UN Conference to Debate South Africa, Zionism; U.S. Jewish Groups Rap Confab for Linking Zionism Wit

The United Nations sponsored World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination opened here today with an announcement that the two main topics of debate will be South Africa and Zionism. Mooki Molapu of Lesotho was elected president of the conference which is being attended by representatives of 80 governments and 30 non-governmental organizations. Israel and the United States are not attending because of the General Assembly’s 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism.

(In New York, the Coordinating Board of Jewish Organizations announced it also is not attending the conference because of the anti-Zionist resolution. The Coordinating Board said that by linking Zionism with racism “This was not merely a new form of anti-Jewish defamation, but a move, we fear, calculated to sow the seeds of an evil which in the recent past exploded into unparalleled crimes against humanity.”

(The Coordinating Board stressed that its members “remain completely dedicated to the urgent task of removing forever from the face of the earth racism and racial discrimination in all their forms.” The Board, which includes B’nai B’rith International, the International Council of Jewish Women and the Women’s International Zionist Organization, all non-governmental organizations with consultative status at the UN, said it welcomed the World Conference when the UN first announced it.

(However, the adoption an Nov. 10, 1975 of the General Assembly Resolution equating Zionism with racism “committed such UN programs as the Decade and the World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination to single out for attack one national ideology in the world, that of the Jewish people, “the Board stated.)