74. When I had the opportunity to congratulate you last week on your election to the presidency of the General Assembly, Mr. President, I expressed the hope that this session would take us further on the road to peace. In reiterating my congratulations today, I express my Government's deep respect and regard for your predecessor, Mr. Sosa Rodriguez of Venezuela, who gave high expression to the traditions of Latin America in international statesmanship.
75. It is our custom in this debate to make an annual re view of the human condition. From no other platform can the future of the world community be surveyed in the spirit of responsible authority which moves us here. This is the first generation in which the great majority of the human race lives in sovereign independence. Nearly all its nations are now free to take part in a universal discourse. In previous ages, whole regions and continents, great civilizations and cultures, were insulated from contact with each other. Only in our own times does an event or an idea originating in any part of the world communicate its effects across the entire human scene.
76. The United Nations is the central expression of this new global interdependence. It is not just an annual diplomatic conference. It is not only a reunion of national representatives. It brings us together not for the mere sake of assembly, but in common devotion to specific aims and purposes. The Charter tells us clearly what we are; what rights we hold; what duties fall upon us; what common ends we are bound to serve.
77. Our common ends are peace and security; equality and co-operation; the development of our planet's natural and human resources; and the construction of an organized family of sovereign nations reconciling their creative diversity with the overriding solidarities of a new international order.
78. In the past year, the progress of the United Nations towards these goals has been halting. The treaty prohibiting nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water was significant as a first step towards the limitation and control of the nuclear threat. But when a first step is not succeeded by others, it merely confirms a static impression. Indeed, the test explosion in China reminds us that time is working against the hope of nuclear limitation. The Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament has had a lean and hungry year. There has been little progress towards agreement on partial or collateral measures; still less towards a substantive limitation of armaments.
79. Meanwhile, persistent armed conflicts in Viet-Nam, the Congo, Cyprus and Yemen, have taken a heavy toll of life and disturbed international peace, and they threaten to leave a heritage of bitter memory. While wars are waged in some places, they are threatened in others. Governments assembled at Arab "summit meetings" have openly planned and threatened to violate the provisions of the Charter guaranteeing the sovereignty and integrity of all Members of the United Nations. It is difficult to refute the Secretary- General's statement in the introduction to his annual report that "the year 1964 has not fulfilled the hopes generated by the partial test-ban treaty and the general improvement in international relations in 1963" [A/ 5801/Add.l, p. 1].
80. In the promotion of economic and social development, the United Nations does not face obstacles as great as those in the way of political conciliation. Here there is at least a starting-point of general interest and universal agreement. But even in this domain, there is a lack of proportion between the immensity of our tasks and the slow rate of our progress.
81. This is the first generation of mankind in which the elimination of poverty, disease and illiteracy has become an objectively attainable goal. Man is now clothed with a power which he never previously held — to generate and control energy; to fructify land; to conserve and utilize water; to sweeten the seas and to harvest the desert; to open the gates of knowledge; and to draw the human family together in close and constant accessibility.
82. Yet in this era of potential abundance, one-half of the world's population of 3,000 million suffer from under-nutrition or malnutrition or both. By the end of the century, there will be 6,000 million people to be fed in a world which shows no present sign of adequately feeding one-half of that number.
83. This is also a golden age in the expansion of knowledge. Twentieth century experience has been dominated by the power of reason with its decisive influence on the life of humanity. Yet amidst the full brilliance of the scientific revolution, 700 million adults — one-third of the world's adult population — are totally illiterate.
84. If I evoke the sombre reality of man's unfilfilled yearnings for peace and security, economic dignity and cultural enrichment, it is not for the purpose of suggesting a conclusion of despair. I mean only to emphasize that beyond the particular interests of nations there are challenges of global scale which cannot be confronted, still less solved, except within a unitary framework of international relations. Yet precisely at this moment the United Nations, which ought to be saving mankind from the peril and confusion of our times, is itself in acute need of being saved.
