March 5, 2009

The Obama administration’s decision to boycott the Israel-bashing hate-fest known as Durban II (more formally, the Durban Review Conference) was a clear demonstration of engaged diplomacy followed by assertive action.

Administration officials acknowledged that the UN-sponsored, Geneva-based event, billed as a response to “racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance,” was bound to degenerate into yet another occasion to gang up on Israel — as it had eight years earlier. Indeed, draft resolutions for the conference branded Israel as “racist.” American officials resisted calls to declare an early boycott, preferring instead to attend planning meetings last month and to try to steer the conveners away from their self-defeating and defamatory focus on Israel and toward a more constructive set of goals. United States officials even enlisted the help of the American Jewish Committee in monitoring the process.

When those talks proved fruitless, the administration opted to boycott the proceedings, a move that makes it likely other Western nations will follow suit.

As if to confirm the poisonous atmosphere surrounding Durban II, the UN high commissioner for human rights, Navanethem Pillay, suggested that the U.S. pullout is evidence of a “disparaging media and lobbying campaign” by those with “narrow, parochial interests.” Of course, the head of a global organization that seems obsessed with the supposed misdeeds of a nation of fewer than six million souls may not be the best person to give a lecture on parochialism. As the AJC’s executive director, David A. Harris, said in a statement denouncing Pillay’s remarks, “This is an attempt to smear those who want the UN to protect human rights rather than inexcusably single out and demonize Israel.”

During the presidential campaign, candidate Obama pledged a new direction in U.S. foreign affairs, one that reemphasized consultation and cooperation without sacrificing America’s military might nor compromising its ideals or self-interest. The administration struck that balance in seeking to restore a measure of credibility to Durban and ultimately deciding that, in the words of a State Department spokesman, its one-sided resolutions are “unsalvageable.”

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