U.N. Ponders Palestine

Genocide Pact Signing Shares In Interest For Day

Paul W. Ward, Sun Staff Correspondent, Lake Success, N.Y.

U.N. Ponders Palestine — The Baltimore Sun, 17 October 1950 — The Baltimore Sun · Baltimore, Maryland · 17 October 1950

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“Lake Success, N.Y., Oct. 16 — The United Nations spotlight today shifted momentarily away from Korea, Indo-China and other foci of the world-wide Communist infection and turned instead on Palestine and ‘genocide.’

The shift was impelled by two developments besides the fact that the General Assembly’s 60-member political and security committee was bogged down throughout the day in repetitious technical arguments over a single section of the American ‘uniting for peace’ plan which Moscow opposes.

Between Two Orthodoxies. One of the two impelling developments was the plight of Israel’s Government.

It was caught between two orthodoxies — Jewish orthodoxy which had unseated David Ben-Gurion’s Government at the time and Moslem orthodoxy which arraigned Israel before the United Nations Security Council here today on charges of ‘Zionist aggression.’

The other development was a signing ceremony here bringing into effect 90 days hence a United Nations convention defining and outlawing as ‘genocide’ all measures undertaken in peace or war ‘with intent to destroy, wholly or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such.’

The convention binds its ratifiers to have their national legislatures enact complementary domestic laws, pledges them also to prosecute in their own courts persons accused of ‘genocide’ and to grant extradition of persons wanted in other countries for prosecution on the same count, and, finally, projects the possible creation of an international tribunal to try ‘genocide’ cases.

Representatives of Jordan and Israel clashed in the Security Council this afternoon as Jordan’s envoy joined with Egypt’s in virtually accusing Israel of ‘genocide’ by charging it with attempts to wipe out Palestine’s Arab population in certain sections.

Earlier Than Hitlerism. Another link between the Near Eastern situation and the ‘genocide’ convention was created by events here today. For Lemkin began his crusade to outlaw organized mass murder on racial or religious grounds long before the Nazis destroyed his family in Poland.

It was not Hitlerism, but a massacre of Christian Assyrians in Iraq that caused him, he says, to first propose a ‘genocide’ convention to the League of Nations in 1933…”

Context added by this archive

The Genocide Convention signed and the word used of Palestine in the Security Council on the same afternoon, reported in one story. The paper records where Lemkin says the idea came from: a massacre of Christian Assyrians in Iraq, proposed to the League of Nations in 1933, before Hitler.

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"U.N. Ponders Palestine," The Baltimore Sun, 17 October 1950, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1950-001. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1950-001