A Talk With Israel's New UN Ambassador
SAMUELS, GERTRUDE
FIGHTING FANATICISM A Talk with Israel's New UN Ambassador BY GERTRUDE SAMUELS Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's first native-born Ambassador to the United Nations, presented his credentials to...
...If the Soviet Union is really interested in the peace that it proclaims, then the best thing it could do would be to stop arming the radical Arab states and start encouraging them to resolve their differences with us at the negotiating table...
...We can object...
...Netanyahu: This, too, is potentially a mortal blow to the UN...
...My parents met at Hebrew University, where father was in the first graduating class...
...Samuels: Let's see...
...Samuels: Finally, Mr...
...I would say this vote demonstrates that the popular perception of the Arab-Israeli conflict as being the core of the various conflicts of the Middle East has been shown to be not true...
...or we can say: Gentlemen, check your fanaticism at the door...
...Samuels: Will you tolerate the PLO's presence at the Security Council table...
...That knowledge I got simply from going around, schlepping around, talking to people...
...So they devised a system called the ostrakon, which allowed them to ostracize that party—to expel him—by popular vote...
...He died in the world of terrorism...
...They are committed to delegitimizing Israel, and they've banded together to vilify the Jewish people...
...Would you enlarge on that...
...In his beige-and-blue, book-lined office the young, shirt-sleeved diplomat often punctuated his answers to questions with a spontaneous smile...
...The prime example is the ancient Athenian Assembly, the mother of all democracies...
...Samuels: Given that hostility, just what is it the State of Israel wants from this organization of 159 states...
...They used other parties and powers to lobby in many countries...
...They took the roundabout route...
...Netanyahu: I belonged to no political party...
...The minute you undermine that principle of universality, you are shaking the foundation, the pillar on which this whole body stands...
...When I came to the Washington Embassy two years ago, my contacts proved to be quite valuable...
...I do see the possibility of getting some sort of arrangement with them in a limited fashion on the Lebanese front...
...He did his Army service with a special para-troop unit, was cited for outstanding command, and following the 1973 Yom Kippur War was promoted to the rank of captain...
...There was nothing they could pin on him...
...Netanyahu: No...
...Samuels: Such as...
...In short, they put their whole prestige, the whole so-called automatic anti-Israel bloc, on the line...
...When Yoni died we established a foundation in his name, the Jonathan Institute, a research organization on terrorism...
...I think the step had a salutary effect, and the United States has since gone back in...
...What unites all Israeli ambassadors is apolitical understanding of Israel' s role in the world, and of the forces aligned against it...
...Anti-Semitism, regrettably, still exists...
...Yoni had always believed that this problem was going to spread, and his prognosis was correct...
...I wouldn't say that Iraq's abstention Was a result of their becoming lovers of Zion...
...Samuels: Replying to those enemies in your first speech in the General Assembly, you said, "We can continue to tolerate efforts to turn this body into a parody of itself...
...Netanyahu: Yes, there's a fissure there...
...Now as far as a breakthrough with Syria, I don't see it in the near future...
...participation in the UN is a complex one...
...Netanyahu: Yes, but my undergraduate degree was in architecture...
...The seeds of its destruction were sown when one faction of Athenians wanted to throw out a certain Athenian who was totally innocent of any wrongdoing...
...We sons, we were three brothers...
...Ambassador, in your previous post as Deputy Chief of Mission at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, did you have any contact with Arabs, or Arab intermediaries...
...Samuels: You have said the attackers are totalitarian states, military dictatorships and medieval theocracies...
...It's impossible to understand the tremendous growth of this cancer without understanding the pivotal role played by the PLO from the late '60s onward...
...The nations are obvious...
...Their ambitions are quite unlimited, even though they can't quite realize them at the moment...
...You can go down the list of agencies that were noble in their conception, but that some members sought to use for nefarious purposes...
...Very few people know that...
...While at MIT I took a deep interest in political science, took courses at both MIT and Harvard...
...A majority of members understand this, as we saw in the resounding defeat of the Iranian resolution to oust Israel -80-41, with 22 abstaining...
...How do you see your role...
...What did you mean...
...Ambassador, where did your parents come from—and why to Israel...
...It is very clear which side of the ledger we come under...
...Actually, and above all, my interest was to deal with the problems of Arab propaganda in roads in the United States...
...Netanyahu: I did have contacts...
...I became director of information of the Israeli Student Organization...
...Samuels: And before you became UN Ambassador...
...Netanyahu: Terrorism...
...His mood became grim, though, when the talk touched on Israel's enemies at the UN or on terrorism in the world today...
...Netanyahu: There's no question that certain members inject the poison of anti-Semitism into the bloodstream of the UN in a systematic and deliberate way...
