The UN celebrates the 25th anniversary of the famous Durban Conference in New York

Watching this live, the list of actively attending countries goes like

Afghanistan, Malta, Nepal, Montenegro, Libya, Nicaragua, Namibia, Liberia, Brazil, South Africa, Albania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates, Eritrea, Oman, Bangladesh, Algeria, Jordan, Djibouti, Venezuela, Russia, Ireland, Yemen, Turkey, Sudan, Nigeria, Brunei, Senegal and Morocco, Bahrain, Tunisia, Mauritania, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, the League of Arab States, Iran, Maldives,

followed by a list of NGO's paid by whoever. 

Russia, notably, did not join the Israel-bashing chorus. Its statement was essentially an appeal for peace and a political settlement.

Meanwhile Afghanistan has also managed to appear for the occasion, because when assembling an international celebration of human rights principles, Afghanistan is naturally one of the countries whose attendance really completes the room.

Listening to the 2026 edition of this repeated, distinguished Israel-bashing event, we are happy to hear that Austria, after boycotting the 2011 and 2021 anniversary meetings, is apparently the only Central European country that decided to attend this time.

No, it's not the FPÖ, the Austrian Freedom Party. The party routinely presented by political opponents as Austria's permanent Nazi emergency was already applauding Austria for distancing itself from Durban over antisemitism in 2001. Twenty-five years later, senior FPÖ politicians are openly cultivating relations with Likud and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Beate Meinl-Reisinger, NEOS, has found the sophisticated middle path. Austria attends, but only “technically.” The conference opened by approving a political declaration devoted to the “full and effective implementation” of the Durban Declaration, but Austria's technical presence is somehow not political at all.

Meinl-Reisinger has therefore achieved a diplomatic ideal: Israel can still be told that Austria takes antisemitism seriously, Durban gets an Austrian technical representative and the FPÖ, of course, still stays the "nazi party".

This is especially telling after last week's episode of the Austrian president Alexander van der Bellen publicly accusing Israel of violations of international law and “war crimes” over Gaza and West Bank displacement. Meinl-Reisinger defended his intervention.

The sheep remains whole, everybody has eaten, and the foreign minister gets another international appointment.

Vallah LOL

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