Garment Says the UN Anti-zionist Resolution Incited Arab Violence in Israel and on the West Bank

Leonard Garment, the U.S. representative to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, said today that the anti-Zionist resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly last year “played an instrumental role in stirring Arab passions and in inciting Arab violence, not only on the West Bank but in Israel itself,” He added: “Don’t think for one moment that consequences of this at the time were not calculated.”

Addressing the opening session of the national biennial convention of the American Jewish Congress. Garment said “the attack on Israel’s legitimacy” was part of a “serious assault by the conspiracy of the majority”–composed of the Soviet bloc in league with Third World states–that sought “to undermine and ultimately to destroy the principles and procedures of the West.”

He added: “Step-by-step, resolution-by-resolution, in New York. Geneva. Nairobi, at UNCTAD, WHO and so on. Israel is to be cast out of the international community. First Israel, then the West.”

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D.Mass.) told the convention “There must be no open pipeline of arms to Egypt, a pipeline that will only increase the risks of war. We must stand ready also to provide the assistance that Israel needs to defend itself. Our commitment to Israel’s independent future will endure. The pledge is firm. The commitment is real. We have been willing to provide full assistance for Israel in the past. We will continue to do so in the future.”

Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger will address the concluding session at a luncheon Sunday. It is Kissinger’s first address to a Jewish group since he joined the Nixon Administration in 1969. Some 500 delegates are attending the conclave.