...One member was expelled, then another, then another, until ultimately the Athenian Assembly lost all moral and political authority...
...They sent dozens of their ambassadors to dozens of capitals...
...Appointed to the UN post by Israel's new National Unity Government, Netanyahu, who turned 35 on October 21, is a dynamic, handsome six-footer...
...But the Syrians are committed—and have dedicated their national resources—to the holy war with Israel...
...From 1982-84 he was Deputy Chief at the Israeli Embassy in Washington...
...The United States has threatened to leave unesco because of its attempt to censor the world press, among other things...
...The defeat, by the way, had implications for the Warsaw Pact structure and its defenses in Eastern Europe, which had to be altered...
...As long as we and the other democracies uphold the same principles, then we shall stay here...
...We cannot for the moment make that body live up to its principles...
...Netanyahu: The inherent problem of the UN is that the addition of states includes some that are basically committed to oppose the principles which established this body...
...Despite my double workload at MIT, I had to get involved with this...
...Ambassador, to your background and how you feel it has prepared you for your UN post...
...So that might be an inhibiting factor, although I must say that the uninhibited Soviet support for some Arab states, after each defeat by Israel, is what sustains their belief that one day they may be able to overcome Israel...
...Were you also implying that they are anti-Semitic...
...So this vote reflects the fact that the Middle Eastern countries have other interests than the ritualistic espousal of the obsessive anti-Israel campaign...
...Jordan and Lebanon didn't participate in the vote, that's true...
...They write about it, they speak about it, and they act on it...
...Samuels: The term parody meaning...
...Let's take the most dramatic one—the Iran-Iraq war, now in its fifth year, the bloodiest battle of the second half of this century with no end in sight...
...The crisis of U.S.-Israel relations during the Lebanese campaign, and the tremendous improvement and flowering of that relationship in the last 18 months, was something I was involved in...
...The United States withdrew from that agency...
...Ambassador, how do you see the mood in America today in relation to Israel, compared with the mood when you were a student at MIT...
...Particularly after the Yom Kippur War of 1973,1 became very much aware of the upsurge of Arab propaganda...
...Colonel Jonathan (Yoni) Netanyahu was the only fatality the Israelis suffered during the bold rescue...
...But are you saying there's genuine movement—a genuine change—in the Arab-Moslem position...
...The specific conditions relating to that situation the Syrians are very much aware of...
...Netanyahu: On my mother's side, my great-grandparents came to what was then Palestine in 1896...
...They were Zionists, almost proto-Zionists...
...Netanyahu: We have to be realistic...
...FIGHTING FANATICISM A Talk with Israel's New UN Ambassador BY GERTRUDE SAMUELS Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's first native-born Ambassador to the United Nations, presented his credentials to Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar on October 1. Soon afterward, Iran sought unsuccessfully for the third consecutive year to have Israel expelled from the world organization...
...Netanyahu: Most of my predecessors, including Abba Eban, were not lawyers...
...It should be fought with every ounce of strength we have...
...Every terrorist group operating in the world today, literally, has trained in the PLO's ministate, ha's been supported by the PLO, sometimes has had joint operations with the PLO...
...This is the danger the UN faces...
...Of your recent predecessors, Chaim Herzog was an international affairs scholar, a general in Israel's wars, and he is now the President of Israel...
...This is a parody...
...You have in six weeks of fighting there more casualties than in all of the Arab-Israeli wars put together...
...Iddo is a doctor in Israel...
...He was 30 when he was killed on that mission...
...Samuels: Mr...
...They went from Lithuania to, surprisingly, Minnesota, and from Minnesota to Palestine...
...Israeli commandos, led by his 30-year-old brother, raided the Entebbe airport to free 103 hostages held by international terrorists andIdi Amin's Ugandan Army...
...We do object...
...For his debut at the 39th General Assembly, its new permanent representative delivered ascathing speech denouncing Iran's move as "an attempt on the very life of this body...
...Samuels: You have said the challenging of Israel's credentials was also an attack on the very life of the UN...
...I felt I knew the stuff, knew these people, had come into territory I was intimately acquainted with...
...I represent the State of Israel, as I believe all Israel's diplomats should and do...
...Yehuda Blum, who was here f or the past six years, was an international lawyer and a unesco Fellow at the University of Sydney...
...This means that any'nation can come and join the body, meet, talk, and sometimes even agree with other nations...
...That July 4, an event that stirred the world also changed the Ambassador's life...
...Samuels: You took engineering courses...
...And after that tremendous investment of energy, they did not even hold their line...
...You know, each nation has a flag and an anthem— it's a sign of recognition...
...And that system proved irresistible...
