U.N. Group Debating Religious Freedoms Hears British Support for Banning Anti-semitism

With Israel, the United States and Britain lined up against the Soviet and Arab blocs on whether a draft convention on religious freedoms should specifically condemn anti-Semitism, a 122-member General Assembly committee was set today to continue that debate tomorrow.

Inclusion of condemnation of anti-Semitism drew the support of Britain this weekend when Lady Gaitskell, London’s representative in the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee, advocated such a clause in the draft Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Religious Intolerance. Thus she supported the attitudes on this score expressed previously by Mrs. Zena Harman and Mrs. Patricia Harris, respectively the Israeli and American delegates participating in the committee’s debate.

“During the last 100 years,” Lady Gaitskell told the committee, referring to anti-Semitism, “across the European continent from the Atlantic to the Urals, we have witnessed barbarism on a scale never seen before. We have witnessed the most vicious persecution of this minority faith, both through pogroms and Nazi tyranny. This explains why this particular form of religious persecution was originally singled out for inclusion in the draft and why delegations like mine prefer this, rather than to rest on the glib assumption that this dark evil could never happen again.”