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Congressional Action to Be Sought Against Un, UNESCO Resolutions

November 26, 1974
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Sen. Clifford P. Case (R.NJ) and Rep. Barry Goldwater, Jr. (R. Calif.) have indicated they will seek Congressional action to offset the Arab-Communist actions against Israel in the United Nations and its auxiliary organs. Case said he. is considering a request either for a Senate resolution condemning UNESCO or a move to cut off UNESCO from U.S. assistance in the foreign aid legislation.

In three days–Thursday, Friday and Saturday–UNESCO approved four resolutions: withdrawing all assistance from Israel, excluding Israel from its European regional group, calling for increased assistance within its projected budget for the liberation of Palestine and other liberation movements, and asking the Director General to cooperate with Arab states and the PLO in assuring the right of education and culture to Arabs in Israeli-occupied territory.

(See related-story on reaction by West German intellectuals.)

Goldwater, pointing to the UN votes to admit the Palestine Liberation Organization to join its General Assembly debate and to exclude the Republic of South Africa, said these actions were violations of the UN Charter. He stated that he would introduce legislation in the new Congress convening in January to reduce the level of American funding to the UN. “An organization which persists in actions such as these,” he said, “does not deserve to be supported by the hard working American taxpayers.”

UN RESOLUTION ILLEGAL

During a two day meeting here this weekend of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority. Eugene Rostow said that the two pro-Palestinian resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly Friday are illegal under the UN Charter and conflict with the only legal and historic definition of Palestine in modern times–that given by the League of Nations Mandate in 1922. Speaking at a press conference held in conjunction with the meeting, the former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in the Johnson Administration and former Dean of Yale Law School, said the Assembly resolutions have “absolutely no legal or political effect” on Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 which “remain the law.”

Referring to the League of Nations Mandate given Great Britain 52 years ago. Rostow said that throughout the life of the League “the word Palestine meant the territories of what are now Jordan and Israel and the lands in dispute between them. This is the only possible meaning that world politics and international law can give to the term Palestine and Palestinians. Therefore, all the people who live in that area have the right to live in that area.” The objective of the PLO, he said, is to take over both Jordan and Israel “and to form a single state within the whole area of the Palestine Mandate.”

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