Citing the Soviet attempt at the United Nations to equate Zionism with Nazism in the draft of the U.N. convention on elimination of racism, Rep; Leonard Farbstein, a member of the House Foreign Affairs committee, said today in an address on the House floor that Russia “is attempting to exploit anti-Semitism both at home and now in the United Nations, to extend its influence into Africa and the Middle East.”
Rep. Farbstein noted that the United States took a “courageous stand” by offering an amendment to the “draft convention on elimination of all forms of racial discrimination.” He reported that the Arab states “put pressure on the United States to withdraw the amendment but the United States stood firm,” He said that the Arabs “rarely miss an opportunity to fan the flames of anti-Semitic hatred.”
Charging that Russia “is seeking to impose a terrible uniformity upon its citizens, while at the same time currying favor with the Arab countries,” Rep. Farbstein said the Soviet proposal to link Zionism with Nazism in defining forms of racism “exposes to the entire world the Soviet Union’s hypocrisy.” He voiced hope “that the decent peoples of the world will take note of the Soviet Union’s unprincipled deception.”
“It casts doubt on the integrity of that country and on its pretensions to lead oppressed peoples around the world,” he declared. “The Soviet Union’s purpose was to exploit Jews to serve its national interest. It would not hesitate to exploit any peoples for that purpose.” He asked: “Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, such an outrage as the equation of Zionism with Nazism and anti-Semitism? How does the Soviet Union dare to make such a shambles of honesty?”
He said that “one would have thought that even the Soviet Union, in its unprincipled pursuit of political advantage, would have been less shocking or, at least, less clumsy. Can there be any doubt in anyone’s mind that the Soviet objective is to assist the Arabs in their efforts to destroy Israel? In mentioning Zionism in the same breath with Nazism, the Soviet Union surpassed even its own sorry record of deceit.”
“Zionism,” he pointed out, “is not, like Nazism, an expression of hate but an expression of love. It is not, like Nazism, a message of destruction but a message of construction. It does not, like Nazism, seek to debase a people but to exalt them. It is not, like Nazism, a philosophy of negation but of affirmation. Zionism is the movement to restore the Jewish Homeland to the Jewish people; Its only relation to Nazism is in its attempt to repair, in some measure, the wreckage that Nazism caused. Zionism, Mr. Speaker, is–and I scarcely need to say it–the very antithesis of Nazism.”
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