Chaim Herzog, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, today urged the United States to assert itself at the world organization and warned that there is still a danger that Israel could be expelled from the General Assembly. His remarks were made at a discussion on “Israel and the United Nations,” sponsored by the Synagogue Council of America at the Carnegie International Peace Center here.
Herzog said that the abdication of power in the UN by the U.S. had an unfortunate impact on the world organization which during the years has been bad for Israel. “Israel must regard the UN as an important arena,” Herzog said, and therefore must urge the U.S. to reconsider its position. However, the Israeli envoy noted that the American position appears to be changing as indicated by the strong stand it has taken against the Arab-led efforts to expel Israel from the General Assembly.
Calling the move to expel Israel an “act of international anti-Semitism,” Herzog said if it is successful “then in the final analysis there will be no General Assembly. The process of disintegration which has taken hold of UNESCO will seize hold of the United Nations.”
Herzog also attacked the anti-Israel resolutions at the conferences of the Organization of African Unity in Kampala, Uganda, and the non-aligned nations in Lima, Peru, as an “unbelievable concentration of vilification, hate and baseless vituperation against Israel and the Jewish religion.” He said the Lima declaration “openly attacked one of the great religions of the world,” an attack, he said, which is unheard of in modern history.
WELCOMES NON-ALIGNED REVERSALS
But Herzog noted that many Third World countries are showing a defiance toward the Arab attempts to dictate their policy. “We welcome this important change in the attitude of many African countries,” he said. “I personally felt an indication of this new attitude in the reception accorded my appearance this week at the UN special assembly, openly and demonstratively by so many African and non-aligned countries.” Herzog said the African countries have become aware that all they have received from the Arab states for breaking relations with Israel was “a four-fold price increase for their oil.”
Herzog noted that Jews accepted the Lima document with a sense of relief because it didn’t call for Israel’s expulsion from the UN. “The Jewish people must not lose sight of the very serious nature of this document drafted by the PLO and the Syrians which recalls from the shadow of the past the racist vituperations of the Sturmer in Nazi Germany,” he said, The Lima Conference, Herzog said, termed Zionism “a danger to world peace” and expressed deep concern at “the invalidity and illegitimacy of the measures taken by Israel…with the aim of Judaizing Jerusalem.”
The Israeli envoy said the new Egyptian-Israeli agreement could be “the most far-reaching one Israel has ever achieved with a neighbor, and still leave Israel with adequate depth for defense should it not work out.”
Speaking earlier, Arthur Goldberg, a former Supreme Court Justice and U.S. Ambassador to the UN, said the agreement means that “peace is not at hand but neither is war.” He added that “even delaying war and providing the basis for further negotiations is not an insubstantial achievement.”
U.S. INVOLVEMENT NOT NEW
Goldberg predicted Congress would approve sending American civilian technicians to monitor Sinai listening stations. He noted there was nothing new in “American involvement” because since 1948 approximately 260 American military officers have served as observers in the Middle East. He said that since the Yom Kippur War. 83 American military officers have served in the area, including 36 who perform inspections as observers with the UN Truce Supervision Organization.
The event, attended by about 200 persons, was interrupted briefly at the close of Herzog’s address when Linda Feldman, a Jewish Defense League member, ran up to him and shouted that he failed to speak about the American pressure on Israel to give up its security. Four JDL members picketed outside the building during the meeting. The JDL is demanding “not one inch” of retreat by the Israeli government.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
