An acrimonious exchange developed in the special political committee of the General Assembly today between the Israeli representative, Moshe Erell, and the representatives of several Arab and African states who insisted on equating South Africa’s policy of apartheid with”Zionist crimes in Palestine.” At one point in the exchange, the Saudi-Arabian delegate, Omar Azouni, accused Mr. Erell of “gall and chutzpah.”
The item on the agenda was apartheid and the acting chairman of the committee, Mr. H. Lannung, of Denmark, repeatedly asked the speakers to keep to the matter under discussion. Mr. Erell too said he hoped that the delegates would refrain from “senseless insults and propaganda.” But representatives of Libya, Pakistan, Yemen and Mauritania, in addition to the Saudia Arabian, continued to castigate “the transplanted Zionist Jews in Palestine” who “brought untold misery” and allegedly “fragmented a thriving nation.”
Mr. Erell said that for 20 years the Arab states have been pursuing policies which had brought nothing but suffering. He denied that there was any segregation in Israel or in the occupied territories and called on the Arab countries to “look into their own actions” to see why there had been war and suffering.
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