Why the United Nations is tackling racism

By Sheryl McCarthy and Adrian Peracchio, Newsday

Transcribed from the clipping

“The delegates haven’t even arrived in Durban, and already a huge slugfest is in progress over what subjects should or should not be discussed. The Europeans are demanding that there be no discussion of the compensation against gypsies… The Indians insist on avoiding talk about the caste system… Portugal, Spain, France and Great Britain want to derail any talk about reparations for colonial oppression… And the United States government is threatening to boycott the conference unless it receives assurances that there’ll be no talk about reparations for slavery or revived efforts to equate Zionism with racism.… ‘Zionism as racism is ridiculous, but the government delegation should show up and register its opposition, rather than pout and stay at home’… [And, against:] ‘it took several days of incessant bickering during the drafting of the agenda in Geneva to decide whether ‘Holocaust’ should be capitalized in reference to the Nazi extermination of Jews. But that’s probably tied into the most blatantly discriminatory of the agenda items, the one that equates Zionism with racism. That hateful canard, which keeps resurfacing at the United Nations whenever the Israeli-Palestinian conflict grows more bitter, is in direct contradiction of another agenda item that condemns anti-Semitism directed at Jews. Go figure.’”

Context added by this archive

Two syndicated columnists set against each other on the same page a fortnight before Durban opens, one arguing the United States should attend and object, the other that the conference is doomed by the length of its own agenda. Both take it as given that the formula is the thing that will wreck it.

Cite this item

"Why the United Nations is tackling racism," Ithaca Journal, 15 August 2001. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2001-010. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2001-010

Elsewhere in the archive

Palestinians don’t want to give up ‘right of return’The Atlanta Journal-Constitution · 21 January 2001 · the same year
Palestinians Deserve Rights, Including Right To ReturnHartford Courant · 23 January 2001 · the same year
Israeli bulldozers strike deep into GazaAnchorage Daily News · 12 May 2001 · the same year

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-2001-010.

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