Israel today charged that the Soviet Government has associated itself with “terror operations being directed against Israeli civilians” thereby encouraging the Arab states “to continue to violate the cease-fire and undermine further the prospects for peace through the initiation and support for the terror operations.”
The charge was contained in a letter from Ambassador Yosef Tekoah, chief Israeli representative to the United Nations to Karoly Csatorday, this month’s Security Council president. Mr. Tekoah’s letter referred to an article by Tass, the official Soviet news agency, which the Soviet representative Yakov Malik, submitted to the Security Council on March 11 with a request that it be circulated as a Council document. The article, dated Feb. 28, accused Israel of opening fire in the Suez Canal area and of committing “abominable acts of provocation” against the Arab countries in reprisal for the “growth of popular resistance in the occupied Arab territories.”
The section of the Tass article which Mr. Tekoah charged was “blanket approval” of Arab terror warfare against Israel said: “As regards the statements by Tel Aviv politicians concerning ‘massive reprisals,’ they should hear in mind that the struggle of peoples against invaders and occupiers is justified and legitimate from the point of view of international law. The longer the Israel forces remain in occupied territories, the stronger and more extensive will the Arabs’ struggle for liberation become.”
Mr. Tekoah wrote, “The Soviet position on this was expressed without any embellishment in an article that appeared in Pravda, Feb. 27, defending the terrorist attack on an Israeli civil passenger aircraft at the Zurich airport. The entire civilized world had expressed its horror at this wanton attack against innocent men, women and children in a neutral country…Instead of heeding the Secretary-General’s call to all governments to take all possible measures to prevent any repetition of these acts, the Soviet organ glamorizes them and in fact calls for more.”
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