New Tactic by Senate Conservatives to Prevent Ratification of the United Nations Genocide Convention

Senate conservatives have found a new tactic in their effort to try to prevent ratification of the United Nations Genocide Convention, a claim that it will not only harm the United States but also Israel.

This became clear when Sens. Jesse Helms (R.N.C.)and Chic Hecht (R. Nev.) used this argument December 5 to prevent unanimous consent to bring up Helms’ own amendments to the treaty.

Helms said “there are Jewish citizens who previously strongly supported this treaty who now realize that Israel will be most likely the first nation to be victimized by it.”

Helms had made this argument before. But it came as a surprise when he was supported by Hecht, who is Jewish, since the Jewish community has long called for ratification of the Convention which was signed in 1949 in the wake of the Holocaust.

A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION

Hecht said he asked “top Jewish attorneys, international attorneys” to analyze the treaty and “it is their opinion that the genocide treaty would not be in the best interest of the State of Israel or the United States of America.”

However, Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D. Ohio) replied that “the American Jewish community believes that the Genocide Convention should be ratified. The American Jewish community further believes that on the whole question of genocide, Jews of other lands, who suffered more than perhaps any other group in the world, have an impact, and a concern about the whole issue of genocide.”

The convention failed to come to the floor for ratification before the Senate adjourned Friday. But Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (R. Kans.) is on record as pledging that it will be ratified.

“We’ll do it this year,” Dole said at the ground-breaking for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in October. Later, in November, in an address to the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations, he said if it could not be done before the Senate adjourns it would be one of the first issues in the new year.

David Brody, Washington representative of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Dole repeated this pledge on the Senate floor last week.

NO CONCERN ABOUT A ‘FALLOUT’

Hyman Bookbinder, Washington representative of the American Jewish Committee, told the JTA that while he was “disappointed” that in the last few weeks the Senate had six or seven opportunities to bring up the treaty but it had not done so, he was “confident” that the Genocide Convention would be acted upon by February.

But Bookbinder said he had no concern that ratification would be threatened by a “fallout” from the Jewish community.

The issue first came to public attention last March when Arnold Fine opposed ratification in an editorial in the Jewish Press in New York City which largely serves the Orthodox community. Fine’s editorial was inserted with praise in the Congressional Record by Sen. Steven Symms (R. Idaho).

“Americans would lose their rights under the Constitution and Israel would become the prime target in the UN,” Fine wrote. “All the UN, controlled by Russia, would have to do is continue their anti-Israel stance and charge Israel with genocide for their position in opposing the terrorist PLO.”

This was followed by a column in the op-ed page of The New York Times in April by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R. Utah) in which he imagined a scenario in which an Israeli Defense Minister would be arrested in New York City on a federal warrant charging him with genocide against Palestinians on the West Bank.

In all of these there has been no mention that Israel was one of the first countries to sign the Genocide Convention.

On December 12, Metzenbaum inserted in the Congressional Record a letter from Bookbinder, who noted he was chairman of the Washington representatives of all Jewish national agencies. “It is simply mind-boggling to have it suggested by the Senator from North Carolina and the Senator from Nevada that there is Jewish opposition as such to ratification,” Bookbinder wrote.

CITES ‘LUDICROUS ARGUMENTS’

“Whatever some individuals might have indicated to these Senators, I can assert with authority that every recognized national Jewish organization is and has been enthusiastically supportive of ratification” he added.

Bookbinder said that to suggest “Israel and presumably the Jewish people would be hurt” by the ratification of the treaty “is among the more ludicrous arguments that have been raised. Israel itself was among the first ratifiers of the treaty, and many Israeli leaders over the years have urged American ratification. Moreover, the treaty has existed for over 30 years. Why would American ratification now make it a threat to Israel?”

Metzenbaum added that “we owe it to the memory of each and every one” who died in the Holocaust “to move with dispatch and quit befuddling the issue.”