Harold Wilson, former Prime Minister of Britain, told the 62nd annual convention of Hadassah that “the international manifestation of terrorism is a reflection of national manifestations of racialism” and that “in too many countries, the threat is that of a lurch towards neo-Fascism.”
Wilson made his evaluation in accepting the Henrietta Szold Award, Hadassah’s highest, adding a warning that satisfaction over the successful rescue by Israel of more than 100 hostages at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport last month should not obscure “the continuing challenge to the comity of nations which made it necessary.”
Declaring that “racialism is indivisible,” Wilson said “there is no escape in saying in any explosive outburst of racialism that it is not my people, not my race, not my co-religionists who are under attack.” He said a West Indian or Bengali in Britain and a Puerto Rican in the United States “cannot afford to shrug his shoulders when the attack is anti-Semitic in its motivation. “He added “It is not open to any Gentile, Jew, Black white or yellow to pass by on the other side, reassuring himself that it is not his quarrel.”
Wilson declared that “what is genuine in the Palestinian problem must be met by statesman ship and give-and-take” but that “acts of terrorism and murder have nothing to contribute–they are totally unworthy of the problem they claim they are seeking to solve.”
He said international terrorism “so far transcends national frontiers and ideological frontiers–as is shown by the fact that the campaigns have encompassed Jewish targets and the ministerial conference of OPEC–that it must be recognized as a challenge to humanity as a whole.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
