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Friday September 7, 2001

Lantos, lauded for Durban stance, also to get JNF award

ALEXANDRA J. WALL
Bulletin Staff

Kudos for Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo) have come from all corners of the Jewish world for his stance this week at the U.N.-sponsored conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, which he said had become a "mockery."

But when Lantos appears at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel this Sunday, to receive the "Tree of Life" award from the Jewish National Fund, he will be greeted with a consortium of protesters.

Calling itself the Ad Hoc Committee to End Israeli Apartheid, the committee includes several Jewish groups. Among them: Women in Black and QUIT (Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism) as well as Middle East Children's Alliance, the Bay Area Coalition to End the Sanctions on Iraq and the International Action Center, plus several Arab groups.

While Lantos was still in Durban at press time and could not be reached by the Bulletin, the New York Times reported that the congressman -- and the U.S. delegation -- refused to accept a conference report charging that Israel carried out "racist crimes against humanity, including ethnic cleansing and acts of genocide" in its treatment of Palestinians.

Lantos told the Times that Israelis and Palestinians tried to compromise on language they both could agree on, but "this was not a question of persuading people. This was a question of an iron wall we were up against, and there was no give."

While the decision to honor Lantos at Sunday's dinner was made well before the Durban conference, Russell Robinson, executive vice president of the Jewish National Fund, said it was even more appropriate to honor him in light of this week's events.

"This week speaks higher than anything he's done in the past," said Robinson in a telephone interview from his office in New York. "Here is a man who stood up and tried to take a stand against radical individuals and bring logic to a conference on human rights so we could really deal with issues of human rights and not the hatred these people have for Jews and the people of Israel.

"As a person who experienced the Holocaust, he sees what one man can do to another," Robinson added. "He's fought for these injustices and we're proud to honor him."

But Jeffrey Blankfort, a freelance photojournalist who lives in San Francisco, disagreed. One of the main organizers of the protest, Blankfort contends that Lantos "pretends to be an advocate of human rights."

In reality, Blankfort said, the legislator's main agenda "seems to be doing damage control for Israel and maintaining sanctions over Iraq."

Blankfort, who is Jewish, is the founder of an organization called the Labor Committee on the Middle East. He has been involved in the issue ever since he photographed some Palestinian refugee camps in the early '70s.

Kate Raphael, a Jewish activist who lives in Berkeley, is a member of both Women in Black and QUIT. She accused Lantos of trying to "derail the conference on racism."

Raphael said that because her father had raised money for the JNF when she was growing up, she felt personally responsible for the oppression of the Palestinian people now.

"It's really important to make people aware that the organized Jewish community is financing the repression of the Palestinians and the ongoing occupation of Palestinian terrorism. Without our money, they could not be doing it.

"Whether we were misinformed or didn't want to know what was happening," she said, "the Jewish people have been a silent partner in the ongoing repression and dislocation of Palestinians. It's important to take a stand as Jews to say this has got to stop."

Blankfort also accused the JNF of carrying out racist policies and, among other charges, erasing evidence of the Arab presence from the Jewish state.

Robinson said that the statement Blankfort disseminated was full of inaccuracies, and "innuendo doesn't tell the real story of the quality-of-life differences that JNF makes for all the people of Israel."

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