Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and director of global social action at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, urged Austria’s chancellor to keep the country out of a United Nations meeting next week marking 25 years since the World Conference Against Racism in South Africa, which he described as anti-Israel and antisemitic.
The letter to the chancellor came the same day that Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen, at a press conference with Chancellor Christian Stocker, accused Israel of “violations of international law” and “war crimes” in Judea and Samaria.
Cooper wrote that he was concerned about Austria’s intention to attend the Sept. 28 meeting, marking the anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action at the conference.
The declaration accuses Israel of “occupying” Palestinian land, even as it “recognizes the right to security for all states in the region, including Israel.”
Austria was among 38 countries to boycott the 20th anniversary meeting in 2021. Cooper asked Stocker to instruct Austria’s U.N. representative not to participate in the 2026 commemoration. The meeting, which is slated to be held in the Trusteeship Council Chamber at U.N. headquarters, will open with remarks from António Guterres, the outgoing U.N. secretary-general.
Cooper, who attended the conference in Durban in 2001, wrote that he “witnessed firsthand how a gathering convened under the noble banner of combating racism was overwhelmed by virulently anti-Israel hostility and manifestations of antisemitism.”
“Durban was not merely an unfortunate episode 25 years ago,” he wrote. “It became a watershed moment in the international demonization of Israel and helped bring rhetoric once confined to political extremes into mainstream international discourse.”
Cooper added that Austria “has repeatedly emphasized its historic responsibility and its commitment to combating antisemitism” and urged its government to “remain true to that commitment.”
