Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] INTERNATIONAL LAW AND ANTISEMITISM 49
ument makes reference to antisemitism, owing to Soviet attempts to intrude
condemnation of Zionism and Arab resistance to what they thought would
be a manifestation of support for Israel. This unfortunate political wrangling
notwithstanding, the convention forcefully condemns unnamed antisemitism.
Article 4 takes a powerful stand against racial hatred, whether spoken
or written, and requires signatories to condemn all propaganda and organizations
based on ideas of inferior races, makes punishable incitement of
racial hatred and dissemination of ideas of racial superiority (here the drafters
had in mind the Nazis’ prodigious output of works—from pamphlets to
treatises—on “scientific” racialist biology trumpeting Aryan superiority),
and outlaws all organizations that utilize propaganda to incite racial discrimination,
hatred, or violence, and demands prosecution of those who participate
in or finance such organizations. This strong stand is difficult to
reconcile with the convention’s citation of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, an absolute guarantee of freedom of expression
that can complicate or even nullify the implementation of the convention. 34
In recent years, CERD, which implements the convention, has handed down
decisions concerned with antisemitism, such as Jewish Community of Oslo
v. Norway in 2005. In this case, CERD examined a complaint regarding a
Supreme Court of Norway decision that overturned a lower court’s conviction
under a section of the Norwegian Penal Code prohibiting “a person
from threatening, insulting, or subjecting to hatred, persecution or contempt,
any person or group of persons because of their creed, race, color or
national or ethnic origin.” The conviction was based upon a racist speech by
the leader of a neo-Nazi group haranguing marchers honoring Rudolf Hess,
whom the IMT had imprisoned for life. The Norwegian Supreme Court
dismissed the conviction on the grounds that the speech did not sanction
Jewish persecution and genocide; CERD reversed the decision, concluding
that the speech had violated the convention by its message of racial superiority
and hatred, and its incitement to racial discrimination.
Parallel preparatory work on the racial convention’s counterpart on
religious intolerance, the 1981 Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms
of Religious Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief,
went on at a much slower pace and with more input from Jewish organizations,
but has never gotten beyond the declaratory stage; political tension
among the UN blocs again made agreement extremely difficult. The Arabs
feared that anyone opposing Israel or Zionism would be branded as
34. Natan Lerner, “Incitement in the Racial Convention: Reach and Shortcomings
of Article 4,” Israel Yearbook on Human Rights, 22 (1992): 4-10; Natan Lerner,
“Curbing Racial Discrimination—Fifteen Years CERD,” Israel Yearbook on
Human Rights, 13 (1983): 170-188.