Fair Game

...At another: "My best friends are Jews...

...Every one of the signatories had received copies of the UN observers' repcrts on which side had done the attacking...

...He claimed that the embassies of 10 countries had been destroyed...

...He is a man who can read a dispatch from Izvestia with a straight face...

...What cease-fire...

...The happy news did not abate Malik's fury...

...Their suits are dark...

...Beneath those bright robes beats the heart of a true delegate...

...Malik's touchiness about the charge of anti-Semitism was understandable...

...A few minutes later, the Egyptian delegate reported that he had just been informed by his government that there had been an air raid on Cairo...

...Huang of China WE MUST NOT leave out the People's Republic of China, whose contribution to the proceedings was to attack anybody who evinced any inclination to end the fighting...

...This Malik, florid and stolid in debate, is an exemplary Soviet spokesman, on the model of Andrei Vishinsky, prosecutor of deviation-ists...

...Within hours of the outbreak of fighting came a rush of support for Egypt and Syria from assorted champions of National Liberation...

...Soon, like a Broadway producer who bars unfriendly critics from his shows, Egypt ordered UN military observers out of the Suez Canal area...

...The Foreign Minister of Tunisia urged Israel not to turn "Jews everywhere into traitors against their own countries...

...He can simulate hatred and indignation at the drop of an adjective and he drops many abusive adjectives...

...Jeanne Martin Cisse of Guinea, who favors bright gowns and headgear appropriate to her sex and geography, the 15 Council delegates and their accomplices do not make a colorful bunch...

...When Yosef Tekoah of Israel offered condolences, Malik interrupted on a point of order...

...In energetically advertising the fallacious argument about the so-called detente, their purpose is none other than to lull the will of the Arab and Palestinian people to fight against aggression...

...His delegation, he hollered, was "unwilling to hear excuses and condolences irom a representative of the murderers and international gangsters...

...When it came to a vote on the Kissinger-Brezhnev cease-fire, the venerable Huang abstained even from abstention...

...Since the invention of the big-power veto, it has been acknowledged by all that where the major nations disagree, the UN Security Council can do little...

...Damascus had been bombed, but the Soviet Embassy had not been hit, and apparently no Soviet citizen (and certainly not 6 or 36) had been killed...

...With the exception of Mrs...

...Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN UN Watching DURING the early days of the late war in the Middle East, I took occasion to watch the United Nations Security Council go through its motions, and I can't get out of my mind those scenes at Turtle Bay as the UN was celebrating its 28th anniversary...

...Malik of the USSR YAKOV MALIK of the Soviet Union lost no opportunity to feed the flames and kick up the smoke...

...Then, like any sensible strategist digging a second line of defense behind a weak front, he argued to the satisfaction of an evident majority of the Security Council that there was in fact no cease-fire to begin with...

...The Chinese delegate, Huang Hua, did what he had to do without missing a beat: "Overtly and covertly conniving at and supporting the Israeli policies of expansion and aggression, the two superpowers have directly inflated the aggressive arrogance of the Israeli Zionists...

...Golda Meir and General Moshe Dayan as "international criminals...

...Its powerless-ness was amply confirmed in October, for which we may all be grateful...

...Soon other delegates were beginning their speeches with the aside that it was "immaterial" who attacked whom...

...The Egypto-Syrian line was supported in almost identical language by both the USSR and China, competitors for the medal of Most Reliable Friend of the Arab States—but it is not permissible today for any representative of China to give a speech that does not excoriate the USSR, even when the two governments are in accord on the matter at hand...

...Commenting that it reminded him of the acts of the Nazis, he denounced Mrs...

...Malik, returned from wherever he had gone, thanked everybody, with the explicit exception of the Israeli representative...

...Responding to Tekoah's periodic references to anti-Semitism, Malik declared that the Soviet Union "is a model of total equality and equal opportunity...

...In accord with custom, at the start of the Security Council debate, if that is the word, interested parties who were not members—in this instance Egypt, Israel and Syria?took their places at the ends of the horseshoe table, where the man from Tel Aviv could look directly across at the man from Moscow...

...It recalls those years when one had to visit a classy nightclub to catch a glimpse of female flesh...

...All the Council members delivered condolences to all parties...

...they are only slightly less in uniform than the uniformed Chinese...

...He told the Council of "confirmed" reports of the deaths of six Soviet citizens in the Soviet Cultural Center during an Israeli air raid on Damascus and unconfirmed reports of the deaths of 30 persons in the Soviet Embassy...

...There is nothing so absurd that he cannot utter it, with no danger that he will burst out laughing...

...When they speak, the well-lighted room seems to darken, and here Mrs...

...He explained that even though his reports were wrong, his reaction was correct...

...A couple of days after the outbreak of fighting, the nonaligned nations submitted a declaration to the Secretary-General condemning "Israel's aggression against Egypt and Syria...

...And he walked out, to the applause of the galleries and a couple score of non-aligned diplomats crowded along the sides of the room...

...Egypt's Mohammed el-Zayyat repeated his allegation that the Israelis had attacked first...

...He learned his stuff under masters in Stalin's Russia...

...So the Council had a choice: either the Israelis struck first this time, in which case they were culpable, or the Egyptians struck first, in which case they were not culpable since there was no cease-fire...

...Despite the jargon everybody knew the man had a point: While Malik was blustering and the U.S...

...delegate John Scali was marking time, their betters in Washington and Moscow were arriving secretly at secret covenants...

...General Idi Amin Dada, President of Uganda, who not long ago liberated his country from Asians, called for the expulsion of the arrogant and intransigent Israelis from the United Nations...

...He inquired: "Is it not because you wish to exterminate the Palestinians that we have to exterminate you...

...At one point he said: "There is no racial discrimination or hatred among us...

...The admission to the UN over the years of many small "nonalign-ed" states, which are really well aligned with the Arab countries in this cause, guarantees defeat for Israel in any vote...

...The recent experience suggests that in critical instances, the Security Council itself is likely to become a stage for the exhibition of common fatuities, hatreds and bushawah—an embarrassment to reason, an affront to taste, a parody of all that it was created to correct...

...The world organization's official involvement in the crisis began on the afternoon of October 6, when UN observers reported that Egyptian ground forces had crossed the Suez Canal and Syrian troops had advanced beyond the existing cease-fire lines...

...The Soviet Government, liberator of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, took its stand "as a reliable friend of the Arab States" against Israel's "aggressive ambitions," "expansionist policy," "violence," "banditry," "acts of provocation," and other phrases that would soon be bouncing through the Security Council chamber...

...Still, its friends have always contended that the very existence of the organization should serve at least to contain passions until the time grows ripe to use its good offices for reconciliation or accommodation...

...Cisse offered no relief: "We want to assure our brothers, the peoples of Egypt and Syria, of our unconditional support for the struggle they are waging to liberate their usurped territories...

...Had not President Anwar el-Sadat declared an end to the cease-fire in March 1971...

...Since the passing of the Honorable John Rankin, there has been no public forum in the United States where one can enjoy the dosage of anti-Jewish innuendo available today at the United Nations...

...As these movements were in progress, Cairo's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Damascus' Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs reported to the President of the General Assembly that they were being attacked by Israel...

...They have spent too much of their lives in gatherings of this sort, and appear to catch dreariness from each other...

...He never blushes...

...Of the world organization's 135 members, more than half like to think of themselves as neutral, and their rote contributions during the first week of the Mideast war did not make a powerful argument for Open Admissions...

...He subsists on sentences like: "One of the sacred principles of our foreign policy is our struggle against aggression...

...Shortly after this lively session had run its course, it was established that Cairo had not been bombed...