World Jewry is mobilizing its forces in an effort to repeal the 1975 United Nations General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism as the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the infamous document — on November 10th — is approaching.
But Jewish leaders, and Israeli as well as American diplomats realistically concede that a reversal of the resolution is presently unattainable.
“Our target is to reverse this infamous resolution by the end of the decade,” Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN says, while Kenneth Bialkin, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, adds that although there are indications that a number of countries who supported the resolution 10 years ago would vote against it today, the road is still long for the reversal of the resolution.
The resolution equating Zionism with racism has been one of the most damaging resolutions ever passed at the UN against the Jewish people. The Arabs and their supporters at the UN recall the resolution almost daily, injecting it into almost any UN debate or issue.
In Third World countries, where UN resolutions are taken at face value, the damage to the Jewish people from this resolution has been almost incalculable. In some Third World countries the resolution had already been incorporated into public school text books.
In the words of Netanyahu, the anti-Zionism resolution has turned the UN into “an international crossroad propagating anti-Semitism on a global scale as anti-Zionism.”
MASS RALLY NOV. 10 AT THE UN
As part of the efforts of exposing the lie which equates Zionism with racism, a mass rally in front of the UN and a conference inside it on November 10 will mark the 10th anniversary of the passing of the resolution.
Thousands of demonstrators are expected to attend the rally, and more than 1,000 delegates will gather at the conference to hear Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D.N.Y.), who was the American UN envoy at the time the resolution was adopted; Jeane Kirkpatrick, former U.S. Ambassador to the UN; Netanyahu; Vernon Walters, the present U.S. Ambassador to the UN; Bayard Rustin, the Black civil rights leader; Rep. Jack Kemp (R.N.Y); and Bialkin as well as other Jewish leaders. The conference will be co-chaired by Netanyahu, Bialkin, Kirkpatrick and Moynihan.
ACTIONS BY THREE WORLD JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS
Last week, three major world Jewish organizations called on Western Jewish communities — with the exception of the US. — to urge their respective governments to repudiate the Zionism-is-racism resolution.
In letters to their members outside the U.S., Gerald Kraft, president of B’nai B’rith International, Bernice Tannenbaum, president of the World Zionist Organization-American Section, and Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, noted the resolution’s 10th anniversary and urged their members “to mobilize sentiment for the resolution’s reversal.”
The three Jewish leaders pointed out that last summer, the U.S. Congress adopted a joint resolution demanding the repeal of the resolution.
“We are convinced that many parliaments and people of good will share this (the Congress) view and might desire to place a similar statement on public record,” the three Jewish leaders said.
Addressing the House of Commons in London recently, Dr. Daniel Thursz, the executive vice president of B’nai B’rith International, called the resolution “a test case” for the future of the UN.
“The United Nations can demonstrate to the world that 40 years after it was founded, it still believes in and works for peace and human rights for all” by repudiating the resolution against Zionism, Thursz said.
Netanyahu asserted that equating Zionism with racism is in itself racism and is in opposition to all the principles on which the UN was established.
“The resolution equating Zionism with racism is depriving the Jewish people of its elementary, historical right for a state of its own,” Netanyahu declared, adding: “We must continue fighting against the resolution, because the issue here is the right of the Jewish people to have what all other people have — an independent state of its own.”
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.
