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| Aug. 8, 2001 |
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| SLAVERY AND RACISM AT DURBAN |
NEW YORK - An ugly rumpus has erupted over the UN's upcoming conference on racism in Durban, South Africa. The United States and many western nations are threatening to boycott the August 31 meeting after African and Asian nations put two explosive issues on its lengthy agenda: reparations for slavery, and the equation of Zionism with racism. Seizing upon the example of continuing German reparations to Jews for the Nazi era, African states and black groups in America are pressing for billions in reparations for the Atlantic slave trade, which lasted from the mid-1500's, peaked from 1600 to 1700, and was outlawed by western nations by the 1830's. Should the main beneficiaries of the slave trade - Britain, the United States, Brazil, France, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, and Holland - pay reparations? No. Though slavery was a crime against humanity, none of its 20-40 million victims are alive. Today's North American, West Indian, and Brazilian descendants of African slaves are still afflicted by their ancestor's tragic history, but in ways impossible to either quantify monetarily, or to rectify, emotionally or sociologically. The US government spent tens of billions of dollars since the 1960's trying to help African-Americans, but with only fair to poor results. If the west compensates Africa and African-Americans, what about huge numbers of galley slaves used by France, the Italian states, Spain, and the Ottoman Empire, or millions of slave laborers used by the Soviet Union and China? Their heirs also deserve compensation. And so do victims of 18th and 19th-century rapacious European and Russian colonialism, which despoiled entire continents, an issue also on the Durban agenda. African states have no right to claim money from the west for slavery. Most black slaves were rounded up and transported to the coasts by black African slave empires and private slavers. Smaller numbers of Arab slavers were also involved. Africa, including Arab North African states, is just as guilty as the west. Claims by Africans that slavery was responsible for the continent's backwardness are unproven: regions of Africa that never suffered from the slave trade are today no more advanced than those that did. African-American groups are now engaged in a nasty fracas with American Jewish groups - or should we say, `Israeli-Americans,' to be consistent and politically correct. Israeli-Americans are demanding the US boycott the Durban meeting, while African-Americans insist the US must attend, putting UN chief Kofi Annan and the Bush Administration in a very awkward position. The last two times UN conferences raised the Zionism equals racism issue, the US boycotted the meetings. The UN only reversed its original Zionism equals racism resolution in 1991 under intensive US and Israeli pressure. Most Jews see Israel as a refuge for a historically persecuted people, and a Jewish-dominated Israel as life insurance against another Holocaust. But much of the rest of the world sees little or no difference between today's Israel and apartheid South Africa. In fact, the families of many of South African whites had been in Africa for over 400 years, while Jewish colonization of Palestine was a 20th-century phenomena, and many Israelis are recent immigrants from East Europe. Israel's Arabs are treated as third-class citizens and denied the right to buy land or build houses, while a new immigrant from Russia who claims, truly or falsely, a grandmother who had some Jewish blood, has the immediate `right of return' to citizenship and property - which an Arab refugee born in Palestine does not. Israel's claims it must deny Palestinians equal political and social rights to `prevent dilution of the Jewish character of Israel' sounds nearly identical to apartheid's anti-black racism, with its bantustans (tribal reservations), efforts to keep `kafir' (black) population growth in check, residency restrictions, and the notion that apartheid South Africa was the last refuge and God-given homeland for Africa's threatened white minority. In a move that is both foolish and illogical, the UN Durban conference plans to single out Israel as the world's sole violator of human rights. The world needs to press Israel to treat Palestinians like human beings, and halt its colonization of Arab land, which is the main issue blocking peace. Yet the world also needs to demand Russia, India, and China halt grave abuses of human rights in Chechnya, Kashmir, and Tibet…and the US stop tormenting Iraq. Most of the Arab and African states that denounce Israel's wrongs are egregious violators of human rights; and many engaged in the slave trade in centuries past. Their wrongs do not excuse or mitigate Israel's persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, but singling out one malefactor while ignoring the rest makes the Durban Conference look like a kangaroo court. Efforts by Arab states to get the meeting to condemn Israel for a `holocuast' against Palestinians is also foolish and counter-productive. Hitler's attempted extermination of Europe's Jews cannot be compared to the Israel's treatment of Palestinians which, however brutal and a major violation of human rights, is not objectively comparable. Attempts to equate the two crimes undermine the legitimate cause of Palestinian rights and will be rightly rejected by most westerners as a wild exaggeration. Finally, even if the Durban conference condemns Israel and demands billions for African or African-Americans, so what? Countless UN resolutions affirming the rights of Palestinians, Muslim Kashmiris, and other persecuted groups have been either ignored, or vetoed by the great powers. Durban will be no different, just louder. Copyright: Eric S. Margolis 2001 `War at the Too of the World - The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Tibet' by Eric S. Margolis has just been called `the best book on foreign policy in the new millennium' by the `Houston Review.' Available in leading bookstores and online.
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