Fifty years after a majority of the members of the UN General Assembly adopted the notorious Resolution 3379 that labeled Zionism as racism, this document and action remain singular milestones in the post-Holocaust version of Jew-hatred.
In response to the resolution, Chaim Herzog, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN at the time, took the podium, where he ripped up a copy, declaring that it was “born of a deep, pervading feeling of antisemitism.”
US Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan, too, angrily rejected the resolution, saying that America “does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, [and] will never acquiesce in this infamous act.” As Moynihan observed, “the idea that Jews are a ‘race’ was invented not by Jews but by those who hated Jews.”
Main sponsors of hate
The Soviet Union, in alliance with the Arab League, was the main sponsor of the resolution and the lengthy campaign of hate that preceded the vote. And although the USSR and its empire collapsed 35 years ago, its role as the leader of anti-Israel demonization has been filled by the heads of institutions that exploit the facades of anti-racism, human rights, and international humanitarian law.
They include the leaders of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders, and others in this powerful network that are often falsely described as altruistic, politically neutral nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
In addition to the multi-billion-dollar NGO advocacy industry, officials from UN agencies such as the Human Rights Council join in legitimizing and promoting the hypocrisy that singles out Israel, thereby continuing and extending the infamous legacy of the demonizing “Zionism is racism” propaganda.
Through extensive use of double standards and invented norms, the unaccountable officials of these institutions have concocted and directed a series of blood libels, particularly after October 7, through systematically false accusations of “war crimes,” “apartheid,” “starvation,” and “genocide.” Their demonization is automatically parroted by many journalists, academics, and politicians, under the guise of “expert reports,” and then cited in justifying large-scale harassment of Jews and violent antisemitic attacks.
As during the era when the Kremlin led the political war and media pogrom, today’s NGO and UN combatants obsessively targeting Israel are motivated by a number of factors. One thread stems from classical antisemitism based on Christian and Islamic religious and cultural themes, such as “replacement theology,” in which adherents reject the return of the Jewish people – members of the scorned predecessor religion – to the world stage as a sovereign nation, equal in status to the world’s 190 other countries.
Liberal, Marxist antisemitism
This form of antisemitism is often hidden under a heavy layer of liberal and even Marxist themes and rhetoric. The torrent of condemnations of Israel from Muslim and Arab NGO officials, as well as from New York mayor-elect Zohran Madmani and Francesca Albanese, the UN Human Rights Council’s “special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories,” are prominent examples.
For other pathological Israel haters, particularly in the human rights NGO industry, the primary motivation comes from the ideology of progressivism and post-colonial hostility to the West, democracy, and capitalism. In their Orwellian new-speak derived from the earlier Soviet version, Zionism is condemned as a form of “settler colonialism” (although there is nothing colonial about Jews returning to their ancient homeland).
As Prof. Michael Ignatieff observed, NGO activists who “espouse the universalist language of human rights … actually use it to defend highly particularist causes.” He specifically cited the example of “persons who care about human rights violations committed against Palestinians [who] may not care so much about human rights violations committed by Palestinians against Israelis.”
Ideological straightjacket
For post-colonialists, the West is automatically held responsible for wars and suffering, and those identified as members of the “global South,” particularly Palestinians, are transformed into perpetual victims. Within this prism, for these and other human rights activists, the Jewish state is seen as intrinsically malevolent.
Based on this 1960s ideological straitjacket and a deeply personal antipathy towards Israel and Zionism, Ken Roth, (HRW’s executive director from 1993-2022), led the highly disproportionate campaigns that exploited the language of human rights.
In a 2009 opinion piece published in The New York Times, HRW founder Robert Bernstein castigated Roth for abandoning the organization’s “original mission to pry open closed societies” and instead turning the focus to Israel, an open democratic society, and turning the nation-state of the Jewish people “into a pariah state.”
Joining these campaigns, “highly respected” Palestinian NGOs involved in demonization and lawfare mimic this rhetoric - many of which are funded by European governments and whose officials are linked to People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror groups.
Palestinian NGO aboard HRW
For example, Palestinian rights NGO Al Haq submitted a report – to the UN’s permanent Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including east Jerusalem – claiming to document Israel's “Policies to Maintain and Entrench its Settler-Colonial Apartheid Regime: Violent Suppression of Demonstrations and Ensuing Wilful Killing and Injuries, Arbitrary Detention, Torture, and Smear and Delegitimization Campaigns against Human Rights Defenders and Organizations.” Shawan Jabarin, who heads Al Haq, was appointed by Roth to HRW’s Middle East Advisory Board.
For many years, the efforts to counter the NGO and UN replacements for the Kremlin in singling out Zionism – and Israel for demonization – were not effective. In the “post-truth” era, presenting detailed evidence of the lies and propaganda does not lead to a loss of influence for these institutions and their officials.
Instead, as in other battlefields, it is necessary to weaken the sources of their power. In particular, confronting the donors – both private and governmental – who provide their large budgets is a necessary step in this long overdue process.
The writer is the founder and president of NGO Monitor.