The Durban Libel Is 25 Years Old — and the UN Is Celebrating It

The charges of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide filling today's university quads and UN resolutions did not emerge from the rubble of Gaza. They were minted in Durban, South Africa, in September 2001 — and on September 28, the United Nations will convene in New York to mark the 25th anniversary of that founding act of organized hatred.

I have spent my career following the money behind terrorism. What was assembled at Durban was terrorism's legal-political twin: a structured operation to destroy a state not with bombs but with language. The World Jewish Congress was right to call it a "hallmark of antisemitism and anti-Zionism."

The fix was in before a single delegate arrived. The Islamic Republic of Iran chaired the preparatory meeting in Tehran and barred Israeli and Jewish organizations — effectively after their last flight had left Paris. In their absence, delegates produced language accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and racial superiority doctrine. The conference's final declaration condemned one country. The parallel NGO Forum — 7,000 activists — called for the "complete and total isolation of Israel" and demanded reinstatement of the 1975 Soviet-backed resolution equating Zionism with racism, which the General Assembly had already revoked in 1991.

The conditions at that forum were obscene. Vendors sold the Protocols of the Elders of Zion openly; pamphlets circulated bearing Hitler's photograph asking "What if I had won?" The Roma caucus walked out and condemned the text as antisemitic. Holocaust survivor Congressman Tom Lantos called it "the most sickening display of hate for Jews I have seen since the Nazi period." Former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler called it the "tipping point for the laundering of antisemitism at the U.N."

Representatives of 1,500 organizations adopted the NGO Declaration as a platform for boycotts and sanctions. The ADL has documented how Durban laid the groundwork for BDS, formalized in 2004–2005. The NGO network has since metastasized: NGO Monitor identified 157 U.S.-based groups linked by nearly 3,000 funding and partnership connections, and in Britain 80% of anti-Israel protests since October 7 were organized by NGOs with documented links to Iran, Hamas or Hezbollah.

The Durban NGO Declaration called for a "war crimes tribunal" to try Israel. South Africa obliged: on December 29, 2023, less than three months after the October 7 massacres, it filed a genocide case at the ICJ. The playbook written in those tents in Durban is now being executed in The Hague. Thirty-eight countries boycotted the 20th-anniversary event in 2021. Every democracy should stay home on September 28 — and say loudly why.