November 6, 1975
Page 35320
THE U.N. RESOLUTION ON ZIONISM
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the recent passage in the U.N. Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee of a resolution that declares Zionism a form of racism is an outrage against the civilized values for which this committee is supposed to stand.
This is a form of demagogic nonsense which I hoped had been discredited in the community of nations since 1945. It threatens to bring into disrepute the entire United Nations Organization.
It is particularly disheartening in the wake of what we in the United States had seen as a lessening of tensions in the Middle East, and an awakening recognition on the part of some of the nations in the region that there is a need to agree upon a basis of legitimacy for the peaceful resolution of our differences.
During the Senate debate on the Sinai agreement I had cause to remark that the United Nations was not looked upon by either Egypt or Israel as a fair and reasonable peace party. The passage of a resolution like this merely accelerates the erosion of international respect for it. The passage of a resolution like this signals that the sponsoring nations will not repudiate the use of force to settle differences. It clearly demonstrates a willingness to exacerbate the dispute and prolong the conflict.
And the unsubtle attempt to define Zionism as racist is just one more weapon in the arsenal of anti-Semitic propaganda which has for so many millennia been directed at the Jewish people.
Zionism is the oldest of the nationalist and liberationist movements. Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N., Yosef Tekoah, has written:
Zionism was not born in the Jewish ghettoes of Europe, but on the battlefield against imperialism in ancient Israel. It is not an outmoded nationalistic revival, but an unparalleled epic of centuries of resistance to force and bondage.
And Abba Eban has stated the case most clearly, when he says:
There is, of course, no difference whatever between anti-Semitism and the denial of Israel's statehood. Classic anti-Semitism denies the equal rights of Jews as citizens within society. Anti-Zionism denies the equal rights of the Jewish people to its lawful sovereignty within the community of nations.
The cynical use of U.N. humanitarian and social programs — like UNESCO — to launch political attacks on the right of Israel to exist as a sovereign state is part of a clearly conceived policy to which theUnited States is not blind. The substitution of rhetorical violence for physical force does not render the violence — or its goal — more respectable.
There are serious and difficult economic, social, and political questions at stake for all participants in the Middle East dispute. Blatant racist appeals and blanket condemnation of the legitimate national aspirations of the Jewish people are not the way in which those disputes will be resolved. Rather, passage of such a resolution inevitably raises the most serious questions about the motives of its supporters.
Our Ambassador to the U.N., Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has called the adoption of this resolution an "obscene act". The wording is harsh, but its accuracy is indisputable. Aside from the immediate political motivations of the resolution's sponsors, its passage is obscene because it jeopardizes the global struggle against racism. It seems to utilize the historic and present sufferings of oppressed national groups in the creation of another political epithet.
At its inception, the United Nations represented a reaction against the blatant racism of the Nazi regime. The combating of racism around the world has been one of the major goals of the organization, and has earned it — justly — universal respect and moral authority as a world body. That authority and respect will be irretrievably lost if the General Assembly encourages the vicious politicizing of this humanitarian issue by support for the resolution.
Racial repression and warfare are still unfortunately common on our globe today, as many member nations of the U.N. are well aware.
Those nations are also aware of the substantive and distinct differences that exist between racism as a practice and the legitimate national aspirations of a people. Those differences have been nullified and those aspirations have been dishonored by the adoption of this resolution.
The U.S. delegation to the United Nations has expressed the sentiments of the American Congress and the American people in repudiating, in the strongest possible terms, the aims and intent of this resolution as an expression by the world body. Introduction of two congressional resolutions underscores our national sentiments, and I know that Congress will continue to stand firm on this issue. I hope the General Assembly will take note, and will take into account also the statement by the European Economic Community nations, which have had the most recent historic experience with massive and barbaric anti-Semitism.
If the coming together of the community of nations in the U.N. is to have any relevance to the long and bitter fight to rid the world of savagery between ethnic groups, we must now vigorously assert that this effort to politicize racism is a moral outrage against all humanity.