A half-century ago, Israel found itself deeply isolated when the United Nations passed a resolution equating Zionism with racism. The U.N. eventually repealed this Cold War relic, but today, Israel is again shunned by many nations because of the war in Gaza.
The recent ceasefire brokered by President Donald Trump offers the Jewish state a chance to recover, but it remains to be seen whether the damage to Israel’s standing is irreparable — including, most ominously, among Americans.
On Nov. 10, 1975, the U.N. General Assembly passed resolution 3379, which labeled Zionism “a form of racism and racial discrimination,” by a vote of 72-35, with 32 abstentions. The Soviet Union and Arab nations led the effort, which provoked a furious condemnation by the United States.
“The United States rises to declare before the General Assembly of the United Nations and before the world that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act,” said Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a former chief U.S. delegate who went on to become a Democratic senator from New York.
“A great evil has been loosed upon the world. The abomination of antisemitism has been given the appearance of international sanction. The General Assembly today grants symbolic amnesty — and more — to the murderers of the six million European Jews,” he said.
The New York Times reported that during the 4 1/2 hours of debate, only a few delegates spoke in favor of the resolution. One was Kuwait’s Fayez Abdallah Sayegh, who argued that many Jews oppose Zionist policies. He said Arabs had “reverence for Judaism,” and added, “We reject the equation between anti‐Zionism and antisemitism” — a sentiment expressed today by many of Israel’s opponents.
“The Jewish answer,” Time magazine observed in a story at the time, “is that today this is a distinction without a difference: attacking Zionism means threatening the very existence of Israel.”
In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel captured land from its Arab neighbors. Israel’s hold on the Gaza Strip and West Bank led many third-world and communist nations to end diplomatic relations with Israel, which helped fuel the Zionism=racism resolution eight years later.
In Washington, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called its passage “an example of the bloc voting, of the one-way morality, that has weakened the public support in the United Nations for the United Nations.” The Washington Post reported that 56 senators and nearly every House member cosponsored resolutions condemning the U.N. action.
“The General Assembly has decided to institutionalize one of the world’s most vile and ancient prejudices, antisemitism,” said former Republican New York Sen. James Buckley, who lost his reelection race to Moynihan the following year.
Later that week, the New York Times published an editorial headlined, “Shame of the U.N.”
“The unholy alliance of Communist and Arab Governments that pushed through the General Assembly the odious resolution equating Zionism with ‘racism’ was, in effect, challenging the very right to existence of Israel, a member state created by act of the United Nations itself,” the outlet said, adding that the votes in favor from virtually every communist nation reflected “their endemic antisemitism.”
Chaim Herzog, Israel’s former chief delegate who went on to become its president, said in a speech that the entire U.N. was becoming “the world center of antisemitism,” and tore up the text of the resolution, in a move former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) would have approved.
‘Dustbin of history’
In a September 1991 speech to the General Assembly, former President George H.W. Bush urged the member nations to repeal the resolution, arguing that the U.N. “cannot claim to seek peace and at the same time challenge Israel’s right to exist.” By then, the Soviet Union was also on board. Former Soviet Union acting Foreign Minister Boris Pankin said in a speech to the General Assembly that the USSR considered the resolution a “relic of the ice age.” A few months later, the Soviet Union would also be history.
Following Bush’s speech, his administration told American embassies to press nations to get on board with the repeal effort. An assistant secretary of state named John Bolton, who was indicted last month for allegedly storing and sharing classified records, helped run point for the United States.
“The U.N. can free itself from the hypocrisy that caused a crisis of confidence in the U.N. a decade ago — which still lingers to some extent today — by now definitively repudiating Resolution 3379,” Bolton wrote in a Dec. 16, 1991, op-ed on the eve of the vote. (He later called his work on this matter a “highlight of my professional career.”)
That day, former Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger introduced the repeal measure.
“We believe that with the world’s and this body’s passage into a new era, it is more than time to consign one of the last relics of the Cold War to the dustbin of history,” Eagleburger said. “We believe it is time to take this step, thereby recovering for the United Nations its reputation for fairness and impartiality.”
