The United States cannot and will not compromise on Israel’s — or any other nation’s — right to participate in the United Nations on an equal basis with all other states, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Jeane Kirkpatrick told the B’nai B’rith International Convention here. Addressing some 2,000 delegates and guests, Mrs. Kirkpatrick declared that any attempt to expel Israel would be viewed as an attack on the UN itself and would prompt the United States to withdraw its participation and financial support.
"To defend Israel’s right to remain in the UN is nothing more or less than to defend all our hopes and dreams of peace in the world of reason as a process rather than violence," she said. Mrs. Kirkpatrick told the B’nai B’rith audience that the attack on Israel in the UN is only the latest of a series of attacks that began following the 1967 Six-Day War.
Israel’s foes began laying the groundwork for the Jewish nation’s ouster from the UN through resolutions designed to show that Israel is both racist and an enemy of peace, she said. The first objective was achieved through the 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism. The second was gained last February when Israel was declared not to be a peace-loving state.
CAMPAIGN HAS ‘SPREAD LIKE CANCER’
The U.S. envoy explained that either action leaves Israel open to "legal" attacks with no "right" to defend itself. The campaign, she added "is pervasive, intense, incisive, and vicious." It has "spread like cancer" to all arenas of the UN, she observed.
The Ambassador placed most of the blame for this campaign on supporters of the PLO, the non-aligned nations in the General Assembly and the Soviet Union, Libya and Algeria. Mrs. Kirkpatrick declared that all of the attempts to exclude Israel from the General Assembly and the UN’s various agencies are "clearly unconstitutional under the Charter of the United Nations." Noting that the huge and frequent votes against Israel are dismaying, she asserted that the United States would not drop its fight. (Related UN story, P.4.)
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.
