50 Years Later: How the UN’s ‘Zionism is Racism’ Still Fuels Antisemitism
As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the U.N.’s infamous resolution describing the liberation movement of the Jewish people, Zionism, as racism, we can draw a direct link between that moment and the surge of anti-Zionism and antisemitism five decades later.
This resolution was a product of the Soviet propaganda machine. Concocted by the Soviets as one more way to attack the West, the United States, and the Jewish people, it won the overwhelming support of the majority of U.N. members, mostly authoritarian states. It is no accident that it closely followed the end of the Yom Kippur War, started by allies of the Soviets—Egypt and Syria—but ending with their having to beg for pressure on Israel before they were decimated by the Israel Defense Forces.
While the Soviets saw this as a major propaganda victory against the West, for Israel and the Jewish people it set off the denigration of the Jewish state as a moral outlier by so many around the world and made Zionism a dirty word. This was so even though in 1991, following the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.N. rescinded this accusation against the Jewish state.
Unfortunately, the damage had been done. The fact that for years this resolution, signed off by the U.N., circulated freely and appeared in libraries around the world meant that a generation of young people grew up with the understanding that the word Zionism was synonymous with the great crime of racism. The fact that this had no connection to the truth—that Israel was the only true democracy in the region, that the Jewish people had returned to their ancient homeland under the auspices of the same U.N. 27 years earlier—seemed to have little impact on those mostly exposed to the 1975 vote.
And 50 years later, we are seeing how the State of Israel and the Jewish people are paying the price for this infamous moment. When the massacre of October 7 happened two years ago, in many international circles, instead of the normal empathy with victims of terrorism, one heard rationalization and even support for the terrorists. It wasn’t merely disagreements with Israeli policy that led to this egregious reaction, but a denial of the legitimacy of the Jewish state. Echoes of the U.N. resolution rang in calls of “From the River to the Sea” or in the adage, “By any means necessary.”
Antisemitic attacks on Jews around the world, which skyrocketed, were framed in the anti-Zionist context: Israel accused of apartheid—the more recent version of “Zionism is racism.” A state allegedly built on such sinful values had no reason to be supported, and Jews who identified with such a state had no right to safety.
Campus antisemitism can be linked as well to 1975. Young people were exposed for years to this image of Zionism, and so when the true test of their fairness emerged following October 7, many failed because subliminally they had been exposed from a young age to these views of the Jewish movement for liberation in their historic homeland.
If this is what Zionism is, then who is to say that terrorists have no right to invade Israel? If the Jewish state is based on an idea that is fundamentally racist, what right does that state have to exist in a world trying to come to grips with racism?
And in America, if Jews are supporting a racist state, then what right do they have to participate in civil rights events or any respectable institution?
In sum, we are still paying heavily for that terrible moment at the U.N.. While the idea was propagated by the Soviets to score propaganda points, other anti-Zionist figures and institutions have both kept it alive as a highly useful weapon and made sure that young people would be educated about the evils of Zionism.
Finally, on this 50th anniversary, the resolution is alive even though it was long ago rescinded because it serves the ongoing purpose of reducing the guilt of the West for its role in the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust. The “Zionism is racism” resolution was partly an attempt to equalize the guilt: “We had our haters—the Nazis and those who were collaborators and bystanders during the Holocaust. And you Jews have your haters—the racist Jewish state and now the genocide in Gaza.”
We are still paying the price for what happened 50 years ago today.