After completing four years as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations offices here, longtime Jewish activist Morris Abram is staying on in Switzerland to serve as chairman of the new “U.N. Watch” project of the World Jewish Congress.
In that role, Abram will be responsible for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism at the United Nations and the other international organizations located here.
The WJC has held consultative status to U.N. bodies for 40 years, but the project is a new attempt to focus its monitoring efforts.
Despite the repeal by the U.N. General Assembly of its infamous resolution equating Zionism with racism, and the growing normalization of Israel’s status at the world body, some sentiments remain from the days when Israel-bashing was commonplace.
In addition, U.N. bodies based here are sometimes used as forums for undisguised anti-Semitism.
“U.N. Watch will cooperate with all nongovernmental organizations in the fight against racism, intolerance and human rights violations of whomever, wherever, in the conviction that mankind should be united against inhumanity,” Abram told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Abram has served as national president of the American Jewish Congress, president of Brandeis University and chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry.
He is also a past chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
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.
