Twenty-five years ago this week, the world gathered in Durban, South Africa, ostensibly to unite in the fight against racism.

What happened instead should never be forgotten, and certainly not celebrated.

The 2001 UN World Conference against Racism, and its parallel NGO Forum, became a notorious spectacle of unhinged Jew-hatred, Holocaust distortion, and the demonisation of Israel.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous Russian anti-Semitic forgery, was sold alongside anti-racism literature. Pamphlets featured a photograph of Adolf Hitler with the words, “What if I had won?” Jewish participants were harassed and told, “You don’t belong to the human race.” Meanwhile, some activists sought to equate the Holocaust with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and even attempted to redefine anti-Semitism as anti-Arab racism.

At the time, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel warned that “the Durban Conference will go down in history as an enterprise of shame”.

Twenty-five years later, the legacy of this “enterprise of shame” is unmistakable.

Although Durban was steeped in unadulterated anti-Semitism, its lasting significance was in fact re-branding an ancient hatred for the modern age, helping turn charges of genocide, apartheid and war crimes, and calls for boycotts and sanctions, into enduring features of the campaign to delegitimise the state of Israel.

Its significance therefore lies not only in the hatred displayed there, but in the ideological framework it helped put in place.

The evolution of this framework has been aptly described by UN Watch, a leading independent watchdog of the United Nations, as the “Durban strategy”: exploiting and perverting universal human rights language to demonise Israel and spread anti-Semitism disguised as “anti-Zionism”.

This matters because much of the Jew-hatred we see today increasingly arrives masqueraded as “anti-Zionism”. Zionism is, at its core, the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. Denying that right while holding Israel to uniquely different standards is not a legitimate expression of anti-racism, but a modern manifestation of an ancient prejudice.

Yet rather than consigning Durban’s shameful legacy to history, the United Nations is instead preparing to reaffirm and celebrate it 25 years later, with the General Assembly convening a high-level meeting on September 28 in New York, with the UN describing the event as an effort to mobilise support for the “full and effective implementation” of the Durban framework, that is, the very process that laid the foundation for the unprecedented campaign of modern anti-Semitism and vilification of Israel.

For Australia, this presents a clear choice, with a strong bipartisan precedent. Australia has twice recognised that participation in the Durban process would be incompatible with its commitment to combating anti-Semitism and promoting genuine racial equality.

In 2011, the Labor government under prime minister Julia Gillard withdrew from the 10th anniversary Durban commemoration because of concerns over its treatment of Israel and anti-Semitism. A decade later, the Coalition government under prime minister Scott Morrison reached the same conclusion, withdrawing from the 20th anniversary commemoration in 2021. Australia was among 38 countries that refused to participate.

There is therefore something unusually valuable here: a bipartisan Australian principle. Successive governments of both political persuasions have recognised that when the Durban process becomes a vehicle for anti-Semitism and the singling out of Israel, Australia should not lend it legitimacy. There is no compelling reason for that principle to be abandoned in 2026. If anything, the case for maintaining it is stronger than ever.

That is particularly true given where Australia finds itself today, having just completed the public hearings of the Royal Commission on Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion.

For months, Australians have heard testimony about how anti-Semitism has become normalised, how dehumanising rhetoric, including against Zionism, can translate into intimidation and violence, and how institutions must respond to this prejudice in all its manifestations, before it becomes entrenched.

Against that backdrop, Australia cannot credibly confront anti-Semitism at home while lending its diplomatic legitimacy abroad to a process with such a documented history of anti-Semitism and Holocaust distortion. The message to Australian Jews would be deeply contradictory: that Jew-hatred is unacceptable when expressed on our streets, campuses or in our institutions, but somehow tolerable when repackaged in the language of international human rights abroad.

That is not a position Australia should adopt.

Our Government and Foreign Minister Penny Wong should therefore ensure that Australia does not lend its presence or diplomatic credibility to the UN’s upcoming 25th anniversary celebration of a Durban legacy so deeply tainted by anti-Semitism and Holocaust distortion, and so at odds with the Australian values of equality, tolerance and commitment to combating racism and discrimination.

Australia has twice before said no to Durban. Twenty-five years after the original conference, it should do so again and help consign its shameful legacy to the dustbin of history.

Arsen Ostrovsky is a human rights lawyer and head of the Sydney office of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council.