The vote that day proved to be far more decisive than the original one — 111 to 25 in favor of repeal, with 13 nations abstaining. Most of those opposed were Muslim and the hardcore communist nations of Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam, the New York Times reported.
Meanwhile, in a striking reversal, the Soviet Union and the former East Bloc nations all voted for repeal. After the tally was shown, delegates applauded — just as their forebears had done 50 years earlier when it passed.
Khalil Makkawi, Lebanon’s former U.N. representative, speaking on behalf of the Arab nations, said the move would encourage Israel to try to gain more Arab land.
“It would whet the appetite of Israeli extremists wishing to pursue their policy of creeping annexation,” he warned.
Renewed isolation
Today, we hear echoes of that debate, including last month, when Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, angered the Trump administration by passing a pair of symbolic votes in support of annexing parts of the occupied West Bank, which Palestinians want to be part of a future Palestinian state.
“If it was a political stunt, it was a very stupid political stunt, and I personally take some insult,” Vice President JD Vance said at the end of his trip to Israel. “The West Bank is not going to be annexed by Israel. The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel.”
The Knesset action was also a counterproductive move, given Israel’s increasing isolation. Several Western nations, including Britain, France, Canada, Portugal, and Australia, had already recently recognized Palestinian statehood. This was driven by anger at Israel’s conduct of its two-year war in Gaza, which led to the deaths of thousands of Palestinians.
The U.S. has remained Israel’s most steadfast ally, but among Americans, that support is eroding. In a stunning finding, a September New York Times-Siena University poll found that for the first time since the outlet started posing the question in 1998, more Americans sided with the Palestinians over the Israelis. Perhaps even more strikingly, 61% of American Jews said they believe that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, while 39% said it is guilty of genocide in the conflict, a recent Washington Post poll found.
In a September speech in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that “Israel is in a sort of isolation,” and said it would be forced to become a “super-Sparta” self-reliant nation. “There’s no choice; in the coming years, at least, we will have to deal with these attempts to isolate us,” he said.
Later that month, he received an icy reception at the U.N. reminiscent of the hostility Israel faced a half-century ago. Scores of delegates walked out in protest during his speech to the General Assembly.
Could that change in light of the subsequent Trump-powered ceasefire and hostage release? Trump certainly thinks so.
During an appearance on Hannity last month, Trump said Netanyahu called him and told him, “I can’t believe it. Everybody is liking me now.”
Trump continued, “More importantly, they are loving Israel again, and they really are.” That was classic Trump hyperbole, of course, but the president has been urging Israel to take steps to at least reduce its isolation. After pushing Israel to accept the ceasefire deal, Trump has repeatedly counseled Netanyahu to acknowledge that it can’t be an island politically.
“Ultimately, the world’s a very big place. And I’ve said a lot. I’ve said this piece of land is very small … I said to Bibi, ‘You know, the world is big, and it’s strong … ultimately, the world wins,’” Trump said in a speech to the Knesset last month, using Netanyahu’s nickname. Over the past few months, he added, “the world wanted peace and Israel wanted peace.”
Trump was more explicit in an October interview with Time magazine.
“I said to Bibi, ‘Bibi, you can’t fight the world. You can fight individual battles, but the world’s against you,’” he said. “And Israel is a very small place compared to the world.”
“He had to stop because the world was going to stop him,” Trump added. “You know, I could see what was happening. You could see what was happening. And Israel was becoming very unpopular. And that’s what I meant when I said ‘the world.’ There are a lot of powers out there, okay, powers outside of the region.”
He also bluntly said he wouldn’t allow Israel to annex the West Bank.
UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE WILL LONG THREATEN GAZANS DESPITE TENUOUS CEASEFIRE
“It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries,” Trump said. “It will not happen. Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”
That was a remarkable statement from a president whom Netanyahu constantly praises as the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House.
Frederic J. Frommer is a writer and sports and politics historian. He has written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Atlantic, History.com, and other national publications. He is the author of several books, including You Gotta Have Heart: Washington Baseball from Walter Johnson to the 2019 World Series Champion Nationals. He is working on a book about 1970s baseball.