The situation of Russian Jewry erupted suddenly here Wednesday in the Economic and Social Council when, out of context of other items on the agenda, the Soviet representative demanded that a clause in the draft declaration on elimination of all religious intolerance be deleted so as to make no mention of condemning anti-Semitism.
The religious freedoms draft is on the agenda of the current ECOSOC session but had not been reached as yet when the proposal to delete mention of anti-Semitism was made by Evgeny Nasinovsky, the Russian delegate. He insisted that the religious freedoms draft should mention no “isms.”
At that point, the Libyan representative received a formulation proposed in the General Assembly three years ago, calling for condemnation of “anti-Semitism, Nazism and Zionism.” Dr. Joel Barromi, Israel’s representative, requested the USSR to let the religious freedoms draft stand as drafted, condemning anti-Semitism. Dr. Barromi reminded Nasinovsky that Premier Kosygin himself had condemned anti-Semitism in a speech at Riga a year ago.
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