UN Debate Will Necessitate Re-Examination of Resolution 3379

By Joseph Schechla

In 1952, the UN General Assembly settled a long-standing debate, overruling South Africa's argument that its racist ideology and policies should be excluded from consideration as a matter of South Africa's domestic sovereignty. By its resolution 615 (VIII), the GA concluded that apartheid policies indeed fell well within the jurisdiction of international law because they violate the anti-racism provisions of the UN Charter (articles 13, 55 and 56), lead to international friction and endanger world peace and security. The questions surrounding Israel's state ideology and policies are of no lesser consequence.

By 1975, the United Nations had worked for more than two decades to combat racial discrimination in South Africa. Nearly a decade of effort had gone into decolonizing Namibia, and the world's first treaty to eliminate racism and racial discrimination was already ten years old. It was in that year that the General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379, determining Israel's state ideology, Zionism, to be "a form of racism and racial discrimination." Since then, however, the debate has proceeded no further, and no action has been take to sanction Israel (a la South Africa) on the basis of this charge. Though other US opinion makers have publicly scorned it before, not until recently—with Dan Quayle's late-1989 pledge to a Yeshiva University gathering and George Bush's Sept. 23 speech to the General Assembly—has Resolution 3379 been subjected to such serious examination.

One of the inherent problems with this much-maligned resolution is that, upon first reading, it in not particularly instructive. (For instance, it does not distinguish political Zionism—its subject—from "cultural Zionism," which is a movement by Jewish communities to revitalize their culture and religion in their own countries.) The text of 3379 is rhetorical and lacks specific argument. The substance of its charges will emerge only from the discourse that would inevitably ensue if it were finally challenged from the General Assembly floor. For 3379's opponents, therefore, that debate could prove more damaging than if the resolution were simply to remain on the record in its present somnolent state.

Israel is perhaps more scrutinized today than even in those heady days of the 1970s. Since then, the world has witnessed an unprovoked Israel invading a neighboring state and destroying its capital, and has identified Israel more recently as the systematic breaker of children's bones. But all these negative images and perceptions, in themselves, do not necessarily add up to racism and racial discrimination. As evidence of a deliberate policy or ideology of racism, such instances can still be said to be more or less circumstantial.

Resolution 3379 indisputably applies, however, to the fundamental and institutionalized aspects of Israel's discriminatory policies. In a debate over the validity of 3379, the most useful subject of inquiry, as in the South African case, would likely be Israel's own laws.

Since its proclamation of independence in 1948, Israel's Knesset has applied its state ideology in a series of laws formalizing relations between population groups within Israel's recognized borders. As confirmed by Israel's High Court in 1970, there is no such thing as Israeli nationality. In Israel, "Jewish nationality" is the only status which bestows full rights on a citizen. With this ideological premise incorporated into its domestic law, Israel denies many fundamental rights to more than 800,000 indigenous Palestinian Arabs living within the country, but denied a legal nationality. By applying this ideological distinction to civil status, Israel formally rejects the concept of equal rights for all its citizens.

Sources abound which indicate that Israel's founding ideology calls for the departure of the indigenous people from the land of historic Palestine. The "central task of the state," according to official documents, is to replace these people with settlers whom the state endows with "Jewish nationality." This objective in not to be achieved by some sudden event of history, but by the continuous, incremental process presently underway.

Israel's policy of separateness is not spelled out in any single statute. Instead, a combination of Zionist laws, including irrevocable "basic laws," establish separate classes of citizenship and civil rights based on racial criteria. Some of these "basic laws" which are most commonly discussed in connection with Resolution 3379 include:

The Law of Citizenship (1948), which establishes eligibility for citizenship status. Citizenship without "Jewish nationality, " however, conveys few fundamental rights;
The Law of Return (1950), which creates the exclusive "nationality right" for Jews from anywhere to come to the lands Israel occupies, in order to claim—as "nationals"—a superior legal status and full rights (including rights to land and housing) which are denied to the indigenous minority of Palestinian citizens;
The Status Law (1952), which recognizes as part of the government of Israel certain "national" institutions which operate inside Israel, and extraterritorially, to serve "the Jewish people" exclusively. (These include the World Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency linked to the Jewish National Fund—and its subsidiaries);
Basic Law: Knesset (Amendment No. 7) (1985), adopted 10 years after UN Resolution 3379, which prohibits a political candidate from participating in an election on a platform that does not coincide with the exclusivist definition of the state of Israel as "the state of 'the Jewish people. "'

A state's legislation offers some of the most compelling evidence of the intent of its highest authorities. Israel's "basic laws," along with its military forces, are the most effective instruments for implementing the state's ideology, which is to exclude legally and physically the indigenous population from the land of historic Palestine to make way for settlers with "Jewish nationality. " These "basic laws" are the roots of enduring conflict in the Middle East.

Responding to a move to repeal the General Assembly's "Zionism-is-racism" resolution, its proponents may explain once and for all what is meant by this charge. With a view to the principles and purpose of international law, as affirmed in its pivotal decision of 1952, the General Assembly may thus be invited not only to bring fresh scrutiny to a long-dormant document, but also to rule, once again, on a matter vital to world peace and security.

Joseph Schechla, a Washington policy analyst specializing in ethnic conflict, is founding editor of Without Prejudice, a biannual journal on racism and racial discrimination.