The Throughline from the Durban Conference to Oct. 7

When Hamas’ October 7 massacre on Israelis took place almost three years ago, what was so stunning to so many was the widespread reaction to the horror on the very next day.

Israel had not done anything to retaliate at that point, and yet, instead of empathy for the victims and the Jewish people, the world witnessed a stunning surge of hostility toward the Jewish state. The suddenness of this backlash came as a shock to many who believe in Israel’s right to exist, and many wondered where it all came from. 

As we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the infamous United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, the answer to that question lies right in front of us. This UN conference, which was intended to address real issues of discrimination in the world, quickly turned into an antisemitic spectacle the likes of which the international community had not witnessed in decades.

Indeed, a substantial part of the roots of the hatred of Israel and Jews that we are witnessing today can be traced back to this conference. The main charges circulating these days against the state of Israel were all normalized and legitimized at Durban in 2001. In particular, the trio of accusations against the Jewish state—colonialism, apartheid, genocide—that are making the rounds incessantly these days were all central features of Durban’s sustained assault on Israel’s legitimacy. 

In effect, the multi-pronged assault on the Jewish state after October 7 in the media, in courtrooms, social media and more should not be seen as a surprise but as a product of the ideas circulating back at Durban. The slaughter of Israelis on October 7, and the perception of Jewish weakness and vulnerability it exposed, provided that opportune moment. 

The significance of Durban was not that it generated violence. Rather, it created a new intellectual and moral framework through which hostility toward Israel—and increasingly toward Jews—could be presented as a struggle for justice, anti-racism, and human rights. It gave ancient prejudice a modern vocabulary. 

Let’s recall what actually took place at Durban that provided that framework for hostility to Jews ever since.

Beginning before, and overlapping with the official conference, an NGO forum was ostensibly tasked with shaping the conference’s civil society agenda. Though the conference was labeled as a chance to address problems of racism, the NGO forum had a very different agenda, couched in the language of the conference’s stated mission.  And yet, almost all of its statements and discussions were about the perceived evils of the only Jewish state in the world. Ignoring both the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and many actual manifestations of racism in the world, the forum trafficked in the most virulent classical anti-Israel and antisemitic tropes.

The final declaration of the NGO forum called for the restoration of the infamous Zionism is racism resolution which had been rescinded by the UN in 1991 (via UNGA Resolution 46/86). It accused Israel of war crimes and genocide against the Palestinians. It called on the international community to apply all the measures taken against apartheid South Africa to the Jewish state.

In sum, the forum participants urged the complete delegitimization of the state of Israel.  

These ideas did not remain confined to the halls of the UN. Over the following decades they migrated into universities, international NGOs, labor unions, professional associations, cultural institutions, corporate board rooms and social media, where they increasingly became accepted as mainstream rather than extremist views.  

As troubling as these prescriptive measures were, even more alarming were the descriptors that accompanied and drove them:

• They undermined the Holocaust and used the Shoah against the Jewish people by comparing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the persecution and murder of Europe’s Jews during World War II. 
• They sold the infamous antisemitic book the ‘Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’ as if it were a legitimate document. 
• They distributed pictures of Hitler with the caption, “What if I had won,” and accompanying text: “The good thing is there would have been no Israel and no Palestinian bloodshed.”
• And they ignored the reality of Israeli democracy by simply referring to Israel as a racist country, which they accused of “demographic engineering” to preserve Israel’s “purity.” 

In fact, both Durban and what we are seeing unfold in this post-October 7 world are about the illegitimacy of Jewish self-determination and the right of the Jewish people to express their identity as other peoples do. The fact that both Durban and post-October 7 reactions targeted not only Israel’s retaliation to the Hamas assault but also the very existence of the Jewish state and the Jewish people, makes this unmistakably clear. 

We must not allow the discussion to be only about Israeli policies when the real motivator is the hatred of the very idea of a Jewish state. Remembering what Durban was about and its connection to today’s struggles is an important step in clarifying what is taking place now, including the rampant spread of antisemitism in societies around the world. 

What is going on now and what went on at Durban have nothing to do with whether one agrees with the policies of the Israeli government, or not. It is important to stress this point because of persistent efforts to frame this as a problem of Israeli policies.  

None of this suggests that criticism of Israeli governments is illegitimate.  

Durban was fundamentally different. It showcased how anti-Israel and antisemitic activists could co-opt an otherwise well-meaning initiative to prevent racism and turn it into an attack on the very legitimacy of the Jewish state and the right of the Jewish people to have a state of their own. 

Remembering Durban is therefore not simply an exercise in historical reflection. It is essential if democratic societies hope to recognize and understand how antisemitism evolves, how it adapts the language of human rights to attack Jewish self-determination, and how quickly delegitimization can become discrimination, exclusion, and even violence.  

Understanding Durban is not about revisiting the past—it is about protecting the future.