’Zionism is a national liberation movement’: 50 years after his father’s famous UN speech, President Herzog confronts antisemitism

In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly approved Resolution 3379, which determined that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." 

Resolution 3379 was proposed by a group of 25 Muslim and Arab states, and voted for by a group of 72 states, mostly Muslim, Arab, or socialist.

The resolution contained extreme language, which “condemned Zionism as a threat to world peace and security and called upon all countries to oppose this racist and imperialist ideology.” 

While the resolution was later revoked in 1991, its language and the support it gathered from so many states in the General Assembly were a harbinger of the focused attention directed against the Jewish State in the global body. Since that time, the nation of Israel has found itself the focus of more UN resolutions and condemnations than any other state. 

At that time, the United States, which had tried to prevent the bringing of Resolution 3379 to a vote, condemned the resolution and the spirit which it demonstrated, with U.S. Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan saying, “A great evil has been loosed upon the world…the abomination of anti-semitism has been given the appearance of international sanction.” 

50 years ago yesterday: U.N. General Assembly adopts initial draft resolution declaring Zionism to be “a form of racism.”

U.S. Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan delivered this historic speech when the infamous act was ratified on Nov. 10, 1975:

🇺🇸 “There appears to have… pic.twitter.com/cw2g7bAmm7

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 18, 2025

Moynihan warned that the resolution would damage the very purpose of the General Assembly, but he spoke a set of prophetic words, stating, “If, as the distinguished delegate declared, racism is a form of Nazism – and if, as this resolution declares, Zionism is a form of racism – then we have step to step taken ourselves to the point of proclaiming – the United Nations is solemnly proclaiming – that Zionism is a form of Nazism.” 

In fact, decades later, and after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, that very sentiment, that “Zionism is a form of Nazism,” has been the cry of foreign state-funded campus protests and the various anti-Israel demonstrations which began to protest Israel’s military response to Oct. 7, 2023, before the response had even begun. 

While Ambassador Moynihan’s speech was representative of the growing U.S. support for Israel in the face of an alliance of Muslim and Socialist or Communist countries arrayed against it, it was the speech of Israel’s UN Ambassador Chaim Herzog, the father of President Isaac Herzog, which provided a stinging rebuke to the assembly. 

“It is indeed befitting, Mr. President, that the United Nations, which began its life as an anti-Nazi alliance, should 30 years later find itself on its way to becoming the world center of antisemitism,” Ambassador Herzog stated following the vote. 

Antizionism is racism.

Not a legitimate political view.
Not a human rights cause.
Not a liberation call.
Not progressive.
Not acceptable.

50 years after the UN passed Nazi ideology & Soviet propaganda 1975 ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution - it is blood libel that has normalized… pic.twitter.com/164ZyzaIdc

— מיכל קוטלר-וונש | Michal Cotler-Wunsh (@CotlerWunsh) November 10, 2025

Ambassador Herzog poignantly noted that the vote in favor of the resolution took place exactly 37 years after Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, when forces of the Nazi party’s Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary units, with the participation of the Hitler Youth movement, engaged in a pogrom against Jewish businesses, buildings, and synagogues, breaking their windows and much else. 

Herzog pointed to the reality that Arabs in Israel enjoyed the full rights of Israeli citizens, in contrast to the lack of legal rights for Jews in most Muslim countries at the time. 

“I can point with pride to the Arab ministers who have served in my government; to the Arab deputy speaker of my Parliament; to Arab officers and men serving of their own volition in our border and police defense forces, frequently commanding Jewish troops; to the hundreds of thousands of Arabs from all over the Middle East crowding the cities of Israel every year; to the thousands of Arabs from all over the Middle East coming for medical treatment to Israel; to the peaceful coexistence which has developed; to the fact that Arabic is an official language in Israel on a par with Hebrew; to the fact that it is as natural for an Arab to serve in public office in Israel as it is incongruous to think of a Jew serving in any public office in an Arab country, indeed being admitted to many of them. Is that racism? It is not! That ... is Zionism.” 

Talking about the text of the resolution, Herzog stated, “For us, the Jewish people, this resolution based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance, is devoid of any moral or legal value. For us, the Jewish people, this is no more than a piece of paper and we shall treat it as such.” 

He then tore the paper containing the text of the resolution in half. 

“For us, the Jewish people, this is nothing more than a piece of paper, and we will treat it as such.”

With these words, exactly fifty years ago, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, my father Chaim Herzog, stood before the family of nations and tore apart the resolution… pic.twitter.com/c642PqKAo5

— יצחק הרצוג Isaac Herzog (@Isaac_Herzog) November 10, 2025

Ambassador Herzog’s son, Isaac Herzog, the current President of Israel, in a Hebrew language editorial published in Israel Hayom on Monday, drew attention to the rising tide of antisemitism and the support the UN has continued to give to those intent on seeing the Jewish state’s destruction.

“Indeed, that decision, that malicious comparison between Zionism and racism, has its place in the dustbin of history,” Herzog wrote.

“But a generation has passed and a generation has come, and here again new faces and voices are joining the parade of folly, whose hatred and ignorance are their art. Once again we see with anxious hearts how they are turning the United Nations, which was born as an anti-Nazi alliance, into the center of antisemitism in the world, as my father diagnosed it.” 

Rejecting the claims of racism, President Herzog said, “Zionism is a movement of national liberation. The return of an ancient people to its land, not by foreign conquest, but as the direct continuation of two thousand years of prayer and national memory. Israel does not ask for special treatment; it asks for fairness.” 

Herzog spoke of the nation’s continual need to stand up for itself, and how that has brought “cultural, technological, and spiritual fruits” for the Jewish State. 

“In every generation we see how hatred of Jews takes on new faces, and in every generation we are required to stand up to it head on, to stand up for the rights of our people and our state, and to fight - in the security and diplomatic arenas, including the political-legal arena - for our right to self-determination and independence. We are fighting for our ancient and deep roots in our homeland, for the cultural, technological and spiritual fruits that the Jewish and democratic state has grown from within it in 77 years of independence, and for those that it will continue to yield.” 

Herzog also called for unity in Israel and the Jewish people, as they face the struggle against antisemitism. 

“We stand today at a critical juncture, facing immense challenges. We must never allow ourselves to be dragged into an internal war of all against all. We must not waste our strength on delegitimizing one another, instead we must fight the delegitimization directed at us all. We must stand strong and continue presenting the justice of our path, grounded in the Jewish and democratic values at the heart of Zionism and the State of Israel.”