The Boycott Backlash

American Sociologist Daniel Bell was outraged. So were West German Novelist Heinrich Boll, France's former Culture Minister Andre Malraux and British Poet-Critic Stephen Spender. An indignant committee of Nobel laureates called upon U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim to complain. Novelist Saul Bellow was so angry that he exploded at an international P.E.N. congress in Jerusalem last week: "They are stupid, ignorant, partisan. And I think they are a lot of swine."

What incensed them, as well as hundreds of other prominent Western intellectuals, was the blatantly discriminatory acts against Israel recently adopted by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, which for years has ranked among the most respected and useful of the U.N.'s agencies. With its 3,500-member staff, UNESCO, headquartered in Paris, annually sponsors 130 conferences on subjects ranging from freedom of the press to piracy of art treasures, coordinates international scientific programs and tries to improve educational programs in developing countries. Last month, however, at a meeting of its 135-member General Conference, a bloc of Arab and Communist delegates, backed by Third World representatives, cut off Israel's $12,000 cultural allocation for 1975. The Arabs charged that Israeli construction programs and archaeological excavations in Jerusalem are endangering Moslem monuments and altering the historical character of the Holy City. Experts who had been previously sent to Jerusalem by UNESCO had reported that the accusations against Israel were exaggerated.

More serious was a resolution denying Israel's request to join the European regional group of UNESCO, where it has been an "observer" nation. Israel is now the only UNESCO member without a regional identity, although it contributed $111,000 to UNESCO's 1974 budget of $61.7 million (a contribution, Israelis point out, that is many times larger than that of any oil-rich Middle Eastern state). The conference's action did not actually expel Israel from UNESCO, but it did prevent the Jerusalem government from voting in the regional meetings, where an increasing number of decisions are made.

"Israel is a state which belongs nowhere because it comes from nowhere," said Lebanese Delegate to UNESCO Halim Said Abu-Izzeddin. Explaining the conference's measures, UNESCO's new head, Amadou Mahtar M'Bow of Senegal, declared: "UNESCO is composed of almost the same member states as the U.N. It is natural that the problems which perturb the world today should find an echo there."

Christmas Cards. The anti-Israel measures, however, have caused a substantial backlash. Switzerland has cut its UNESCO contribution by 10%, and France threatens to follow suit; the U.S. is about to suspend its $19.5 million contribution to UNESCO's $77.9 million 1975 budget. Israel has announced it is suspending payment of its dues. Many Americans are refusing to buy UNICEF Christmas cards this year, even though the U.N.'s Children's Fund has nothing to do with UNESCO.

Arab oil money could conceivably replace Western financial contributions to UNESCO. There is, however, no substitute for the support of Western intellectuals. Thousands of scientists, artists, jurists and writers (many of them non-Jewish and highly sympathetic to problems facing the Third World) have vowed to boycott the organization's programs until the resolutions are repealed. Already more than 600 French psychiatrists and psychoanalysts refused to attend a conference on mental health because it was held at UNESCO headquarters; a number of prestigious European chemists stayed away from a UNESCO scientific symposium. If such boycotts grow, the quality that made UNESCO so valuable--its ability to organize Western experts to aid underdeveloped nations--could very easily be lost.

Another U.N. program also faces a boycott, although for quite different reasons. Last week the U.S. announced that it would not contribute to a special fund being set up to aid the underdeveloped nations that are suffering most from economic problems. Washington, which already spends over $4 billion yearly in foreign economic, developmental and humanitarian assistance, has been opposed to the fund since the Third World bloc proposed it last spring. The U.S. prefers to give aid directly to needy countries or channel it through existing international agencies (the World Bank, the U.N.'s World Food Program) rather than establishing yet another costly bureaucracy. Some observers see the action as another sign of Washington's displeasure with the unrealistic attitudes of the Arab, Communist and Third World countries, which now command a majority within the U.N.'s General Assembly.

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