Anti-Zionism is Racism

This week marks the 40th anniversary of one of the worst instances of anti-Semitism since the end of the Second World War. On Nov. 10, 1975, the United Nations — a body created out of the ashes df the Holocaust — passed General Assembly Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement, with racism and racial discrimination.

That resolution was the culmination of a lengthy campaign by the Soviet Union to turn Israel into the only state within the U.N. system to have its legitimacy questioned. Soviet Jews had been persecuted in the name of “anti-Zionism” since the days of Josef Stalin’s dictatorship, and Resolution 3379 represented the globalization of that campaign. To that end, the Soviets enlisted the support of Arab states and developing nations, all of whom, in promoting the slander that Zionism is racism, were engaging in the oldest form of racism themselves.

Only a handful of people at the General Assembly grasped this fundamental fact back in 1975. One of them was Chaim Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to the world body. In his magnificent speech — commemorated at a special event hosted by Israel’s U.N. mission this week — Herzog reminded the delegates of another anniversary, also on Nov. 10: Kristallnacht, that dreadful winter’s night in 1938 when Nazi stormtroopers attacked defenseless Jewish targets across Germany. The pogrom resulted in the incarceration of 30,000 Jews, the murder of around 100, and the burning of thousands of synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses.

“It is indeed befitting,” began Herzog, as he proceeded to eviscerate the assembled delegates, “that this debate, conceived in the desire to deflect the Middle East from its moves towards peace, and born of a deep pervading feeling of anti-Semitism, should take place on the anniversary of this day. It is indeed befitting, Mr. President, that the United Nations, which began its life as an anti-Nazi alliance, should 30 years later find itself on its way to becoming the world center of anti-Semitism.”