DURBAN, South Africa (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Israel was branded a ''racist apartheid'' state early on Sunday by thousands of non-governmental organizations meeting in South Africa. (Read photo caption below)The harsh anti-Israeli language in the NGO Forum's final declaration injected new Middle East tensions into the parallel U.N. World Conference Against Racism attended by 153 governments in the Indian Ocean port of Durban.
Worsening Israeli-Palestinian violence has cast a shadow over the racism meeting despite pleas by Nelson Mandela to seize the chance to end the contagion of racial discrimination.
The Forum accused the Jewish state of ``systematic perpetration of racist crimes including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing.''
It called Israel ``a racist apartheid state in which Israel's brand of apartheid as a crime against humanity has been characterized by separation and segregation...and inhumane acts.''
The declaration, adopted by 3,000 NGOs in 44 regional and interest-based caucuses, shocked Jewish groups. Jewish delegates walked out.
But a lawyer with the Association of Palestine NGO, Tawfiq Jabareen, said: ``We want the governmental conference to adopt these documents. The Palestinian people have a right to self-determination.''
The Israeli government delegation to the U.N. conference blasted the language making the typical claim that it was an incitement to hatred of Jews. ''The decision of the conference of the NGOs adopted this morning is outright incitement, whose only purpose is to delegitimize the Jewish state and its people,'' delegation spokesman Noam Katz made the empty claim to a Reuters reporter.
``(It) adds fuel to the attempts that are being made to demonize Israel,'' he claimed.
NGO INFLUENCE AT U.N. MEETINGS
Resolutions at NGO Forums have no binding authority but they increasingly influence the final declarations adopted at the U.N. governmental meetings they precede.
The United States, Canada and Israel sent only junior level delegations to the U.N. racism conference attended by some 6,000 delegates in protest at what they see as anti-Israeli bias.
Washington had already warned it might withdraw before the conference closes on September 7 unless offending language is removed from draft texts. The NGO Forum's declaration further reduced the prospects for agreement at the U.N. meeting.
Before he flew to the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Saturday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that rows over the Middle East and controversy over how to handle the historic issue of slavery threatened the conference.Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, one of the most prominent figures at a conference which drew only a handful of senior Western politicians, again branded Israel as racist on Saturday.
``The ugliness of these Israeli racist policies and practices against the Palestinian people has become manifest and obvious during the Intifada,'' he said.
He was referring to the 11-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli military occupation in which at least 548 Palestinians and 157 Israelis have been killed.
``CONTAGION OF RACISM''
Mandela, the father of South Africa's multi-racial democracy, made an impassioned call for delegates to put aside differences and act to rid the world of a disease that was an ''ailment of the mind and the soul.''
``It kills many more than any contagion. It dehumanizes anyone it touches,'' the 83-year-old former South African President said in a recorded speech to delegates.
Reparations to Africans for centuries of slavery also remained a stumbling block.
African and Caribbean states want a formal apology and some countries are pressing for financial reparations.
Some 12 million Africans were shipped to north and south America, often in chains, during the 400 years in which the trade flourished until the 19th century.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, one of a small number of top Western government officials in Durban, offered his country's apology.
He said recognition of guilt was the way to restore to the victims and their descendants ``the dignity of which they were robbed.''
``I should therefore like to do that here and now on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany,'' he told the conference in a speech. Germany was a former colonial power in Africa.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Middle East tensions threatened to sink a U.N. conference against racism September 1, 2001 despite pleas by Nelson Mandela to seize the chance to end the contagion of discrimination. Mandela, the father of South Africa's multi-racial democracy, made an impassioned call for delegates to put aside differences and act to rid the world of a disease that was an 'ailment of the mind and the soul.' Anti-Zionist protesters are seen outside the conference in Durban, South Africa. (Mike Hutchings/Reuters)