85. It is urgent that a power of action be restored to the General Assembly. The capacity to hold a general debate is a very small and temporary consolation for the absence of a normal and orderly procedure. Indeed, the financial difficulties of the United Nations illustrate the paradox of our age. More will be spent on armaments around the world on this single day than is required for all the activities the United Nations for a whole year. The Governments of the world spend $14 million on armaments every hour, and $150,000 million every year. But to find $300 million for a world peace organization seems to be beyond our ingenuity. It appears that men are more easily moved to effort and sacrifice by the spur of conflict than by the challenge of co-operation.
86. Israel comes to the nineteenth session of the General Assembly in the conviction that the hour is ripe for a new advance towards a more stable and peaceful international order. The most urgent need is to reaffirm the right of States to maintain their political independence and territorial integrity, and their corresponding duty to seek the pacific settlement of their disputes in strict avoidance of the threat or i use of force.
87. There is now a wider agreement than ever before on the need to maintain the integrity of the world's territorial structure against violent change. This principle was expressed in an exchange of notes between the Soviet Union and the United States of America early this year. It was endorsed in other replies to the Soviet Union’s message of January 1964. In great-Power relations, this consensus flows from a direct and awesome knowledge of the nuclear danger. Mankind can no longer afford the consequences of territorial expansionism. The result of aggression against the existing frontiers of great Powers would not be the gain of new territory, but the conversion of existing territory into scorched and poisoned earth.
88. And for small States, the universal respect of existing frontiers is a condition of national survival. Now that nearly every nation has its legally sanctioned area of territorial sovereignty, there is every reason to safeguard the world's political map against violent change. The impulse of change should be applied henceforward to the liberation of human societies from economic and social servitudes.
89. It is in that spirit that Israel has announced its support for an international agreement for the renunciation by States of the use of force for the settlement of territorial disputes and questions concerning frontiers. The Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, whose Government has inscribed this question on our agenda, has correctly stated that the question of territorial disputes between sovereign States should not be confused with the liberation of territories from the colonial yoke or from foreign occupation. Mr. Gromyko went on to say: "... in respect of territorial disputes between sovereign States there can be no two opinions ... all such questions, as well as any other disputes between States, should be resolved not by force of arms but solely by peaceful means" [1292nd meeting, para. 98]. A similar note was struck on the first day of this debate by the Foreign Ministers of Brazil, Japan and Somali, and has been sounded again and again in unvaried conviction by other representatives.
90. This strong world-wide emphasis on the pacific settlement of disputes is not only a reaction to the nuclear peril. It is inspired by hope as well as by fear. The world is moving away from the bi-polar confrontation of East and West during the nineteen forties and fifties towards a new international order marked by diversity, pluralism, variety, freedom end dissent. It is not an age for crusades. In great- Power relations, the keywords are "coexistence" and "co-operation". And in small nations, life has to be lived on two levels: on the intimate level of national distinctiveness, and in the broader arena of intense international co-operation. In economic and social relationships, the trend is no longer towards dogmatic extremes of exclusive private ownership or exclusive public control. Most of our societies are mixed societies in which private initiative and State planning exist together within a single economic framework. In philosophy and religion, there is a search for unifying common principles, not for divisive barriers. It promises to be the age of tolerance. It is the ecumenical age. And over all aspects of our lives there stand the towering victories of scientific inquiry, which is the central enterprise of the human mind in its commerce with external reality.
91. The General Assembly will respond both to the ideals and to the interests of humanity if at this session it proclaims the sovereign equality and integrity of all Member States and the confinement of territorial change to the realm of negotiation and mutual consent. The agenda items submitted by the USSR and Madagascar [A/5751 and A/5757 and Add.l] should offer the basis for a comprehensive discussion of these themes,
92. The meagre harvest of the Geneva disarmament talks should not lead us to premature despair. The dialogue on the limitation and control of armaments can never be broken off, the stake is too high. Nothing but the utmost tenacity will suffice.
