UNITED NATIONS: Shock Waves from an Infamous Act

• Share

When the United Nations General Assembly last month approved an Arab-sponsored resolution denouncing Zionism as a form of racism, U.S. Ambassador Daniel P. Moynihan declared that the U.S. would never accept "this infamous act." Later he described the vote on Zionism as "an obscenity" and called it "a self-inflicted wound from which the reputation and integrity of the General Assembly may not survive in our time." Last week there was plentiful evidence that the shock waves from that Assembly resolution are still having an impact on the world. Items:

>In New York, as the 30th General Assembly session drew to a close, Ambassador Moynihan renewed his verbal assaults on the Zionism vote, albeit obliquely. He told delegates that the session had been "a profound, even alarming disappointment," and that it had been "the scene of acts which we regard as abominations." Moynihan argued that the Assembly "has been trying to pretend that it is a Parliament, which it is not," and acidly (but accurately) observed that "most of the governments represented do not themselves govern by consent of their citizens." He then quoted a plea by dissident Russian Scientist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Andrei Sakharov for a worldwide amnesty for political prisoners. At this, the Soviet delegate, Yakov Malik strode out in protest.

The response of Afro-Asian delegates who had voted for the Zionism resolution was predictably cold. Pakistan's Iqbal Akhund made the observation that no nation "has a monopoly on righteousness or self-righteousness," while Saudi Arabia's irrepressible Jamil Baroody offered a mock resolution forgiving "the illustrious Daniel Patrick Moynihan for any misconceptions he may have formed about the U.N. during his sojourn."

>In Paris, the U.S., as well as ten Western European nations plus Canada, Israel and Australia, decided to boycott a conference of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization after it voted 36-22 to include the General Assembly resolution on Zionism in a set of guidelines on the relationship of the press and the state. The conference was originally advanced by the Soviets in 1972, largely as a vehicle for legitimizing government control of the press as it is practiced in the U.S.S.R. The anti-Zionist measure was proposed by Yugoslavia and forced through by a bloc vote of Arab and Eastern European nations.

Some UNESCO officials in New York privately described the Paris vote as the expression of a death wish; they feel that the Arab states and their Communist allies are so intent on pursuing their isolation campaign against Israel that they are willing to destroy UNESCO and perhaps even the United Nations itself.