The Wichita Eagle · 27 January 1980

CP-1980-006

Is Zionism Racism?

The United Nations Says So

By Bernard D. Nossiter, N.Y. Times News Service

Transcribed from the clipping

“UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. — Almost unnoticed late last year, the General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution proclaiming ‘The Inadmissability of the Policy of Hegemonism in International Relations.’… Tucked into the resolution was a far more notorious phrase. The resolution ‘resolutely condemns’ among other things ‘racism including zionism.’ The uncapitalized ‘z’ is a device to express contempt. The document was adopted by a vote of 111 to 4 (Australia, Canada, Israel and the United States dissenting), with 26 abstentions, mostly Western European democracies. It marked the first explicit appearance of the famous Zionism-racism formula in the Assembly since 1975. Yehuda Blum, the Israeli delegate, termed the action a monstrous perversion, an obscenity and a specimen of ‘the lies told in the United Nations that have turned this forum into the laughingstock of international society’… For a handful of Arab nations outraged at Israel’s treatment of Palestinian Arabs, the formula describes reality. For most Third World countries and the Soviet bloc, which regularly vote for the device, it is politics.… William Korey, director of international policy research at B’nai B’rith, said: ‘The Zionism-equals-racism resolution has had the effect of promoting, sustaining and legitimizing anti-Semitism in various parts of the world… Because the U.N. is regarded in broad regions of the globe as a source of fundamental judgments about political reality, especially in Third World areas, to that extent the resolution has a profound and deleterious impact on attitudes toward Jews.’ An attempt to delete the words ‘including zionism’ from the condemnation of racism lost, 79 to 26, with 33 abstentions.”

Photograph caption

The U.N. General Assembly condemned Zionism

Context added by this archive

The formula came back in 1979 inside a resolution about hegemonism, with a lower-case z that the correspondent reads as contempt, and almost nobody noticed. The attempt to strike the two words failed by 79 to 26. This is the short version of a piece that ran at greater length in Miami two days later.

Cite this item

"Is Zionism Racism?," The Wichita Eagle, 27 January 1980. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1980-006. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1980-006

Elsewhere in the archive

• UN papers on Zionism challenge Israel itselfMiami News · 29 January 1980 · the same dispatch, carried by another paper
• No Compromise At Kiryat ArbaSarasota Herald-Tribune · 12 February 1980 · the same year
• Zionism Equated With Racism By Some Women at U.N. ConferenceThe Brattleboro Informer · 18 July 1980 · the same year
• Israeli denies torture chargesKingsport Times · 25 July 1980 · the same year