2 Friday, January 16, 1981
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Purely Commentary
United Nations' Yielding to Status of 'Warped
Mentality' Turns World Organization Into a
`Moral Swamp' Creating International Outrage
By Philip
Slomovitz
International Outrage: Moral Depravity of Hate-Mongering at the United Nations
Mankind's hopes for peace, for
amity among nations, were ele-
vated in 1945 with the formation of
the United Nations Organizations.
They were rooted in anticipation of
the aspirations for high standards
for all peoples of the earth under
the then designation of the UNO.
Then came the developing era for
the UN, and in the process what-
ever was hopeful became tragic.
Mankind's hopes gradually were
dragged into waters muddied by
campaigns of hatred.
The inhumanity of it all became
evident in the attempts to under- *4':
MORRIS ABRAM
YEHUDA BLUM
mine Israel's existence. Battles
have raged over the issue through the years. In the last weeks of 1980 the situation
became so ridiculously venomous that the Israel ambassador to the UN called the actions
the result of a warped mentality. When Israel's enemies resorted to the fakes incorpo-
rated in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the world's leading citizens, Nobel Prize
winners and academicians of note • expressed their resentment in a statement that
aroused shock over the incredulity of anything like it occurring in a civilized society.
The protests resulted from a series of 13 resolutions attacking Israel adopted in a
period of two weeks. The disgust that was stimulated by the uncivilized actions at the UN
caused UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim to confer with prominent leaders in an
attempt to prove that the world organization really wasn't as evil as it was portrayed.
It was as a result of that session that Morris Abram, a former president of the
American Jewish Committee and a most distinguished American leader, disclosed that
at that meeting Mr. Waldheim said the Secretary had no executive power and no control
over policy decisions of the UN, which, he said, was composed of sovereign states.
By that time, the actions of the UN had been defined as "an international outrage"
and the UN was designated in public opinion statements as "a moral swamp."
Mr. Waldheim had convened the responsible participants in the conference called to
defend the UN under auspices of the Committee for UN Integrity, located at 9 E. 40th St.,
New York 10016. That committee, after that conference, issued a statement which
concluded:
Speaking for the committee, Mr. Abram told the UN officials that the anti-
Israel bias which he said pervaded the UN was evident in the "failure" of the
Secretary-General or any UN organ to hail the Camp David accords and the
Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.
"Although the way has been wide open for anti-Israel resolutions and ac-
tions," he said, the fact that the Secretary-General found it politically impossi-
ble to applaud this breakthrough to peace, even if he had wished to do so, speaks
volumes about the atmosphere at the UN."
The critique is presented here in deference to the UN.
But the designation of the organziation, as "a moral swamp," stems from the outrage
of making Israel a subject for attack, at a time when the world is on fire, when the
"international outrage" continues to dominate the world organization and remains
intact.
This portion of the statement from the Committee for UN Integrity merits quoting:
In issuing its "Call to Conscience," signed by 130 persons including 35 Nobel
laureates, the Committee for UN Integrity charged that the anti-Israel spirit at
the UN had "obstructed" and "crippled" the work of specialized agencies such as
the International Labor Organization, World Health Organization, and United
The Pope, Arafat and Israel,
and How U.S. Nuns Reacted
At the meeting of the Central Council of the PLO, held
in Damascus, Yasir Arafat read messages from Pope John
Paul II and Leonid Brezhnev.
While the contents of the messages were not made
known, the news report emphasizes that the Pope greeted
the PLO, and it presaged sort of a recognition of the move-
ment that seeks Israel's destruction.
At the same time, the National Coalition of American
Nuns made public a letter challenging the Pope on his
stated position on Israel and Jerusalem.
So, Israel is not without friends in the Catholic ranks.
Mike Wallace and Sixty Minutes:
The Prejudicial Negatives
Mike Wallace and the "Sixty Minutes" Sunday eve-
ning CBS program are the envy of the communicative
media forces. They have the audience and they mesmerize
it with the sensationalism that often exposes, sometimes
creates puzzlement.
The latter is the unfortunate experience of the Jewish
viewers of that program. Several years ago, Mike Wallace
and his associates rendered a great disservice with at-
tempts to vindicate the Syrians who continue to persecute
the few thousand Jews who remain in that country. Instead
of exposing the crimes, they glamorized the anti-Israel and
anti-Jewish forces there.
On Jan. 4 there was another insult to intelligence and
to Jewish viewers of the program. It is an established fact
that there is editing of scripts, that programs are cut to the
needs and to the time allotment. Yet a Mafia brute who
admitted that he has committed murders but is now bene-
fiting from protection provided for him by the government
spewed utter nonsense that implicates Israel and
Menahem Begin.
It really didn't make much sense, and the claims the
Mafia-nik made of having collaborated with Israel and
Begin emerged as utter stupidities. Even if he could claim
Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO).
At the meeting with Mr. Wal-
dheim, Committee spokesmen
elaborated on the charge. Mr.
Abram said the UN agencies
had been "exploited by the
campaign to ostracize Israel,
sharply diminishing the effec-
tiveness of their work."
This is less defense than it is
apology. It fails to acknowledge the
disgrace of mounting failures, the
unwillingness to deal with thr -
situation in the Middle East whici _
KURT WALDHEIM is a blazing cauldron, where Israel
ROBERT GORDIS
alone avoids assassinations and retains a firm position with the other peace-seeking
nation, the Egyptians.
