B’nai B’rith Leader Condemns Christian Statement on UN

David Blumberg, president of B’nai B’rith, condemned today a joint statement issued by 14 Christian religious organizations which lauded the “positive” accomplishments of the United Nations 29th General Assembly, Blumberg said “it requires moral obtuseness to see positive values emerging” from that Assembly session.

The 14 religious leaders, speaking as individuals, took issue with a United States denunciation of the 29th Assembly as one dominated by Third World nations that used their numerical strength to exercise a “tyranny of the majority.” That phrase was used by John Scali, U.S. Ambassador to the UN, in declaring that U.S. support for the UN was eroding because of a trend toward approving unrealistic resolutions and making “self-centered decisions” on the Middle East and Africa.

FAILED TO MENTION ARAFAT

Blumberg asserted that not only did the Assembly “fall to take action for the third straight year against international terrorism but the session glorified its leading exponent, the gun-toting Yasir Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization,” an appearance which the statement of the 14 did not mention, though it did criticize the Assembly’s decision to curb Israel’s right to speak on the Palestine question and the decision by UNESCO barring aid to Israel and excluding Israel from participation in its regional groupings.

Blumberg noted that the statement criticized the anti-Israel practices at the UN and UNESCO but added that “it fails to recognize the depths of moral squalor into which the UN has plunged a condition which Ambassador John Scali, diplomat that he is, actually understated.”

Blumberg declared that the statement of the 14 “further tends to undercut the growing efforts for dialogue between Christian and Jew even as it condones the General Assembly session that abridged the basic purposes of the UN to which we are committed.”