2 Fri'dry, Oehler 2, 1911 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Purely Commentary Anti-Israel Policies Engineered at UN With Support of Secretary General Kurt Waldheim Exposed in Analyses of His Quest for. Re-Election to the International Position By Philip Slpmovitz `To Bigotry, No Sanction' the Slogan Exposing KUrt Waldheim's Anti-Semitism, UNESCO's prejudices Kurt Waldheim seeks re-election as Secretary General of the United Nations. He must have the support of both the U.S. and USSR. A few days before his official • announcement that he was a candidate for retention of the important international post, an analysis of his attitudes showed that he carefully avoids offending either nation. But he does not hesitate to offend Israel. It can be said without fear of contradiction that he . . goes out of his way to be antagonistic to the Jewish state. As an Austrian, he seems to • follow the line of the Jewish arch enemy of the Jewish state, Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky. Is there evidence that Waldheim is unfriendly to Israel? An enlightening lengthy essay, "The UN's Man in the Middle" by Jane Rosen, United Nations correspondent for the Guardian of London, gave the facts in the New York Times Magazine, Sept. 13. The article by Miss Rosen is subtitled "Kurt Waldheim, seeking a third term, must balance conflict- ing interests deftly. His fractious constituency mistrusts him as often as it applauds him." Israel's friends are compelled nearly always to mistrust him. Waldheim, together with UN Undersecretary General Brian Urquhart, have helped to plant seeds of hate for Israel. Here is the joint attitude of the two men as told by Jane Rosen: All United Nations members are equal, but some _ are less equal than others. On issues involving South Africa and Israel, the pariahs of the United Nations, Waldheim ap- KURT WALDHEIM pears to have abandoned his nonpartisanship. He routinely denounces racism and repression in South Africa, but he is much more guarded in criticizing the human-rights violations of the United Na-, tions"Third-World and Communist majority. He often singles out Israel for blame, failing to note that many of Israel's actions are retaliatory. When the Israeli commando unit staged its dramatic rescue of the Israeli hostages at Entebbe airport in Uganda in 1976, Wal- dheim called it "a serious violation of the national sovereignty of a United Nations member state," only later adding that humanitarian and moral • issues had also to be taken into account. At an Arab League dinner a year ago, he endorsed Palestinian statehood without mentioning Israel's right to exist. Israeli violence in southern Lebanon has consistently drawn his rebukes; PLO violence is often played down or unidentified.-He denounced Israel for attacking the Iraqi nuclear reactor but he did not criticize Iraq for attacking Iran. Most of Waldheim's official statements on the Middle East are drafted by Under Secretary General Urquhart, who is known to be sympathetic to the Palestinians. Although he stresses that neither he nor Waldheim is anti-Israel, they both obviously reflect the views of the United Nations majority, which is anti-Israel. Waldheim supports Israel's right to exist within "secure and recognized boundaries," as Security Council Resolution 242 puts it, but because 242 treats the Palestinians only as a refugee problem, he thinks that either it should be amended or else the Council should adopt a complementary resolution to take account of Palestinian rights. The anti-Israel actions at the UN, primarily in the General Assembly, very often in the Security Council, approached .the disgraceful. Waldheim didn't do a thing to obviate it. An example of the venom that has spread, without a word of protest from him, was UNESCO's. The Sept. 4 issue of Near East Report contained an expose of the UNESCO role by Dr. William Korey, director of policy research of the International Council of Bnai Brith. Dr. Korey is an authority on UN procedures, having represented the Bnai Brith as a UN observer for some years. Under the title "To Bigotry, No Sanction," he wrote in the Near East Report: That anti-Jewish bigotry may soon be given sanction by a world body committed to combatting racism is by no means inconceivable. UNESCO ordinarily might be expected to repudiate an organization distributing hate material. Instead, its director-general has been authorized to negotiate a relationship with that group. The supreme irony surfaced at a meeting of the 45-member policy- making executive board of UNESCO on May 15. At issue was the question of whether UNESCO should enter into "relations" with the Islamic States Broadcasting Organization (ISBO). What ISBO stood for was already known to UNESCO observers. In January 1981, the organization fully described its own activities in a book- let which was later distributed at UNESCO House, in Paris. The booklet is replete with illuminating examples of obSZ-ene bias. Page 16 describes an ISBO radio series about six companions of the Prophet who supposedly defended Islam from "the conspiracies of the Jewa." The series was entitled "The Mission of Martyrs." On the same page, another 30-part radio series was offered to confront the "Zionist, racist and colonialist dangers threatening the Islamic nation." The series is called "The Raid and Intellectual . Conquest." Another page of the booklet characterizes a 19-part color television series designed to ex- pose "the conspiracies that the Jews engineered against Islam." The TV programs were scarcely of a nature to realize UNESCO's proclaimed educational and cultural purposes. For that reason, the U.S. representative to UNESCO, T. Elkin Taylor, in a letter to Director-General Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow on May 13, objected that "programs such as these can only inflame racial, religious and national prejudices imperiling the very goals of peace and international cooperation that UNESCO is supposed to promote." The conclusion was self-evident. It would be WILLIAM KOREY unseemly for UNESCO to establish any kind of formal relationship with ISBO. The American representative put it more diplomatically: "... we have very serious reservations about the appropri- ateness of UNESCO entering into an agreement with the organization." . 