93. On signing the international treaty for the partial prohibition of nuclear tests, my Government expressed the ardent hope "that every effort would be made to remove the awful dangers to humanity arising out of the continuation [of nuclear arming]". In that spirit, my delegation will define its attitude to the various proposals on denuclearization that will come before the General Assembly and its Committees. At the same time, we urge constant attention to the perils arising from excessive accumulations and imbalances of conventional weapons of great destructive power, especially in areas of tension. For many countries, this is an even more real and actual danger than that of nuclear attack. The Foreign Minister of Argentina has warned us against the danger of nuclear pacifism accompanied by conventional aggression.
94. The solution lies in an integral and co-ordinated approach to nuclear and conventional disarmament. The theme of disarmament should also be illuminated by a positive vision. The delegation of Israel therefore supports the idea of calling on the nations to divert an agreed portion of their military budgets to development projects.
95. My delegation will give close attention to the memorandum on disarmament put forward by the Soviet Union [A/5827]. The Middle East is one area in which States which manufacture arms could well illustrate their devotion to peace by avoiding a constant escalation in the arms race through the introduction of increasingly sophisticated weapons of destruction,
96. The deadlock from which the General Assembly has only partly emerged is not primarily a financial crisis at all. The issue is where responsibility lies for determining, controlling and financing the peacekeeping activities of the United Nations.
97. It is not that the enforcement provisions of the Charter have been "transferred" from the Security Council to the General Assembly. What has happened is that there has grown up a new area of international responsibility which falls short of enforcement as in Chapter VII, but goes beyond mere conciliation as in Chapter VI. This is an important area of international responsibility. These are situations which require the symbolic or restraining presence of the United Nations by invitation or consent to avoid belligerency or to establish a focus for public order.
98. It is urgent that the Powers primarily responsible for international peace and security reach agreement not only on immediate financial problems, but also on the future balance between the peace-keeping functions of the Security Council and of the General Assembly. The Charter was conceived with the notion that restraint should be used not only in the exercise of the veto but also in the exercise of majority power. While a new attempt should be made to explore the avenues of great-Power co-operation envisaged in the Charter, it is already clear that new conditions have created new necessities. For example, it is now commonly agreed that the forces of the great Powers are less appropriate in peace-keeping activities than chose of small and medium nations whose involvement does not raise the shadow of possible nuclear escalation.
99. Israel advocates a close study of the United Nations peace-keeping experience with the participation of all who have been directly or closely involved. The Foreign Minister of Brazil has recommended Charter revision in order to provide for the peace-keeping functions of the United Nations. Until this possibility comes into view, an ad hoc agreement among the major Powers on the relative responsibilities of the General Assembly and the Security Council should be sought at this session. If the great Powers can achieve a greater harmony, the Security Council will be able in some measure to restore the authority and efficacy which the Charter ascribes to it.
100. In the effort to solve the financial crisis, it may be useful to create a new fund for the financial reinforcement of the Organization, so that Members which give less support to certain peace-keeping activities may give correspondingly greater support to the development activities of the United Nations. Provided that the over-all burden is equitably shared and duly apportioned, the manner of meeting the expenses of the Organization should be sufficiently ramified to allow Member States to select special areas for their interest.
101. The intensive growth of the United Nations budget requires the establishment of a sort of financial "Cabinet", with the full participation of the major contributors, to determine those financial measures which affect international policies in a broader field.
102. The crowning achievement of the United Nations has been its role in the expansion of national independence. It is here that the opinion of mankind has become a motive force for the accelerated liberation of peoples. It is here that the sovereignty of new States finds moving expression when they first come to this platform as active agents of international law and policy. The air of the United Nations is alive with freedom. It is in this hall that Africa, in particular, has experienced an awakened international dignity. It is in the establishment and growth of new communities that men and nations achieve their highest sentiment of creativity.
103. The international community should take pride and confidence from this achievement. If in some areas of the world independence has been succeeded by turbulence, this is not because independence was granted too early, but because it was granted too late, too grudgingly or with inadequate preparation and foresight.
