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“70. The PRESIDENT: I call on the representative of Israel.
71. Mr. TEKOAH (Israel) I would be remiss in my duty if, in asking to speak today, I did not mention something which took place in our Organization last week and which directly concerns the Security Council. I refer to Iraq’s election on 15 October to membership of the Security Council of the United Nations.
72. Iraq’s election is a travesty of the Charter of the United Nations. It further debases the Security Council, the General Assembly and the entire Organization. Article 23 of the Charter clearly stipulates that in the election of non-permanent members of the Security Council due regard should be “specially paid, in the first instance to the contribution of Members of the United Nations to the maintenance of international peace and security”.
73. For the last 25 years, since the Arab invasion of Israel in 1948 in defiance of the United Nations, Iraq has pursued war against Israel, refusing to sign the armistice of 1949, which had been sponsored by the Security Council, and actively supporting terror warfare against Israel, and joining in the Egyptian-Syrian aggression of 6 October 1973. Throughout this period Iraq has openly proclaimed its objective to be the total destruction of a Member State and the denial to the Jewish people of Israel of its right to self-determination and freedom.
74. The election of Iraq to this Council, only a few days after it had resumed active aggression, again illustrates the shortcomings and failings of theGeneral Assembly and the Security Council in matters concerning the Middle East.
75. It was not my intention to speak at this stage of the meeting; the statement delivered by the representative of Saudi Arabia compels me, however, to do so. Only the other day I was interrupted five times in this very chamber in the course of expressing grief over the death of innocent civilian victims of the war, whether they be Egyptian, Syrian, Israeli, or nationals of other States. Yet today we listened to a statement by the representative of Saudi Arabia into which he succeeded in packing the maximum of nonsense into maximum of verbiage and venom. He did not stop at distorting fact and history. He insulted Heads of States, including those of permanent members of the Security Council. He slandered nations. He abused civilizations and religions. He extolled Hitler and anti-Semitism. Yet no one except me tried to call him to order. His falsifications and calumnies do not deserve any response. I should, however, like to refer to one point in his speech: his attack against Zionism—because he is not the only one who resorts to these perfidious views and expressions.
76 Zionism is the love of Zion. Zionism is the Jewish people’s liberation movement, the quest for freedom, for equality with other nations. Yet in an organization in which liberation movements are hailed and supported, the Jewish people’s struggle to restore its independence and sovereignty is maligned and slandered in an endless spate of malice and venom.
77. In his drive to annihilate the Jewish people, Hitler began by distorting the image of the Jew, by rewriting Jewish history, by fabricating some of the most odious historic and racial theories. The Arab Governments, in their campaign to complete Hitler’s crimes against the Jewish people and destroy the Jewish State, have adopted the same method of falsifying Jewish history, and in particular the meaning of the Zionist movement and the significance of its ideals.
78. What is Zionism? When the Jews, exiled from their land in the seventh century before the Christian era, sat by the rivers of Babylon and wept and prayed but also sought ways to go home, that was already Zionism when in a mass revolt against their exile they returned and rebuilt the temple and re-established their State, that was Zionism. When they were the last people in the entire Mediterranean basin to resist the forces of the Roman Empire and to struggle for independence, that was Zionism. When for centuries after the Roman conquest they refused to surrender and rebelled again and again against the invaders, that was Zionism. When, uprooted from their land by the conquerors and dispersed by them all over the world, they continued to dream and to strive to return to Israel, that was Zionism, When, during the long succession of foreign invaders, they tried repeatedly to regain sovereignty at least in part of their homeland, that was Zionism. When they volunteered from Palestine and from all over the world to establish Jewish armies that fought on the side of the Allies in the First World War and helped to end Ottoman subjugation, that was Zionism. When they formed the Jewish Brigade in the Second World War to fight Hitler, while Arab leaders supported him, that was Zionism. When Jews went to Nazi gas chambers with the name of Jerusalem on their lips, that was Zionism. When, in the forests of Russia and the Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe, Jewish partisans battled the Germans and sang of the land where palms are growing, that was Zionism. When Jews fought British colonialism while the Arabs of Palestine and the neighbouring Arab States were being helped by it, that was Zionism. Zionism is one of the world’s oldest anti-imperialist movements. It aims at securing for the Jewish people the rights possessed by other nations. It harbours malice towards none. It seeks cooperation and understanding with the Arab peoples and with their national movements.
