Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein. (Isaac Harari/Flash90)
Although 40 years have passed since the adoption of the notorious UN resolution, Israel still faces the same bias and the “trend of UN hostility towards Israel continues to this day,” Netanyahu said.
The Knesset on Tuesday commemorated the historic speech given by then ambassador to the United Nations Chaim Herzog on November 10, 1975, in which he denounced General Assembly Resolution 3379 that declared Zionism a form of racism, while condemning the continued anti-Israel biased policies the UN has since exhibited.
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein opened the special plenary session by saying that even after all the time that has passed, ”the UN is once again proving its deep detachment from what is happening in our region [and presents] its biased approach to the conflict here.”
”Today, 24 years after the UN annulled the miserable resolution which compared Zionism to racism, the UN is leading, in practice, a clear anti-Israel approach, which at times is no less severe than that decision regarding Zionism. In many ways, nothing has changed after 40 years. Israel is still slandered and boycotted all across the world, and nonsense and incitement indirectly or directly encourage the hatred and the attacks against [Israel],” Edelstein told the plenum.
”Today, as in the past, we do not plan on remaining silent about the dissemination of lies which slander the Jewish nation and the State of Israel. If we are destined to remain in the minority position, we will never stop fighting for our justice, our rights and our morality, in the spirit of the determination and courage that were displayed by Chaim Herzog on the UN stage.”
A ”Watershed Moment” in the History of Anti-Semitism
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in his speech that Resolution 3379 marked an ”unprecedented moral nadir” for the UN, which ”provided a platform for the libel of racism, turning into an organization that perpetuates the lines of division between states.”
”Not only does it not help in finding solutions, it has deepened the conflicts and stood on the side of tyranny against democracy,” he said.
The prime minister said the “Zionism is racism” resolution, which coincided with the 37th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom (the Night of Shattered Glass) in Germany, was a ”watershed moment” in the history of anti-Semitism, in that previously, hatred of Jews arose in one country or another, but this was the first time an international body was used to that end.”
In the 40 years since Herzog’s speech, Netanyahu stated, ”the impression of deep polarity that was inherent in that day has not been dulled,” and though the resolution was canceled in 1991, ”the trend of hostility to Israel in UN institutions continues to this day. The pattern of automatic votes against Israel continues. There are factors in the UN who seek to condemn us at every opportunity.”
Just Like Today’s BDS
”Forty years later,” opposition leader Isaac Herzog, Chaim’s son, stated, ”the State of Israel is fighting for its existence and international standing. To this day, there are still some around the world who seek to destroy us and our spectacular project…To this day, our enemies doubt the justice of our existence and our natural and historic right to self-determination.”
”They didn’t know what BDS was then, but it was the same,” Herzog remarked. ”Israel is dealing with terrorism and orchestrated international delegitimization.”
The resolution at the UN was adopted by a 72-35 vote with 32 abstentions, and at the end of his speech, Chaim Herzog tore up the resolution on the podium before the UN General Assembly.
”For us, the Jewish people, this is no more than a piece of paper and we shall treat it as such,” he said.
The decision, he told the gathering, was ”conceived in the desire to deflect the Middle East from its moves toward peace and born of a deep pervading feeling of anti-Semitism”
”It is sobering to consider to what level this body has been dragged down if we are obliged today to contemplate an attack on Zionism. For this attack constitutes not only an anti-Israeli attack of the foulest type, but also an assault in the United Nations on Judaism,” Herzog stated.
”The resolution against Zionism was originally one condemning racism and colonialism, a subject on which we could have achieved consensus,” he added. ”However, instead of permitting this to happen, a group of countries, drunk with the feeling of power inherent in the automatic majority and without regard to the importance of achieving a consensus on this issue, railroaded the UN in a contemptuous maneuver by the use of the automatic majority into bracketing Zionism with the subject under discussion.”
The notorious resolution remained in place until it was revoked in 1991, by which time Herzog was Israel’s sixth president.
By: United with Israel Staff