104. The remnants of colonial rule are more than ever incongruous. It is urgent that the liberation of all African territories be completed, and that the few remaining areas of the world under external rule be drawn into the circle of national independence. A sense of urgency will guide the Israel delegation in its unqualified support of national independence in Africa and elsewhere.
105. Equality is the guiding principle of twentieth century life. Men are no longer prepared to reconcile themselves to traditional situations of inequality, either as groups within a national society or as people in the international community.
106. But institutional freedom does not exhaust the quest for human dignity and welfare. In the awakening continents, political freedom has not been attended by a parallel liberation of nations from their social and economic ills. Behind the new emblems of sovereignty, millions still languish in squalor, illiteracy and disease. Men awaken to learn that they can be free in every constitutional sense and yet lose the essence of their freedom in the throes of famine and want.
107. As the political inequality between nations passes away, a new inequality comes to the fore. It is reflected in the sharp disparities between the abundance of the few and the distress of the many; between an average expectation of life of seventy years in advanced Western countries and thirty to thirty-five in the developing countries; between spectacular technical progress in the northern world and a lack of educational momentum in the southern world. And the gap is growing ever wider.
108. There will not be a stable and just international order until those disparities are narrowed. The drama of accelerated development must command our most intensive concern.
109. The United Nations has made two serious attempts to define and solve this dilemma. In 1963, the United Nations conference on science and technology made a daring attempt to bring the creative imagination of the scientific community to bear on the problems of development in emerging societies. The exclusion of any nation, however small, from the world of scientific and technical knowledge is compatible neither with its national dignity nor with its hope of economic progress. Science is concerned with the penetration of nature. But it is also a social pursuit. It has a human origin and a human destination.
110. The 1963 conference dealt primarily with the flow of knowledge and skills. In 1964, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development discussed the more controversial issues involved in the flow of capital and goods.
111. Israel brought its utmost effort of heart and mind to bear on the problems raised in those memorable encounters. In the Advisory Committee on Science and Development, established after the 1963 Geneva conference, we helped to formulate a plan for an immediate world-wide attack on a limited number of especially urgent problems affecting nutrition, health, education and water development. In the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, held this year, the Israel delegation submitted proposals for increasing the flow of capital to new States and for liberalizing trade relationships in favour of the developing countries.
112. We are dominated by a sense of urgency. The present momentum of development is much slower than the world’s population increase. The current pace of economic growth in developing countries will not avail to close the gap. The advanced and the developing countries may well come to confront each other across a gulf of tension in a new polarization of the human family.
113. The recommendations of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development may seem to the developing countries too moderate in comparison with our need for more concrete and speedier solutions. Modest as these proposals are, they must be acted upon. Other difficulties notwithstanding, the General Assembly should find a way to launch the Geneva machinery and to endorse the Final Act — as well as the budgetary allocation that goes with it.
114. In many nations we see progress towards a welfare State. It is urgent that we march towards a welfare world.
115. In those new dimensions of international cooperation, the great Powers and the advanced countries have no monopoly of responsibility. Our own national experience teaches us something about the extraordinary mobility and versatility of technical skills. International gatherings convened in Israel have explored the role of science and technology in the advancement of new countries. They have examined the central importance of rural development as a primary factor in economic and cultural progress. This summer, we hope to explore with the economic and finance ministers of emerging States some of the fiscal problems arising from the establishment of new economies. An International Conference on the Role of Women in the Advancement of Peace and Development has just ended in Jerusalem.
116. Israel has concluded projects of economic and technical co-operation with fifty-one other developing countries in Africa, Asia and America. In all the eighty-three votes taken on the recommendations and principles of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Israel aligned itself with other developing countries. Thousands of young men and women from developing States have in recent years attended courses of study and training on our soil.
117. Israel’s principal vocation in international life is to be found in this expanding field of co-operation. It is therefore with a profound sense of rectitude and justice that Israel claims its place in all international bodies dedicated to the advancement of developing States.