1 While the debate in the executive board centered on the technical consideration of whether the director-general should engage in formal negotiations with ISBO, the more immediate reality was petropower influ- ence in the international body. Negotiations were urged by( - Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Not surprisingly, the West European democracies were reluctant to offend the Muslim countries by holding a formal vote. They warned the U.S. would find itself isolated. The American delegation refused to bow to such pressures, and in the final countdow, the United States stood alone at UNESCO. The vote on May 18 to support negotiations with ISBO was 33 to 1 (the U.S.). Six, mainly West European countries, abstained and five were absent. Recently, UNESCO has elevated the terrorist PLO to an enviable spe- cial status in the international community. /At its general conference in Belgrade in the fall of 1980, UNESCO voted to give the PLO a consultative voice in the funding of educational programs for the Palestinians Arabs. In an even more extraordinary UNESCO decision, the PLO is to be financially assisted in order to improve its propaganda machinery. Testifying to the PLO's unique status, Yasir Arafat was offered the UNESCO platform at its closing session on Oct. 27. The fiery 90-minute speech by the terrorist chieftain predicted that the Palestinian flag would "fly high on the sacred hills of Jerusalem." The address ended with a prolonged standing ovation. But the UNESCO power-brokers ought to be aware of the conse- quences. The U.S. Congress responded in 1975 to the extreme bias of UN- ESCO toward the Jewish state by withholding the American assessment, which amounts to one-quarter of the UNESCO budget. The city of Washing- ton takes seriously the pronouncement of its namesakes: "To bigotry, no . . sanction." This is a time for protest and condemnation. It may not matter how successful Kurt Waldheim will be in his campaign for re-election. Ha Third World candidate beats him, the situation may not differ, the hatred against Israel having become so deep-rooted% approaching the anti-Semitic. At least in the matter involving the UNESCO there should be organized action. The United States Senate must be asked to deny support for UNESCO as long as it adhered to anti-Semitic policies. It isn't pleasant always to be protesting. But it is necessary. It is easier to deal with the outside world by telling jokes and quoting Scripture, as in the Ronald Reagan- Menahem Began exchange at the White House on Sept. 9. But when knifed constantly, very often in the back as a constituent of the international organization, Israel must fight fearlessly and without apologies. World Jewry, especially American Jews, must join in that battle. "To Bigotry, No Sanction." The Vigilantes for Yiddish: Paving New Language Roads others who lend glory in a battle for survival of a language among the richest in literary treasures. This is an addendum to an earlier review of the status of Yiddish as well as Ladino. The latter is being treated as a dialect; the former has a marked measure of the continuity. Yiddish clubs are springing up in several communities in the United States and in Israel. These are indications of renewed strength. Moshe and Sarah Friedman, among the staunchest supporters of Yiddish, came back from Israel exhilarated by the progress made in behalf of Yiddish in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. The clubs in those cities in- spired them in the faith that Yiddish can and does make progress. The Detroiters in the Yiddish ranks are adamant in their devotion. Among the Yiddish publications that have an influence in Jewish quarters is the Kemfer, the Yiddish organ of the Labor Zionist Alliance. A quarterly that has gained cultural status is Unzer Eigen Vort, Detroiter Wolf Snyder serving as one of its editorial contributors. Devotees who give strength to Yiddish here include Adele Mondry, who authored her reminiscences in a Yid- dish book, which has been translated into English; Goldie Adler, Dena (Mrs. Irving) Greenberg, Rose Kaye, scores of Max M. Fisher, the Barney Baruch Without Park Bench That's quite a tribute to eminent Detroiter Max M. Fisher, in Forbes Magazine. "When Do You Build Character?" is the key head- lined query to the Forbes ar- ticle (Sept. 14), and it pro- ceeds to describe how Mr. Fisher gained access to crude oil from Ohio Oil Co. at a time when gasoline was selling at eight cents a gallon. He was a lad just out of school, and he had the per- sonality generated by the character elaborated upon in the Forbes article. There was trust in the • MAX FISHER young lad and he began to develop his plan to encourage the conversion of crude info salable products. Forbes tells how he managed Marathon, Aurora and' Speedway into leading firms, capturing a large market. There is the story also of a beginning, in Keystone Oil, which he later acquired, after it has been developed by his father, the late William Fisher. The story could have been lengthened with mention of the two partners of William Fisher, the late Leon (Komisaruk) Kay and Nathan Epstein. Then there is an account in Forbes of Mr. Fisher turning to real estate, the development of the Troy Some- rset area, now one of the most blossoming in this part of the state. In this activity, too, two prominent names could have been included, the Stollmans (Phillip and Max) and Samuel Frankel. The exciting portion of the Forbes article is the praise for Mr,.. Fisher for his philanthropic activities. He is spoken of as "the Barney Baruch without the park bench," and this applies to the Fisher relationship with Presidents and na- tional notables. The Forbes article is an 'exciting piece, fully described by the industrialist - philanthropist - Jewish leader for his very impressive role as Jew and as American.