Anti-Zionism=Anti-Semitism: Fact or Fable?

On November 10 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution defining Zionism as “a form of racism and racial discrimination.” The vote was 72-35 with 32 abstentions. A week earlier Abba Eban had written in the New York Times that “there is…no difference whatever between anti-Semitism and the denial of Israel's statehood. Classical anti-Semitism denies the equal rights of Jews as citizens within society. Anti-Zionism denies the equal rights of the Jewish people to its lawful sovereignty within the community of nations. The common principle in the two cases is discrimination.” Mr. Eban's words, coming as they did, not in the midst of a pro-Israel rally, but in a reflective column from a widely respected figure in the international community, a man who has not hesitated to criticize publicly aspects of his own government's policies toward the Arabs, must be accorded a special seriousness.