118. Our Charter combines a deep respect for sovereignty with an urgent concern for individual rights. This latter concern proceeds from the haunting memories amidst which the United Nations came to birth: memories of a violent tyranny never surpassed in the history of crime. Nazism was born of a theory of discrimination which denied the intrinsic equality of human rights and human personality. Races were arranged in a hierarchy of nobility and servitude, to be exalted or degraded in accordance with a perverted system of values. It mattered not who was placed at the top or the bottom of the ladder. The United Nations has only one course open to it: total condemnation of all forms of racism and discrimination.
119. Israel carries into its future history the most poignant experience of suffering and martyrdom which has ever afflicted the human memory. No other people has such a recent recollection of millions of its men, women and children being thrown into the furnace.
120. With this special burden of memory on its shoulders, Israel will take an active part in the discussion of the draft international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination. It is especially important that nazism, racism and antisemitism should be specifically repudiated in that convention. The vigorous statement by the Foreign Minister of Argentina [1292nd meeting] on the issue of racism will find a warm echo in our hearts.
121. A bold and vital step has recently been taken in Rome towards creating a doctrinal atmosphere favourable to broader tolerance. I refer to the Ecumenical Council declaration of 20 November 1964, repudiating "the teaching of anything that could give rise to hatred or contempt of Jews in the hearts of Christians", in view of "the bond that ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham's stock".
122. Memory is the father of conscience. The recollection of past intolerance is a vital element in the education of humanity towards a spirit of fraternity. Israel therefore endorses what the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia has said in criticism of any refusal to prolong statutes of limitation for Nazi crimes. Our own Government and Parliament has recently expressed its grave concern on this matter. It is intolerable that authors of Nazi crimes should be enabled to enter into the normal life of society.
123. In committee discussion, my delegation will call attention to certain cases in which greater action or vigilance is required to insure the prevention of discrimination on ethnic, racial or religious grounds. There is a great Jewish community which claims our special concern in this context.
124. Similarly, we shall approach the problem of apartheid. Our unqualified condemnation of apartheid proceeds from a special legacy of memory and principle. In that spirit, Israel has sponsored the resolution presented to the Assembly of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, providing for a world conference on education for tolerance, which will work towards the eradication of all discrimination on grounds of race, religion or origin.
125. It might seem at first sight that I have said nothing about the problem of Israel in its relations with the Middle East. In a deeper sense I have said everything about that problem. If the United Nations upholds the sovereign equality, political independence and territorial integrity of all its Members; if it repudiates the use or threat of force against the integrity and independence of any State; if it respects the existing territorial structure, subject only to change by negotiation and agreement; if it maintains fidelity to international law; if it seeks a world in which every people shall be free to express its personality under its own sovereign flag; if it rejects policies of belligerency and blockade; if it believes in the duty of its Members "to practise tolerance and live together in peace as good neighbours"; in short: if you accept the Charter, then you inexorably ratify Israel's essential rights; and by the same token you reject the claims of those who seek to place Israel outside the scope of their Charter obligations.
126. There is no need to seek special principles for conciliation our immediate region. It is surely useless to upnold an international order as a matter of general principle—and to abandon it in any specific case. The tensions in our region can be truthfully defined and, effectively resolved only when they are envisaged in the general light of United Nations principles and United Nations structure.
127. It is in this light that we reject constant aspersions of neighbouring Governments on Israel's sovereignty, Israel's identity, Israel's honour and lsrael's inalienable rights. It is especially incongruous to hear such tirades re-echo year by year in the United Nations itself.
128. The United Nations is an instrument for ending conflicts — not an arena for waging them. The misuse of this tribunal for purposes of hostility was begun this morning by the Foreign Minister of Libya. He spoke of a Member State as "a group of adventurers". The first adventure of Israel as a Member State, on the day after its admission to the United Nations, was to cast the decisive vote, on 12 May 1949, in support of Libya's independence and against the prolongation of colonial tutelage. It was our assumption that all new States would respect the rights of existing States. There is a deep cynicism in the actions oi those who claim for themselves what they deny to others, especially if what they claim is the elementary right of every distinctive people to its sovereignty and nationhood.