...Do you expect it ever to extend to Syria...
...Benjamin, already working for the Boston Consulting Group, then helped create and later served as executive director of the Jonathan Institute, a Jerusalem research foundation on terrorism...
...my graduate degree in management...
...Samuels: Mr...
...Netanyahu: We're not simply going to get out of Lebanon and allow the PLO to get back in...
...Censor the free press of the world...
...Netanyahu: Neither...
...There were only two votes that changed from last year's 79-43, with 19 abstaining...
...Samuels: I'd like to turn briefly, Mr...
...Netanyahu: It's not a secret that the UN has often been unfriendly to Israel, and sometimes in outright assault against its legitimacy...
...So I became very active in the Institute, to increase the understanding of international terrorism, and the way that democratic nations have to organize themselves to fight it...
...Some have been turned into kangaroo courts, where not only the matter of Israel but also the interests of other countries have been subverted in the most irresponsible manner...
...I think that because of recent experiences in the Middle East, including Lebanon, the United States has discovered who its friends are there and who its foes are...
...Samuels: Earlier we touched on that alleged crack in the Arab bloc...
...Samuels: Whom do you really represent here, the LikudParty or Prime Minister Shimon Peres' Labor Party...
...I'm speaking about the general American public and America's leaders, many of whom I've come to know in the last two years...
...Using the instrument of expulsion as a method of settling scores between members will simply destroy the organization...
...The United Nations was established with a commitment to peace and against war, while the PLO is the quintessential organization that has espoused the opposite...
...Samuels: What of the leverage that the Soviet Union has with the Syrians...
...He is a writer as well, and he has edited International Terrorism: Challenge and Response (Transaction Books, 1981), a«c/The Letters of Jonathan Netanyahu (Random House, 1980...
...Netanyahu: The underpinning of the UN is the idea of universality...
...Samuels: The American Jewish public or...
...Netanyahu: The question of Israel's Gertrude Samuels reports regularly on the United Nations for this magazine...
...Samuels: Is it also viewed as a crack in the Arab-Moslem block...
...The simplest way I can answer it is this: As long as the democratic nations —the United States, the Western European democracies—maintain their presence in this body, it is in Israel's national interest to do the same...
...Samuels: Mr...
...Samuels: Thank you, Mr...
...his family came in 1920...
...Samuels: Was it so resounding...
...Netanyahu: The Jewish community is obvious...
...We met for the exclusive interview the Ambassador granted The New Leader at the Israeli Consulate in Manhattan, a block west of Turtle Bay...
...Moscow wouldn't like to see the Soviet-armed Syrians trounced again this close to their dramatic defeat in Lebanon...
...Netanyahu: That leverage might certainly have an inhibiting effect...
...The next year he returned to the U. S. to complete his undergraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
...I not only got to know European leaders in those years after 1976 but I also got to know Washington very well, and the political forces that were coming up...
...Netanyahu: Nevertheless, fewer members supported the Iranian proposal, despite the fact that this was the first year the Iranians put on an international effort of unprecedented size...
...Just after I graduated from MIT, my older brother, Jonathan, fell at Entebbe...
...The vote is therefore viewed as a major defeat, although I'm not sure that it will deter Iran from trying again next year...
...Iraq abstained...
...Father was born in Poland...
...Mother was born in Petach Tikvah...
...That, indeed, it takes a back seat to problems and conflicts of the Arab-Moslem world...
...But one of the charms of those contacts was that they remained private...
...How do you feel about the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) being permitted to sit at the Security Council table...
...It was evident on the campuses and beyond the campuses—perhaps bolstered by the rush of oil riches...
...That is unacceptable...
...We don't want to abandon that simply because our enemies want us to disappear from the international scene...
...Egypt, of course, supported the maj ority vote...
...Ambassador, more than any of his counterparts in the United Nations, Israel's permanent representative has in a sense always been the image of his country, perhaps because of the antagonisms in the world organization toward the Jewish State...
...Netanyahu: Several UN agencies have been politicized beyond recognition...
...Samuels: I understand...
...Netanyahu: There's no question that it has improved...
...The PLO has made terrorism an art form...
...It is important for Israel to make its voice heard, loud and clear, to fend off attacks vigorously, to assert its case—its case—in the most credible and firm way...
...There's a very close identification of the American public...
...The same was true of the International Labor Organization (ILO...
...in 1976, he earned a Master's degree from MIT's Sloan School of Management...
...Having this group, which is committed to systematic assault on innocent people—that's its modus operandi—to have them honored in the UN means that there is something very, very wrong here...
...And we'll make sure that this forum is not merely used to attack us...
Vol. 67 • October 1984 • No. 19