But there is nothing new in what is being encouraged by the powers in the United
Nations. The hatreds began blossoming years ago. In 1975, one of American Jewry's most
distinguished leaders was compelled to call for actions to expose the spreading outrages
and the ignominy of the world organization. On Nov. 19, 1975, Dr. Robert Gordis issued
this appeal for an expose of the infamy of the UN:
The abominable resolution adopted in the General Assembly of the United
Nations, offering the hypocritical stamp of legitimacy to anti-Semitism on a
world-wide scale, has naturally aroused the loathing of all decent people and
deep indignation in Jewish ranks the world over. To be sure, the Jewish people
cannot respond adequately to this incarnation of Hitlerism in our day.
But there is something we can do — and immediately.
As one of our leading news publications, the Detroit Jewish News should
begin publishing each week the Scroll of Infamy, listing the states that voted for
the Arab-Communist resolution and the states that did not have the courage or
the integrity to vote against it and abstained. The list might well be enclosed in a
black border in commemoration of the death of human decency in the United
Nations.
The publication in each issue of this Scroll of Infamy would be a very helpful
reminder to Jewish tourists and travelers, and all men and women of good will
and intelligence, in planning their trips abroad.
If biblical warrant is needed, we have it in the 18th Psalm, Verse 26:
"Toward the faithful you are faithful, toward the wholehearted you are
wholehearted, toward the sincere you are sincere, but toward the crooked you are
perverse."
I am also writing to the president of the Synagogue Council and the three
national rabbinic bodies suggesting that they urge their constituent congrega-
tions to publish the Scroll of Infamy in each issue of their synagogue bulletins as
well.
The list of the infamous was long then. It is very much longer now. It is filled with the
names of Western countries posing as civilized but on their knees begging for oil.
Therefore, the yielding to the Soviet-Arab bloc whose aim is the destruction of Israel and
the defamation of the Jewish people. Therefore, the compulsion to relate the facts, to
expose the incredulous infamies. Therefore, the unending hope that one day those who
pose as civilized will reject the villainy that dominates the UN and will once again render
justice in an atmosphere of decency. Perhaps a way will be found to restore humanism to
an international movement that has permitted the dragging of its charter into the gutter.
that he can prove his charges, the involvement didn't fit
into a story of self-indictment and confession to crimes. Yet,
Mike Wallace and his crew permitted the outrageous drag-
ging of Israel into Mafia-ism. ,It was inexcusable.
Panorama (Television Today and Tomorrow) Maga-
zine, in its recent interview with Israel Prime Minister
Begin, conducted by Jane Friedman, quoted the Israeli
leader as saying: "I won't deny anybody an interview with
one exception, which I am not going to mention. There is
one gentleman who is not going any more to interview me.
He can speak to my colleagues but not to me."
Following this statement, the Panorama interview
had this revelation in parenthesis: "U.S. sources say the
reporter is CBS's Mike Wallace."
This tells the story. There was enough insulting for
Begin and that ends the Wallace courting of him. Will there
be an end also to the ugliness of gangsterism as it was
applied to Israel and Begin in the most recent episode?
This is a Cosa Nostra case with implications that could
easily drag the innocent into misconceptions. It is possible,
in matters involving philanthropy and socio-political con-
tacts for the unaffiliated, to be accused of involvements that
have no relation to a cause they may wish to sponsor.
Jimmy Hoffa was deeply interested in efforts to strengthen
the Israel labor movement and he therefore supported His-
tadrut. The Israeli laborites therefore honored him and
established a project in his name in Israel. He was honored,
some 20 years ago, at a dinner in the State Fair auditorium
and it was attended by some 2,000 people of all faiths, all
races.
Did this make Jews and Israelis accomplices with
Teamsters or the Mafia that is now accused of complicity in
Hoffa's death? Because Frank Sinatra showed a great
interest in the music department of the Hebrew University
and was acclaimed for such an involvement in Jerusalem a
year ago, does the latest claim of his involvement with the
Mafia also attach such blame to Israel?
Edward M. Warburg, when he was national chairman -
of the United Jewish Appeal, punned about his fellow-
philanthropists and their interests and called them the
Kosher Nostra. Does that justify a Mike Wallace permit-
ting an item approaching the libelous to be inserted in a
sensationalized item which glorifies a murderer and the
Mafia?
The Democratic Way of Changing Israel's Ruling Forces
Israel apparently will have a new government some time during or after June. The change is taking place in an
evolutionary democratic fashions That's the lesson from the Jewish state as an admonition to enemies and friends that
civilized people know how to be parliamentarily reasonable.
Perhaps the evolution in Israel also is politically revolutionary. Yet, after many months of prognosticating, of
resorting to prophecies that the government headed by Menahem Begin was just about to collapse, the Likud faction
under Begin's leadership survived some no-confidence proposals, carried on an occasionally-tottering foreign policy,
suffered from economic ills unparalleled anywhere, was able to withstand hatreds.
The new government anticipated in Israel will not be strange to that nation, to world Jewry, to the international
community. With the certainty of its being headed by a Labor spokesman, Shimon Peres is his party's choice,
speculation will be flying back and forth from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, from commentators in the world's capitals, with
predictions that can both be anticipated as well as possibly rejected in many respects.
The foreign policies may differ in approaches. It is doubtful whether there will be very many marked changes,
since the Camp David accord is uppermost as an aspiration for peace. It is the economic agony that will challenge.
In the matter of democratizing changes and Begin's retirement, there is cause for deep satisfaction that what is
happening to and in Israel, by the Israelis themselves, is in a civilized way. In the civilized fashion, the retiring prime
minister has the blessings of all who have watched his performance, many of them with justified admiration.