A fierce attack on Israel by a fist-pounding Soviet delegate who likened Zionism to neo-Nazism triggered an angry three-way exchange pitting Israel and the United States against the Soviet Union at a session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission here.
“We have never heard such harsh language and such blatant hate at this UN forum,” said one Western delegate referring to Soviet delegate Dimitri Bykov’s tirade against Israel. The verbal warfare erupted last week in the course of a debate on measures against totalitarian ideologies and practices.
Representatives of Jewish non-governmental organizations attending the session said they could not recall when a Soviet delegate had been so openly anti-Semitic and so unrestrained in his attacks on the U.S. as well as Israel.
Bykov alleged a spiritual, political and ideological relationship between fascism and Zionism, and accused Israel of practices in the Middle East that aped Hitler’s laws and methods. He also charged that Jews helped Hitler to power and financed his war machine.
Ephraim Dubek, the Israeli delegate, said he had never heard such virulent and vicious anti-Semitism in the Palais des Nations and doubted that even the Nazis ever resorted to such diatribes against Jews in the old League of Nations.
He said he thanked God the USSR has no common borders with Israel because the Soviets “would have no qualms to unleash their tanks and armor on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem as they did in Budapest, Prague and Kabul and were on the verge of doing in Warsaw.”
U.S. delegate Richard Schifter was drawn into the fray when Bykov accused the U.S. of harboring Nazi war criminals and allowing them to work for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. “That criticism from the Soviet Union comes with particular ill grace because the poisoned fruit of a system which one thought came to an end 40 years ago has sprouted new roots in that country,” Schifter said.
He noted that the U.S. is a free country where the spoken word was not a basis for punishment. Individuals found to have been Nazi war criminals are deported, he said and recently one was extradited to Israel to stand trial.
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