Israel rejected yesterday as “stale Russian borscht” a series of charges by the Soviet representative in the United Nations Human Rights Commission against Israel, including “inhuman treatment” of the Arab population in the occupied areas; abandonment of “hundreds of thousands” of persons in the Sinai desert, resulting in “great loss of life;” the alleged bombardment of refugee camps and eviction of Arab civilians from their homes.
Platin D. Morozov, the Soviet delegate, used most of his hour-long diatribe Tuesday night in denouncing Israel and “the ruling circles in Tel Aviv.” He asked the commission to condemn the alleged Israeli violation of human rights and the “flouting” of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.
Ambassador Shabtai Rosenne, the Israeli representative, exercised his right of reply and declared that the Soviet concern for human rights might have carried more weight if the Soviet Union had voted for the Universal Declaration. He denied that any recognized rights of Arabs in Israel-held territory had been deliberately violated.
He said the “people left to their death in the desert” were soldiers, part of an “aggressive force’ built up in the area by Egypt and “abandoned to their fate by their officers” in the June war. He said that while Israel had not been bound to help the stranded troops, Israeli authorities had arranged for their succor and helped them to return to Egypt.
Ambassador Rosenne was the target of a personal attack by Soliman Ahmed Huzayyin, Egypt’s representative, who called the Israeli envoy a “liar” in connection with a previous Rosenne statement to the commission. The commission was discussing an agenda item on situations “which reveal a consistent pattern of violations of human rights” when the Egyptian delegate took the floor. Citing both Vietnam and the Middle East, Huzayyin said the Zionists were carrying out “a second form of crusades,” that Israel was “ousting people to get the land” and violating the 1949 Geneva convention on protection of civilians during wartime.
On his right of reply Dr. Rosenne said that if the commission had decided to study the effects of war on human rights, it should recall that “the long war against Israel” was not the only one in the Middle East and that Egypt “would provide an excellent subject” in its intervention in the Yemen war on that topic. Replying to charges against Israel in the Gaza Strip occupation, he said such security measures as curfews, screening of suspects and banishment”but not to some forlorn concentration camp in the middle of a desert” had been “no more than necessary” to protect the majority of law abiding citizens and the Israeli forces “in accordance with governing rules of international law.” To the Egyptian representative, he added, “I say that our administration in Gaza and in Sinai is more humane, more tolerant, more sympathetic to the human rights of the local inhabitants than was the Egyptian occupation in Gaza, not to speak of Yemen.”
Speaking for the United States, Morris B. Abram denied charges by Morozov against his country and challenged the Soviet right to speak of human rights in other countries. He noted that the Soviet Union did not observe provisions of the Declaration of Human Rights giving all persons the right to leave and return to their country at will, and that the Soviet Union did not observe the declaration’s provisions for freedom of religion.
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