In the Trenches: Durban Diplomacy, Durban Delirium

In a recent editorial, the New York weekly newspaper The Jewish Week applauded the Obama administration for doing "the right thing" by disengaging from the Durban II process in a way that could give our country "new clout in the struggle against pervasive anti-Israel bias in the international arena."

Moreover, the editorial chided those who "have insisted from the outset that Obama harbors animosity to the Jewish state and have pounced on every pronouncement, every rumor as proof," and noted "an element of sheer partisanship in the reaction."

We at AJC have been on the receiving end of some of these scurrilous attacks. Why? Because we understood that, with the decision on Durban II handed from the Bush to the Obama administration, the new team would necessarily assess the process before making a final decision on the US role.

When a five-member official US delegation was sent last month to Geneva to compile a set of recommendations, AJC's Felice Gaer was one of the participants. The group had over 30 meetings with key ambassadors and made crystal clear that any reference to Israel in the final document would be unacceptable to the US.

The trip itself, though, was red meat for a chorus of critics, led by writers Caroline Glick in Israel, Anne Bayefsky in the US and Melanie Phillips in the UK.

Their stunningly overheated rhetoric, perhaps the product of what might be called "Durban delirium," may appeal to their devoted readers, but that's about it.

Whether we like it or not, decisions about Durban II are made by elected officials and civil servants in capitals around the world. Verbal broadsides and fulminating fusillades may have a feel-good quality to them, but if we want to encourage potentially sympathetic nations to do the right thing, then their real-life impact is questionable.

Here's a sample of what the columnists wrote: Phillips asserted in The Spectator: "Having voted this man into power, the AJC now has its head up Obama's backside while he lends legitimacy and strength to those who wish to destroy the Jewish state and the free world - all the time pretending to themselves that they are helping to mitigate the damage [of Durban II]."

For the record, AJC is a strictly nonpartisan agency. Always has been, always will be. Just as the Obama team approached a colleague for the job in Geneva, the Bush team invited me to serve on the official US delegation to Durban I, which, of course, laudably ended up walking out of that hate-fest.

Writing in The Jerusalem Post, Glick stated: "AJC senior operative Felice Gaer is now a member of the US delegation in Geneva. Happily ensconced in the Swiss conference room where the Holocaust is denied, the Jewish people's right to self-determination is reviled, and Israel's right to defend itself is rejected, Gaer now sits silently, all the while using the fact of her membership in the US delegation as proof that the Obama administration is serious about protecting Israel at Durban II. Whatever the AJC may have gained for its support for Durban II, Israel and its supporters have clearly been harmed."

To suggest that Felice and the other members of the US delegation were "happily ensconced" in their Geneva meetings is simply preposterous, if not contemptible. Rather, they went from session to session making clear to diplomats, face to face, that the business-as-usual demonization of Israel and the Jewish people was totally unacceptable. End of story.

(Apropos, it was AJC that chaired the successful global campaign to support Emory University Professor Deborah Lipstadt in the outrageous and drawn-out libel case brought against her in a British court by Holocaust denier David Irving. So much for countenancing Holocaust denial.)

Both Phillips and Glick cited Anne Bayefsky in their writings. Meanwhile, she was insisting in Forbes that the US strategy regarding Durban II was "painfully obvious - spin out the time for considering whether or not to attend the April 20 conference until the train has left the station and jumping off would cause greater injury to multilateral relations than just taking a seat. The delay tactics are indefensible."

Oops! Within a week of the group's return, the Obama administration announced its withdrawal from the process - hardly a strategy to "spin out the time."

In another blooper, Glick confidently predicted: "As Bayefsky and others argued this week, by entering into the Durban preparatory process, the US has... made it all but impossible for European states like France, Britain, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, which were all considering boycotting the conference, to do so."

The next week, Italy followed the US, and, judging from recent comments, others could do the same.

In sum, in their consequences-be-damned approach to Durban II, three well-known observers got it wrong.

They viciously lashed out at anyone who dared to disagree about tactics, irresponsibly questioned motives, incorrectly prophesied the US position and failed to see that European nations were now more, not less, likely to walk out because of the US strategy.

To become so blatantly and blindly partisan, and to irresponsibly and viciously accuse groups like AJC of cavorting with Holocaust deniers and doing willful damage to Israel, is, I'd say, deliriously over the top.

Click here to read a response from Caroline Glick, Melanie Phillips and Anne Bayefsky