An Israeli supreme court judge today affirmed the right of every minority group to maintain its cultural and spiritual traditions no matter where they lived. Addressing the World Assembly on Human Rights here, Justice Haim Cohn, who had previously raised the question of anti-Jewish discrimination in Russia, said, “I need only remind you of the disabilities under which some minorities live in the USSR. I think some words of sympathy should go out to these people who, as human beings, have the basic rights of human beings.”
Turning to the question of protection of human rights in war-torn areas, Justice Cohn urged that the rights of soldiers should be protected. “From the point of view of human rights, the soldier must often be protected from his officers,” he said. In an apparent reference to the treatment of Arab soldiers by their officers, he remarked that “we in Israel, after several wars, can well see how the regular soldier can be exploited and abused.”
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