EDITORIAL:

...at the same time, U.S...

...In this analysis, the "war" against Zionism is only the latest metamorphosis of the myth, this time directed against the great enterprise of the modern Jewish people concretized in the State of Israel...

...the holocaust engulfed an assimilated and unsuspecting German Jewish community...

...Under the circumstances, it is hardly unusual that Jewish sensitivities should be quickened by the action in the United Nations...

...Scholars like Professor Emil Fackenheim of the University of Toronto see anti-Zionism as the newest development in what is termed the hatred of the Jewish people as primeval myth, a myth that assumes a different, fashionable aspect according to given times...

...It affects no one's status in the United Nations...

...In the Middle Ages, it was religious bigotry...

...others would have the U.S...

...Right now," Arnold Forster of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith said recently, "if I went out into the street in almost any city of America and asked the first twenty-five persons I met what Zionism is, hardly anyone would be able to tell me...

...propaganda for propaganda's sake...

...policy is not completely divorced from public sentiment...

...Anti-Zionism as an expression of anti-Semitism is not irrational phobia nor a concept peculiar to watchdog Jewish organizations...

...The United Nations, for all its newly developed flaws, remains the most important forum for international debate and opinion in the world -indeed, the only truly international forum...

...Similarly, it is not to demean the United Nations to suggest that it is important, being the forum it is, for the steam it sometimes lets off rattling pressure cookers...

...The trick during this campaign and throughout this new period of tension and concern will be to resist temptations to reprisal and vindictiveness against the United Nations for the travesty worked by the new majority there...

...ANTI-ZIONISM/ANTI-SEMITISM The unfortunate deed is done...

...it is rather a determination by a particular element of the membership...

...It would be an enormous tragedy if anti-Zionism spilled over into anti-Semitism more than may already have been the case-which makes the more urgent the educational campaign launched by a number of Jewish organizations to acquaint people generally with the true meaning of Zionism and the theological and psychological identification of Jews the world over with Israel as the Land sacred to Jewish history and vital to Jewish safety and survival as a people...

...The General Assembly of the United Nations has voted 72 to 35, with 32 abstentions, in favor of the Arab-promoted resolution that presumptuously defines Zionism as "a form of racism and racial discrimination...

...There are those who would have the United States withdraw from the world body entirely, and those who would have the U.S...

...It may seem somewhat superfluous that much of this educational campaign will be conducted in the United States...

...The vote was a perversion of logic, if not for some a direct expression of anti-Semitism, whatever Arab and some Third World protestations that they were acting not against Jews but against Zionism...

...Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are not precisely synonymous words, and of course it is possible to criticize elements of Israeli policy without falling into one 'ism' or the other...

...At the same time, however, that resolution has the profoundest implications, for it brings into doubt the intellectual and political integrity of the world body, just as surely as it brings Zionism under unfair onus wherever in the world people are disposed to take the UN seriously...

...But presumptions are dangerous...

...If it has disappointed hopes for world peace 'time and again, it still retains its promise if not as peacemaker, then as time-maker so that peace may be worked at...

...boycott the General Assembly or not participate in its votes...

...Ultimately, of course, the resolution casts the welfare of Israel itself under a shadow, since Israel is the fruit of a successful Zionism-by Zionism being understood the unfolding of that ancient Jewish aspiration, with roots in the Bible, for a homeland in the Land of the Prophets...

...The question now is what effects that action will have for the world body and for world Jewry...

...The Inquisition, it has been noted, followed the golden age of Spanish Jewry...

...in the nineteenth century, economic ills...

...The worry with respect to the UN resolution is that it will become a cloak under which one hate will become a code word for the other, with consequences threatening to the existence of Israel as a state and the welfare of Jews as a people...

...in the earlier part of this century, pseudo-scientific racism...

...In this context, the surest way to insure United States firmness on the side of Israel is to educate at the grassroots on the validity of the Zionist movement...

...If the recent resolution on Zionism falls into this category, the world can be consoled.consoled...

...The United States is far and away Israel's staunchest supporter...

...The United States not only voted against the UN resolution, but its delegation headed by Daniel P. Moynihan fought the resolution from the draft stage in the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee with a zeal worthy of an Old Testament prophet...

...The resolution has no binding force...

...In a sense, the General Assembly action was meaningless-sheer theater...

...These are understandable temptations, but not advisable actions...

...This may seem like a large leap from reality to the fanciful, but larger leaps of history have been made where Jewish interests were involved with results that have been catastrophic for Jews...

...withhold funds or punish the UN in other ways...