Cotler, Harris, Porat, Steinberg and Neuer warn that the 2001 conference institutionalized the demonization of Israel under the guise of human rights
GENEVA, September 2, 2026 - Ahead of the United Nations’ planned “Durban 25” commemoration on September 28, UN Watch and NGO Monitor today published a video panel of experts examining how the notorious 2001 World Conference Against Racism became a global forum for antisemitism and the demonization of Israel.
The event brought together leading figures who witnessed and confronted the Durban conference and its aftermath: former Canadian justice minister and attorney general Prof. Irwin Cotler; former UN Watch chair David Harris, now Executive Vice Chair of ISGAP; Yad Vashem chief historian Prof. Dina Porat; NGO Monitor President Prof. Gerald Steinberg; and UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer.
The speakers warned that Durban’s legacy continues to shape the systematic targeting of Israel at the United Nations and in international civil society.
“What happened at Durban was truly Orwellian,” said Cotler. “That was a tipping point for the laundering of antisemitism at the UN. What emerged from Durban was the metastasized, newly legalized antisemitism under the cover of the UN.”
“This singling out of Israel has continued to metastasize since,” he added. “Durban is the ‘Mein Kampf’ of today.”
Harris recalled with pride the Sept. 3, 2001 decision by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to withdraw the American delegation from the conference:
Today I have instructed our representatives at the World Conference Against Racism to return home. I have taken this decision with regret, because of the importance of the international fight against racism and the contribution that the Conference could have made to it… I know that you do not combat racism by conferences that produce declarations containing hateful language, some of which is a throwback to the days of “Zionism equals racism;” or supports the idea that we have made too much of the Holocaust; or suggests that apartheid exists in Israel; or that singles out only one country in the world-Israel-for censure and abuse.
Harris explained how the Durban campaign refined the strategy behind the UN’s infamous 1975 “Zionism is racism” resolution.
“Whereas the 1975 effort on Resolution 3379 was a Soviet-Arab concoction, 2001 and thereafter was much more sophisticated: wrapping its agenda in a mantle of political progressivism, of the language of human rights,” said Harris. “The basic strategies and tactics employed then in Durban, and honed in the months leading up to Durban, continue until today with the BDS movement.”
Porat, who attended Durban as a member of the Israeli delegation, described how a conference that was supposed to confront racism abruptly turned against Israel and the Jewish people.
She recalled asking a senior European delegate how this had happened. His answer, Porat said, was startlingly candid: former colonial powers feared demands for compensation from countries they had once ruled, and therefore found a convenient diversion.
“‘The simple solution to this problem was to pick on Israel and the Jews,’” Porat recalled him saying. “He said it so simply and so openly that he left me speechless. That was a blunt and exact explanation of what happened at the Durban Conference.”
Steinberg reviewed the 25-year history of the Durban process and its role in enabling nongovernmental organizations to promote campaigns accusing Israel of racism, apartheid and other international crimes.
Neuer traced Durban’s ideological origins to the UN General Assembly’s 1975 “Zionism is racism” resolution, which he described as the institutional launch of the campaign to portray the Jewish state as inherently illegitimate and racist.
“The UN should be apologizing for Durban-not celebrating it,” said Neuer. “Unless the September 28 meeting unequivocally repudiates the antisemitism that engulfed the 2001 conference and renounces the discriminatory elements of the Durban Declaration that single out Israel, every democracy should refuse to participate.”
The 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa, descended into scenes of open antisemitism. Jewish participants were harassed, antisemitic literature was distributed, and the parallel NGO Forum adopted a declaration branding Israel a “racist, apartheid state” and calling for its international isolation.
In 2021, following a campaign led by UN Watch, 38 democracies refused to participate in the UN’s Durban IV anniversary event.
UN Watch has launched a petition and is now calling on those governments-and other democracies-to withdraw from the September 28, 2026 commemoration.
Watch the full panel on Durban 25
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