Hillel Representative Terms Youth Assembly ‘circus’; Outbursts Rampant Against Israel

Disorder continued as the order of the day yesterday and today at the United Nations World Youth Assembly, as an American delegate drew cheers and jeers for his denunciation of the Assembly as “a circus,” Israelis and anti-Israelis clashed verbally, and some 30 delegates marched out in protest over the exclusion of South Vietnamese and Nationalist Chinese speakers. Dennis Praeger, a 21-year-old Brooklynite representing the world Hillel organization on the United States delegation scored the convention today by declaring: “The World Youth Assembly does not represent the world, certainly not youth, and has been more of a circus than an assembly.” His remark was greeted with sustained pro and con reactions from the delegates. The chair issued a warning that unless the interruption ended the hall would be cleared. Mr. Praeger resumed by observing that the jeers proved his contention, and he further assailed the “totalitarian obscenities” that he said have marked the Assembly since its opening last Thursday.

There was an outburst yesterday afternoon when Ariel Whine, the 27-year-old English-born head of the Israeli delegation, tried to present the case for Israeli independence and security and to offer to meet privately outside the auditorium with Arab and Palestinian delegates. One of Mr. Whine’s colleagues tried to still the outburst by exclaiming, “Is this the Politburo?” When a Jordanian delegate took his turn to speak and condemned Israeli policy, the Israeli delegation cried out, “Lies!” The walkout, mostly by West Europeans, was initiated by Mr. Praeger when the Assembly overruled the decision of the chairman, Fawaz Najia of the General Union of Palestine Students, to permit the participation of the South Vietnamese and the Nationalist Chinese, Earlier, Dennis Warren, a 22-year-old Californian, said that while charges of U.S. “imperialism” had validity, the Assembly had not mentioned Soviet intervention in the Middle East and repression in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

In other developments at the Assembly, a Syrian delegate charged yesterday that Israel was an imperialist creation designed to keep the Arabs perpetually backward by undermining progress in their states, and a Lebanese delegate alleged that Israel serves as a “conveyor belt” between the “imperialists” and the underdeveloped countries. A Moroccan called on the Assembly to denounce Zionism and “imperialist aggression,” and an Egyptian urged world youth to stand by the Arab cause despite “Israeli aggression.” An Israeli delegate said his country had gained valuable knowledge from her trade with Latin America, Asia and Africa and was willing to aid them even more and join in a mutual assistance program. An American delegate said non-White Americans, including herself, considered themselves part of, and sought solidarity with, the “third world.” The Assembly’s World Peace Commission, at the suggestion of a Sierra Leone representative, observed a minute of silence “in memory of the oppressed peoples who have lost their lives fighting for national liberation in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.”