Language:
English
Year of publication:
2013
Titel der Quelle:
American Jewish History
Angaben zur Quelle:
97,3 (2013) 283-313
Keywords:
United Nations
;
United Nations
;
Antisemitism
;
United States Foreign relations
;
Israel Foreign relations
Abstract:
Focuses on the 1962-65 controversy within the UN on the appropriateness of including a denunciation of antisemitism in the intended International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). It was the Soviets who staunchly opposed mentioning antisemitism as a form of discrimination in UN documents, fearing that any discussion of it would draw attention to antisemitism in the USSR. Early in the controversy, the USSR, against U.S. and Israeli intentions, insisted on excluding religious persecution from the CERD. However, in the opinion of the U.S. and some other countries, antisemitism was as much ethnic discrimination as it was religious discrimination. Trying to thwart the inclusion of an article on antisemitism in the convention, the Soviets first proposed including also condemnations of Nazism and neo-Nazism, and later proposed including a denunciation of Zionism as a form of racial discrimination. As a result of the Soviet tactics, an article on antisemitism was omitted from the final text of the CERD in 1965. However, the debates on the denunciation of antisemitism by the CERD had two indirect effects: on the one hand, the debates drew the attention of the UN and world opinion to antisemitism in the USSR; on the other hand, the Soviet proposal of 1965 established the precedent for linking Zionism with racial discrimination and Nazism, which paved the way for UN resolution 3379 of 1975, equating Zionism with racism.
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