A strong protest was voiced today by Israel’s delegate Arthur Lourie at the United Nations Ad Hoc Political Committee over the fact that “the voice of Nazism is being heard in the United Nations” during the current debate in the Political Committee on the report of U.N. relief work among Palestine refugees.
Mr. Lourie referred to a violent speech today by Iraq delegate, Dr. Fadhil al-Jamali, who had asserted that “the Jews have forfeited any moral material claims unless they granted the legitimate rights of the Arabs in Palestine.”
The Israeli delegate said that this remark had been made by one who was well known for his Nazi sympathies during the war. He said that the Iraqi delegate’s speech was most remarkable for its distortions. Dr. Jamali claimed that the responsibility for the Arab refugees rested on the U.N. partition resolution and “Zionist terrorism.”
Mr. Lourie asserted that the plight of the Arab refugees was due to a war of extermination launched by the Arab states. He made his remarks immediately after the Iraqi delegate had spoken. They were just an intervention, for he announced that Israel would not make a statement on the U.N. report on the Palestine refugees until tomorrow. Dr. Izzat Tannous, secretary-general of the Palestine Arab Refugee Committees in Lebanon, also will speak tomorrow.
Dr. Jamali, who returned to political attacks against Israel during the debate today, said that it would have been “more human to gas chamber the Arab refugees.” He spoke of these refugees as “the greatest of all human tragedies.” He asserted that the U.N. relief agency should have concerned itself with relief alone and left reintegration as part of the political issue.
The Political Committee has a resolution before it authorizing the U.N. relief agency to increase its relief for the present fiscal year to $23,000,000. Australia and New Zealand told the Political Committee it will be increasingly difficult for them to contribute further to a long-term U.N. program for rehabilitating the Palestine refugees unless the Arab nations cooperate more fully with the program. The two comments appeared to be in answer to new Arab demands that the refugees be repatriated to Israel, and to Arab assertions that the U.N. program will hinder repatriation.
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