129. Let the representative of Libya be under no misapprehension. What happens in Israel, who comes in and who does not, will be decided by Israel's sovereign will. He has suggested quite frankly, for example, that the return of refugees is in fact equivalent to Israel's non-existence. He is quite right. That is one of the reasons why we oppose solutions to any problem which are incompatible with the Charter, with the structure of the United Nations, with the sovereign integrity of States, with international peace. Those States of the Middle East which caused this problem by an act of aggression, certified as such by the United Nations, must surely take their full share in a solution by a regional project of reintegration which they and they alone have the duty and the capacity to carry out.
130. Israel is not the only nation in the Middle East which has secured its national freedom in the past few decades. The domain of Arab independence stretches through thirteen States across 4 million square miles with a population of 100 million. This lavish patrimony surely mocks any constant grudge of Israel's corner of sovereignty in 3,000 square miles — fifty times smaller than the domain of Arab independence in population; 500 times smaller in area. What would be the moral status of a world in which so small a people could not pursue its destiny in peace after the agony of centuries past!
131. The Middle East is not the exclusive possession of any single nation. Our region's destiny lies in variety and pluralism, not in centralized domination or uniformity. Of the Middle Eastern States, Israel and seven States of Arab tongue are Mediterranean nations. The Hellenic and Latin worlds, Turkey and Greece, Cyprus and Malta, are washed by the same waters. The Mediterranean basin is a central, compact world congenial to the free interaction of ideas and utterly alien to exclusiveness. In no other part of the globe does a similar variety of conditions exist in such close proximity or in such intensity of mutual influence. It is here that man first considered himself in the light of eternity. It is here that science broke loose from empiricism in search of broad unifying principles. And it is precisely here, amidst all the conditions for a renewed emergence of human vitality, that we find statesmanship still frustrated by unyielding conflict.
132. Last week, a group of young Israelis in the region of the Dead Sea came upon parchment scrolls nineteen hundred years old. They are inscribed in the same language as that in which modern Israelis converse today. There is no truth in any discussion of the Middle East which does not grasp the depth, the passion, the profound rootedness, the total authenticity of this bond between a people and the land from which it once made a communication of grandeur to all mankind.
133. Israel sees its region as the home of all its sovereign States and all its various cultures. If the sovereign equality of all Middle Eastern States is accepted as an unchallengeable starting-point, all Middle Eastern problems are soluble. If that is not accepted, then nothing whatever can be solved. We share one principle with every other State represented here. It is this: we can have nothing to say or to discuss in any context in which our statehood, our sovereignty and our territorial integrity are not accepted as unassailable facts which lie beyond the range of negotiation. It is because this principle is not everywhere accepted that the present is dark with conflict. The final aim is of a future to be shared in peace.
134. The great network of friendships which joins Israel to its colleagues in the international community in every continent testifies to a world-wide belief that the restoration of the Jewish people to it homeland is one of the moments of climax in the political and spiritual achievement of our times.
135. A vigorous and progressive United Nations is an essential element of the emerging international order. With all its imperfections, this family of sovereign States presents a new vision of man in his organic unity. There are seven things which can be done at this session to animate and inspire the hopes of those who look to us for a new affirmation of peace and freedom.
136. We can strengthen the doctrine of the independence, integrity and sovereign equality of States.
137. We can clarify and allocate the responsibilities of United Nations organs for peace-keeping by consent.
138. We can and must give a new impulse and direction to the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament.
139. We can summon Member Governments and the specialized agencies to an intensified effort to accelerate the progress of the developing States.
140. We can advance towards the completion of decolonization.
141. We can formulate and codify the policy of the United Nations against discrimination and intolerance.
142. We can submit the organization and procedures of the United Nations to a close scrutiny, with a view to improving its effectiveness as the primary agent of international unity.
143. Modern statesmanship stands at a point where great danger and high opportunity intersect. Let us ensure that the opportunity shall conquer the danger.