“Zionism is simply Jewish self-determination, and opposing it is denying Jews what every nation has”

Self-determination is indeed universal — the UN Charter names it a purpose of the organization, and common Article 1 of the human-rights covenants grants it to “all peoples.” That universality is precisely the point: a people exercising self-determination cannot do so by denying the same right to the people already living in the country. The documented question is not whether Jews may organize national life, but whether a project that required the displacement of Palestine’s indigenous majority, and that reserves national rights in the state to one ethno-religious group, fits within self-determination as international law understands it.

This was the substance of the UN’s most famous intervention. On 10 November 1975, after weeks of committee debate, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379 by 72 votes to 35 with 32 abstentions, determining that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” A principal intellectual architect of the resolution was the Palestinian philosopher and diplomat Fayez Sayegh, speaking as a delegate of Kuwait: in four UN statements between 1973 and 1975 (published in 1976 as Zionism: A Form of Racism and Racial Discrimination) he argued that Zionism institutionalized “distinctions, exclusions, restrictions, and preferences” on grounds of descent, and was careful to separate Zionism from Judaism and anti-Zionism from antisemitism.

The honest postscript matters too. On 16 December 1991 the General Assembly adopted Resolution 46/86 (111 to 25, 13 abstentions), revoking the 1975 determination — a repeal the United States had pressed for and that Israel had made a condition of its participation in the Madrid Peace Conference. The repeal was a diplomatic transaction, not a reconsideration of evidence, and the underlying question never went away: in July 2024 the International Court of Justice held that Israel’s prolonged occupation violates the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and that its presence in the occupied territory is unlawful. Peoples’ rights, including Jewish Israelis’, are best secured by equality — the conclusion Sayegh himself reached in advocating a single democratic state for all of Palestine’s inhabitants.

Sources

• UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 — UN record
• Full text of Resolution 3379 (XXX), 10 November 1975 — Ruhr-Universität Bochum document collection
• UN General Assembly Resolution 46/86 (16 December 1991): vote and Madrid context — Economic Cooperation Foundation
• ICJ advisory opinion of 19 July 2024: occupation unlawful, Palestinian self-determination violated — UN News