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London declaration on anti-Semitism says ‘never again’ to UN’s ‘Durban II’
Updated: 17/Feb/2009 16:17
London summit instigator MP John Mann, who chairs Britain's parliamentary committee against anti-Semitism, said they were meeting because the problem was on the rise."There must be a fight-back and we parliamentarians are willing to lead from the front. Jewish communities across the world should know that they are not alone."
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LONDON (EJP)---Parliamentarians meeting in London at the first ever summit on anti-Semitism called Tuesday on their respective governments and the United Nations “never again to allow the institutions of the international community to be abused for the purposes of trying to establish any legitimacy for anti-Semitism”.   

They also called on the European Union Council of Ministers to address the issue of combating renewed anti-Semitism on the continent.
 
The call came in a declaration drawn up by around 100 parliamentarians from nearly 40 countries- including the president of the Austrian parliament and the vice-president of the German Bundestag- who attended the two-day summit organized by the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism (ICCA) in conjunction with the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.
 
The conference took place in the Houses of Parliament and at Lancaster House.
 
The participants declare that the international community “must not be witness or party to another gathering like Durban in 2001,” the infamous UN anti-racism conference, where the focus on Israel to the exclusion of all other issues was widely perceived as anti-Semitic. 
 
The “Durban Review Conference on Racism” dubbed “Durban II”  is to be held at the Geneva UN headquarters on April 20-24.
 
According to British MP John Mann, who chairs the Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism, “the Internet, the globalisation of the media, a resurgence of the extreme right and an anti-Zionist hard left have combined to create a febrile environment, in which the spread of old and new anti-Semitic theories and attitudes have been able to gain traction with alarming ease.”
 
He added that the Durban conference was amongst the manifestations of this trend.
 
Over the two days, parliamentarians and experts from nearly forty countries have hammered out a series of strategies to tackle global anti-Semitism.
 
 
Among the ministers attending the conference were Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini and Lord Malloch-Brown, Britain's Minister for Africa, Asia and the UN.

 

This should be an utterly unnecessary conference. We hoped that the embers of anti-Semitism were long since dead and cold. Sadly they're not. The response must not just address the Muslim-Jewish relationship. It's part of it, but only a part.

The broader issue is to again go back to the basics of this to remind people of the extraordinary role Jews play in so many countries around the world.
British Foreign Office minister Lord Mark Malloch-Brown in an interview with BBC television.

 
The London Declaration also called for the exposure and isolation of governments and individual politicians who engage in hate against the Jews and the establishment of an international taskforce of Internet specialists to measure racism and anti-Semitism online and propose international responses.
 
Setting the context for the conference, former Canada’s Attorney-General and counsel to Nelson Mandela, MP Irwin Cotler MP declared:“There is a new sophisticated, globalising, virulent and even lethal anti-Semitism, reminiscent of the atmospherics of the 30s, and without parallel or precedent since the end of the Second World War.”
 
Johan Mann stressed that "anti-Semitism is a touchstone for other ills within wider society and unless we move to address its spread now, and as a matter of the utmost urgency, we will all pay a heavy price."

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