Herzog Slams Arabs, Soviet Union for Their Attack on Israel

Chaim Herzog, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, replying in the Security Council today to attacks on Israel’s rule of the West Bank, declared that Jordan and Egypt did not do in their “occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza from 1948-67 what the Arabs and their supporters are now asking of Israel.

Speaking during the second day of the Security Council’s special session on the unrest in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Herzog quoted Arab newspapers before the 1967 Six-Day War as charging both Jordan and Egypt with harsh treatment of the Palestinians under their rule. He quoted from a 1966 Saudi Arabian newspaper article which said the residents of Gaza were not allowed to leave the area and Palestinians were not permitted to work in Egypt even without pay.

Herzog also decried the repeated call for Israel to evacuate the territories. “For 9 years we have heard about the 1967 borders,” he said, even from Israel’s friends in the West. But he noted that even before 1967 there was no peace and while borders are part of the problem the real heart of it is the Arab refusal to recognize the legitimacy of Israel.

Herzog’s remarks today came as he exercised his right of reply after eleven countries and the Palestine Liberation Organization had attacked Israel’s rule of the West-Bank and East Jerusalem. In his reply, Herzog declared that “this whole cynical exercise is so distorted it is hardly worth the time we are taking.”

He said the countries that denounced Israel have given a new meaning for the saying “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” since they are all countries who persecute minorities, arrest people without trial, are undemocratic and oppressive. He said the various Arab countries attack each other for these things.

REJECTS SOVIET CHARGES

Herzog, in his reply, specifically took aim at the Soviet Union, Egypt, Syria, Jordan. He said he was “moved” by the Soviet Union’s defense of freedom of religion and he said he hoped, and was sure many Moslems hoped, that this means a new policy toward religion in the USSR.

The Israeli envoy also rejected the charge by the Soviet Union and the Arab countries that Israel has “Israelized” the school curriculum in the West Bank. He said the Arab schools in East Jerusalem and the West Bank all follow the Jordanian curriculum. He added that he hoped the Soviet concern for protecting cultures also meant it will give this same freedom of expression to Jewish culture and schools in the USSR.

Egyptian Ambassador Ahmed Abdel Meguid replied to Herzog’s address yesterday in which the Israeli envoy sought to show that there are differences between the Arab countries. “All Arab countries including Egypt are united…in the goal to liberate the occupied territories” Meguid also noted that Egypt was the first to support “the Palestinian people and its representative, the Palestine Liberation Organization.”

Herzog noted that Meguid’s remarks were apparently in disagreement with President Anwar Sadat who he said recently has been attacking the PLO. Noting that Jordan also voiced its support of the PLO, Herzog pointed out that no PLO members are allowed in Jordan.

Zebdi Labib Terzi, the PLO delegate, calling Israel a racist state, noted that an Israeli soldier had killed a child. He was referring to Afani All. 11, who died yesterday in Hadassah Hospital despite efforts by a team of doctors, who worked around the clock to save him. He was shot last Wednesday by an Israeli reserve soldier, Bezalel Dehaan. The soldier, who also wounded two other Arab youths when the three reportedly stoned a car and tried to overturn it, has been jailed pending an investigation of the incident.

French Ambassador Jacques Lecompt said it was clear to the international community that the withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories is essential. He said Israel has no right to make a unilateral decision on the future of Jerusalem and called upon Israel not to take any actions in the city which are “irreversible.” The Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China both attacked Israel. Chinese Ambassador Huang Hua called for a condemnation of Israel by the Council.