Next month, the United Nations will convene its infamous Durban anti-racism conference for the fourth time. Despite the conference’s innocuous branding, the event has provided a forum for participants to bash the Jewish state of Israel and revel in antisemitism. The history of the Durban conference is so ugly that it is worth reviewing.
The first conference was held in 2001 in Durban, South Africa. The only true democracy in the Middle East—Israel—was also the only country under discussion at the week-long conference. Iran, Russia, North Korea, Syria and China were all ignored. Nor was any other country with actual human rights violations against ethnic and religious minorities called out.
While the declaration from that conference following U.S. and European pressure included “concern [with] the increase in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in various parts of the world, as well as the emergence of racial and violent movements based on racism and discriminatory ideas against Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities,” at the conference itself, speech after speech was dedicated to the demonization of Israel. Founder of the PLO terrorist organization Yasser Arafat decried the “ugliness” of “Israeli racist policies and practices against the Palestinian people.” Arafat’s rhetoric included every slanderous accusation, including calling Israel “a racist colonialist conspiracy of aggression, forced eviction, usurpation of land, and infringement upon Christian and Islamic holy places,” and a “colonialist challenge against international legitimacy…moved by a mentality of superiority that practices racial discrimination, that adopts ethnic cleansing and transfer.” To this day we hear echoes of Arafat’s hateful language from those who seek to delegitimize the Jewish state.
Ms. Cohanim was the State Department’s first Iranian-born Envoy, and led diplomatic initiatives which resulted in forging groundbreaking partnerships in the Arab world to combat anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and Islamophobia. Ms. Cohanim also persuaded the first-ever Muslim faith group to adopt the IHRA working definition of anti-Semitism, all as part of the Abraham Accords efforts. As Deputy Envoy, Ms. Cohanim was the lead official for the State Department in creating and implementing policy on countering anti-Semitism in the Near East and Western Hemisphere regions. She worked closely with Jewish communities in Venezuela, Chile, Argentina and Colombia in confronting local issues of anti-Semitism.
Ms. Cohanim can often be seen on Fox News and Newsmax; and is a contributor to National Review, Newsweek, The Hill and Washington Examiner.
Ellie Cohanim arrived as a child refugee to the US, after she and her family fled the escalating anti-Semitism in Iran during the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Previously, Ellie Cohanim was Senior Vice President and Special Correspondent for the Jewish Broadcasting Service (JBS) and was an executive at Yeshiva University; The Jewish Theological Seminary; and UJA-Federation of New York. She serves on the boards of the Iranian-American Jewish Federation of NY and Latino Coalition for Israel; and has previously served on the boards of the American Jewish Committee (AJC-NYR), the New York Jewish Community Relations Council, and the Ester Chapter of Hadassah.
Ellie Cohanim received her B.A. in Political Science, Cum Laude, from Barnard College, Columbia University; and conducted graduate study in International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is fluent in Hebrew and Farsi, familiar with German, Arabic and Spanish.
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