Nine years after the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution ### Zionism with racism, American and Israeli officials agreed yesterday that the resolution is being used as the basis for the international effort to ## and destroy the State of Israel.
“We have all been guilry of an egregious ### of amission” by ignoring the resolution over the years, ### Rosenne, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, told on all-day seminar on the UN resolution at the State Department. He said that because UN resolutions are not Sinding “we simply did not realize what was of stake” since the General. Assembly adoo## the resolution on November 10, 1975.
The seiminar, held in conjunction with International Human Rights Day, was sponsored by the World ### Organization, the World Jewish Congress and S’nai B’rith international. It is the second of five such seminors to be held around the world in an effort to alert public opinion, according to Uzi Nor##, chairman of the WZO’s information deportment.
The first was held November 11 at the Presidential residence in ## and hosted by President Chaim ##, who was israel’s Ambassodor to the UN when the lonism is ## resolution was adopted. Norkiss said after seminors will be held in ## in March, London in may, and Suenos Aires in July.
The #### the anti-Israeli effects of the resolution. Rosence notes that the resolution has been distributed in millions of copies around the world and has found its way into textbooks from the primary schools throughout the universities.
Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, stressed the continuing attack on Israel at the UN, and she and others noted that attacks on Israel were used as an indirect means of attacking the U.S.
“Israel would already have been expelled from the United Nations had it not been for the laws on our books making it clear that if the State of Israel is denied participation in any body of the United Nations will withdraw also and will withhold all financial contributions, until Israel’s right to participate has been restored,” Kirkpatrick declared.
Marshall Breger, special assistant to President Reagan for liaison with the Jewish community, noted the Administration’s pledge to leave any body from which Israel is expelled, adding that Reogan mode this pledge most recently for the upcoming UN conference on women scheduled for Nairobi in July.
RESPONSIBLE FOR ANALOGY WITH THE NAZIS
Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, charged that the gradual impact of the UN resolution was responsible for the analogies with the Nazis used in the world press in describing Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.
Abrams declared that “the impact of the Zionism as racism resolution has been enormous, and that, by serving to legitimize anti-Semitism, it continues to pose a major threat to the survival of Israel and the Jewish people.”
But he added, the resolution may have a “solutary effect. Its very perversity reminds us that we have real enemies in the world, that their enmity is not the result of some peculiar misunderstanding which can be easily rectified. But is is an unyielding fact of life, to be faced and dealt with occordingly.”
CALLS FOR BUILDING BRIDGES
Abrams’ conclusion was challenged by Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, vice president of the World Jewish Congress, who said there was a need to “build a bridge” to the Soviet Union, the Arab countries and the Third World despite their support for the Zionism is racism resolution. He called for “patience which will bring understanding to the other side.”
When someone in the audience questioned this approach, Hertzberg replied in Yiddish, “If they all hate us for the next 200 years, are we going to be better off?”
But Hertzberg also stressed that if the Soviets want detente it requires “the end of rthtoric and the beginning of decency.” He said the Third World challenges of Israel’s legitimacy undercuts “their own moral claim upon the world for any special consideration.” He said it is “particularly swinish for Zionism is racism to be hurled by forces that know very well that in the forefront of the battle against apartheid they has been the world Jewish community.”
ANOTHER VIEW EXPRESSED
Another view came from T.T.S. Koh, Singapore’s Ambassador to the United States, who voted against the Zionism is racism resolution. “I do not think that the passage of the resolution by the UN has persuaded the majority of the countries of the Third World to accept the proposition that Zionism is a form of racism or that Israel is an illegitimote State.” he said. He added that the resolution “created a certain backlash of sympathy for Israel.”
Koh said that most Third World members who voted for the resolution knew nothing about Zionism. He urged an educational campaign.
“The best thing Israel can do to counter the effect of the resolution is to scrupulously practice racial equality at home,” he added. “If the Arab minority in Israel were treated on terms of absolute equality with other Israeli citizens this seems to be the most refutation of the charge that Zionism is racism.”
ROLE OF SOVIET UNION CITED
Sen. Daniel Moynihan (D. NY), who was the U.S. Ambassador to the UN when the resolution wo adopted, blamed the resolution on the Soviet union. “The disastrous showing of the Soviet Union’s clients in the 1967 Six-Day War apparently prompted the Soviets to launch the ambitious propaganda capaign that led ultimately to November 10, 1975,” he said.
Philip Lax, chairman of the International Council of B’nai B’rith International, said the anti-Zionist resolution has been the “point of departure” for the Soviet Union’s anti-Zionism and anti-Semitic campaign which he said is aimed at breaking the resistance movement in the USSR, including the efforts for freedom to emigrate and to “practice Judaism and identify as Jews.”
The representatives of Jewish organizations attending the seminar approved a resolution calling “upon people everywhere who are dedicated to democratic values and human rights, and governments of all enlightened countries to resist this insidious campaign of slander of Zionism and of the Jewish people…”
The resolution reaffirmed that “Zionism is the fulfillment of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, of its aspiration to live in freedom and political independence in its ancient homeland…”
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.