79. Zionism is as sacred to the Jewish people as the national liberation movements are to the nations of Africa and Asia. Even if the Arab States are locked today in conflict with the Jewish national liberation movement, they must not stoop in their attitude towards it to the fanaticism and barbarism of the Nazis. If there is to be hope for peace in the Middle East, there must be between Israel and the Arab States mutual respect for each other’s sacred national values-not distortion and abuse.
80. Zionism was not born in the Jewish ghettoes of Europe, but on the battlefield against imperialism in ancient Israel. It is not an outmoded nationalistic revival but an unparalleled epic of centuries of resistance to force and bondage. Those who attack it attack the fundamental principles and provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.
81. Egypt’s and Syria’s Yom Kippur aggression against Israel is in its third week. What has it brought the aggressors? Nothing. Nothing but another debacle. Those who chose war and not peace have again exposed them-selves to the inevitable consequences of war. Those who preferred to deal with Israel through bloodshed and not agreement have brought bloodshed upon themselves. When, six years ago, the Arab assault against Israel’s existence was foiled and the armies of Egypt and Syria repelled to the 1967 cease-fire lines, Arab leaders complained of humiliation. The world was called upon to consider Arab failure to destroy Israel’s independence as Arab humiliation by Israel.
How is the world to regard the new repulse given to Arab aggression? What is the world to think and to say of Governments which for six years have prepared themselves for war, armed their military forces with the most sophisticated weapons, supplied in unlimited quantities, tried to weaken Israel by a war of attrition and by terror warfare, and then attacked on Judaism’s holiest of days;-attacked when all Israel was at prayer, fast and rest, when the cease-fire lines were manned by a handful of defenders; attacked with all the might of 4,900 tanks, 1,100 aircraft, hundreds of missiles, and over 800,000 men under arms, and then find themselves in the situation which they are in today? There is only one word to describe such a development: disgrace. Disgrace not for the Arab soldier who fought as a soldier fights; disgrace not for the Arab peoples, which, like all peoples in the world, aspire to peace; but dishonour and disgrace for those leaders of Egypt and Syria and their supporters who have led their States into more devastation and sorrow. It is nothing but disgrace to sacrifice the lives of thousands and thousands of young men in order to escape the necessity of building peace. It is nothing but disgrace to engulf the entire Middle East in flames in an attempt to sabotage preparations for peace.
82. In 1967 the plea of humiliation was an invention of Arab leaders to justify their rejection of peace and their refusal to negotiate peace with Israel. This time their disgrace is a fact. The annals of history mirror few instances in which a policy of war has come to a more ignominous fate. This time, no pretexts, no inventions, no pleas must be permitted to enable the Arab leadership to free itself from the consequences of its abject disgrace of preferring war over peace. They must be persuaded once and for all to abandon those policies which have caused the present conflagration.
83. To the Arab Governments the Egyptian-Syrian aggression of 6 October has brought failure and disgrace. To Israel it has confirmed the correctness of its views and the reality of its apprehensions. It is clear now that, after having launched war 25 years ago against Israel’s existence, Arab leadership still aims at Israel’s elimination as a sovereign member of the family of nations. The nature, the timing, the extent of the Yom Kippur aggression leave little room for doubt. The active participation of such States as Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Libya, which openly and officially go on denying till this very day Israel’s right to independence, strengthens this grim truth.
84. President Sadat’s close confidant and adviser Hassenein Heykal had no qualms about reiterating publicly the real objective of Egypt’s renewed assault. In his weekly article in Al Ahram he wrote the following on 19 October 1973, last Friday:
‘The aim at this phase is not a piece of territory in the Golan, the Golan as a whole, a part of Sinai, or all of Sinai. Nor is the problem Jerusalem, the West Bank of the Jordan River, Gaza and the rights of the Palestinians. The matter does not relate to the liberation of the Arab territories which were occupied since 5 June 1967, but strikes further and deeper against the future of Israel, even if this is not immediately apparent. If the Arabs will succeed in liberating by force their lands occupied on 5 June 1967, what can actually prevent them in the next phase from liberating by force Palestine itself?’”
Note: Tekoah’s quotation of Heykal was interrupted and resumed.
The quote is also cited here.
