Thirteen Jewish organizations with representatives at the United Nations have agreed to coordinate actions to combat anti-Semitism emanating from that world body. Responding to a growing concern that the UN has become a vehicle for anti-Semitism, B’nai B’rith International and the Zionist Organization of America jointly called a meeting in New York yesterday to consider counter-measures. The meeting was chaired by Jack Spitzer, president of B’nai B’rith.
Ivan Novick, president of the ZOA, told the meeting, “We can no longer pretend that because the United Nations is most ineffectual, what is said there is of no consequence. We know that the Zionism-racism resolution of 1975 helped to sanction a program of sustained and virulant anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union and has legitimized it elsewhere.”
Novick contended that the “three-fold increase last year of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States surely was encouroged in great part by the public sanction given at the UN to anti-Israel and anti-Jewish expression.”
NOTE THE USE OF CODE TERMS
Participants at the meeting of the UN non-Governmental Organizations agreed that nations at the UN were using the word “Zionist” as a code for Jew and “anti-Zionism” as a code for anti-Semitism. They agreed also that “anti-Zionism” is being used as a means of attacking the United States and other Western nations.
The group expressed their commitment that, while fighting anti-Semitism at the UN, they would continue their support of programs “consistent with the UN charter,” such as those for young people, the disabled, the aged, the ill and the homeless. But they were quick to point out that no one should remain impassive or silent in the face of any efforts to taint these programs with anti-Semitic slurs or the defamation of Israel.
In addition to B’nai B’rith and ZOA, representatives from the American Jewish Committee, Consultative Council of Jewish Organizations, International Council of Jewish Women, Jewish War Veterans, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, United Synagogue of America, Women’s International Zionist Organization, Women’s League for Conservative Judaism, World Jewish Congress and the World Union for progressive Judaism attended the meeting at the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League headquarters.
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