesday, and who I've also been in contact with now. The South Africans are very active, because they as host have a vested interest both in the issue, obviously, but also in a successful conference.

The parameters have to be that there's no singling out. No singling out of Israel. I mean, if you're dealing with human rights, you want to deal with human rights in all the countries, fine, then you can deal with human rights in Israel, but no singling out. There's no such thing as just Israel being put before the tribunal and all the others including our neighbors go free: no such thing. There can be no dealing only with one region of the world. You want to deal with regions, fine. Not just one region in the world, and all the hate language has to go out. All of it. We don't want to exchange, to become the small devil instead of being the big devil. With all due respect, if we're going to be the devil then we might as well be the big one. No small devil. And I'm saying this very clearly because there have been proposals to us which have said, well, we'll take

out, we won't write in the text 'genocide', we'll just write 'ethnic cleansing' - no such thing. The whole hate-language has to go out, the garbage where it's supposed to be. Otherwise, again, a possibility of all the consequences will exist just as much if part of the hate-language exists. Those are the clear parameters.

I feel that we have a great support from many many countries who are active on this. I don't have to say that the United States is very active and we're working hand in hand with the United States, but with many many other countries. The European Union has a very clear resolution no this, and they've promised me to stick to that resolution which was made in the Foreign Minister's meeting a couple of weeks ago. It was never publicized, therefore not many people know about it, but it is there, and it is clear on these issues. The OAU, the African countries are saying things which are very much in the same direction. Many of the Latin-American countries - I won't talk about countries like Canada and Australia who are really fighting intensively here. Also, some of the Asiatic countries we feel are very much understanding the issues - beginning to understand the issues, let me say, in that respect, and therefore the question is what will happen.

The technique of this is strange; it's like when you get a proposal

in, to take it out is nearly impossible. That is part of our problem. If there was a vote today in Geneva, I have no doubt what the outcome would be. But there is no vote, and therefore to take out the language you need the Arabs who put it in to take it out, and that is a difficult issue. I think that there are some of the Arabs who do want to take it out, or want to compromise, and that is what is going on now in these hours in Geneva, to see, to try, to see if something can be worked out before they leave tomorrow at 6 o'clock.

The High Commissioner published a press statement a few minutes ago calling on everybody to continue the efforts until Durban. That is not something we can accept. We do want to work together with the High Commissioner, we feel that she understands the seriousness of the moment, and she wants this to be a successful conference and knows and has declared that if this language stays in there will no successful conference. She even said to me clearly in our private meeting, she said that she would accept no singling out of Israel, which I thought was a very important statement from her side, but we don't have all the time, because the problem is that the moment they have left Geneva, tomorrow afternoon, there is nobody who can in practice take this language out, erase it. Geneva is a forum which can do that, but after they leave tomorrow afternoon that's it.

There is no more possibility formally to erase this language, and the Arab tactic is to just let this go on and on and on to Durban and even in Durban to let it go on and on and on to the last hour of Durban.

We will decide during the coming week on the basis of what finally will happen in Geneva which steps we will take, if we will participate. Of course, we will do this very much in consultation with the United States and our other friends and allies on this issue, and they are doing the same in consultation with us. We hope that there will still be, and I also call it this occasion, a call to come to senses at Geneva so that we can still utilize the last 24 hours for coming up with something which will guarantee a constructive conference in Durban. Don't forget, this is one of the most important conference of this decade. For sure the most important conference this year. It's supposed to be a symbol for the new century, what is happening in South Africa, and we cannot again afford to let this be totally destroyed by this new anti-Semitism dominating the language and the atmosphere of the conference against racism.