Baltimore, MD, May 4, 2021 — The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) welcomed news today that the U.S. State Department will not participate in the “Durban IV” conference. The United States withdrew from the original conference in 2001, referring to “hateful language” employed in the Durban Declaration, which ignored human rights crises around the world to name only the “Palestinian people” as victims. Rabbi Pesach Lerner, President of the CJV, made the following statement:

We commend the Biden Administration for refusing to participate in the conference, as the Obama Administration did previously in 2009 and 2011 when Mr. Biden was Vice-President. We appreciate the Administration’s rejection of both the Durban Declaration’s “problematic portions,” and the Durban Conferences themselves as providing “a forum for antisemitism.”

Photo Credit: Durban Review Conference (Durban II) at UNOG in Geneva, Switzerland April 20-24 2009.