AntizionismLibelEvent1975–1991⊙ View in graph

UN Resolution 3379: 'Zionism Is Racism'

The claim

“Zionism — the Jewish national movement — is not a form of self-determination but 'a form of racism and racial discrimination', as determined by the UN General Assembly on 10 November 1975.”

A defamatory accusation against Jews as a group, historically used to incite violence.

Historical context

On 10 November 1975, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379 by 72 votes to 35 with 32 abstentions, determining 'that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination'. The resolution was sponsored and driven by the Soviet bloc together with Arab and Islamic states, translating Soviet Zionology's core thesis into international law's most visible forum and linking Zionism to South African apartheid. US Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan declared that 'the United Nations is about to make antisemitism international law' and that the US 'does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act'; Israeli Ambassador Chaim Herzog tore the text at the podium. The resolution legitimized the demonization of Israel across UN bodies for sixteen years.

The debunking

Resolution 3379 is the only General Assembly resolution ever revoked. On 16 December 1991, after the Soviet collapse and as a precondition for the Madrid peace process, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 46/86 — a single operative line revoking the 1975 determination — by 111 votes to 25, with the USSR's successor states among the co-sponsors, an implicit official admission of the resolution's propagandistic origins. UN Secretaries-General have since repudiated it: Kofi Annan called its adoption a 'low point' in UN history, and Ban Ki-moon cited its revocation when condemning the 'Zionism is racism' canard. Scholarship (Tabarovsky; Wistrich; Gil Troy's *Moynihan's Moment*; Bernard Lewis's contemporaneous analysis) documents that the 'racism' designation was a Soviet-coined formula, incubated in Zionological literature after 1967 and pushed through the UN by the Soviet-Arab bloc as Cold War political warfare rather than any legal or empirical finding — Zionism, encompassing Jews of every race including Ethiopian, Mizrahi, and Indian Jews, fits no definition of racial doctrine. Tabarovsky stresses 3379's enduring damage: although revoked, its equation survives in contemporary discourse that treats Israel's existence, uniquely among nation-states, as inherently racist.

Descends from

  • descends fromSoviet 'Zionology': The Anti-Zionist Propaganda IndustryAntizionism1963–1991

    The 'Zionism = racism' formula was developed in Soviet Zionological propaganda after 1967 and carried into the UN by Soviet-Arab bloc sponsorship — propaganda thesis codified as UN text.

  • descends from'Chosen People' Misread as Jewish SupremacismAntijudaism1st c. CE – present

    The bloc justified branding Zionism 'racism' partly by casting the Jewish 'chosen people' idea as a doctrine of racial superiority — the theological pretext beneath the 1975 resolution.

Lives on as

  • The Western Export of Soviet Anti-ZionismAntizionism1967–1991 (legacy to present)

    The UN resolution gave the exported package institutional legitimacy, letting Western activists cite 'international law' rather than Soviet pamphlets.

  • The Maximalist 'Settler-Colonialism' FrameAntizionism1960s–present

    The Soviet-sponsored 1975 UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 ('Zionism is a form of racism') gave the delegitimizing frame international institutional standing that outlived its 1991 revocation.

  • The 'Apartheid State' AccusationAntizionism1965–present

    Resolution 3379 institutionalized the racism/apartheid framing at the UN in 1975; though revoked in 1991, it normalized the vocabulary that contemporary maximalist usage inherits.

Full lineage

  1. Deicide Charge ("Christ-Killers")
  2. →Blood Libel (Ritual Murder Accusation)
  3. →Well-Poisoning Accusation
  4. →The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy
  5. →The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
  6. →The 'Jews Control the Media' Myth
  7. →Soviet 'Zionology': The Anti-Zionist Propaganda Industry
  8. →UN Resolution 3379: 'Zionism Is Racism'

Sources