Jeane Kirk-patrick, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, declared here that the UN “has effectively been eliminated as a useful mediator in the Middle East conflict” because its “objective is to isolate and denigrate Israel.”
Addressing 300 government, business and Jewish community leaders at the seventh annual Conference on Social Concerns sponsored by the Agudath Israel of America yesterday, Kirkpatrick said she saw no UN role in Middle East peace negatiations. “The time a Ralph Bunche could work on behalf of the United Nations for peace between Israel and the Arabs has long passed,” she said.
According to the American envoy, the atmosphere in the General Assembly indicates that “The objective is to isolate and denigrate Israel and ultimately to undermine its political legitimacy.” She claimed that “a secondary objective is to Isalate and undermine the United States” and “a related objective is to frighten away from association with Israel any country which might be disposed to befriend her.”
DRAWS ANALOGY WITH FRANK LYNCHING
Kirkpatrick drew on analogy between the lynching in 1915, in Georgia, of a Jew, Leo Frank, for a murder he did not commit and the “resurgence of anti-Semitism in the world” today. She compared the neutral nations to Alonzo Mann, the 83-year-old eyewitness who knew another man had committed the crime for which Frank was murdered, but kept silent.
Kirkpatrick declared: “Like Alonzo Mann, they are intimidated. Perhaps they need oil, or petrodollars, political and economic support or are afraid they’ll be targeted by this and that terrorist group.”
The envoy told the Agudat Israel group: “We share common understandings and common values. We also share a conviction that what happens in the UN matters to these common values and understandings.”
“The United Nations cannot survive if it does not live by its own rule, since membership is supposed to be decided in the Security Council where the U.S. can cast a veto,” she said. She expressed doubt that the UN could survive a “flagrant disregard of its charter and constitution.” She also denounced the policies of the Soviet Union toward Jews as “a gross and persistent abuse of human rights.”
REAGAN POLICIES OF CONCERN TO JEWS
Another speaker, Dr. Seymour Lachman, Dean and Professor of History of Education at City University, New York, said the Reagan Administration’s new approaches to domestic, foreign and defense policy were of deep concern to the American Jewish community and were making them wonder wheiher the new direction “was indeed working.”
Rabbi Menachem Lubinsky, director of Government and Public Affairs of the Agudath Israel, urged the Administration “to plan the national agenda as part of a full partnership between government and communities.”
At a special awards ceremony, Rabbi Moshe Sherer, president of the Agudath Israel of America, presented the organization’s 1982 “New Horizons” award to Anthony Gliedman, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
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.
