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4.2.12
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action, but its major bodies refused even to condemn the genocide until after the killing was
completed and at least 1.8 million people lay dead. The General Assembly, for instance, did not
mention Cambodia in a single resolution until November 1979—nearly a year after the genocide’s
end. Even then the resolution was framed in terms of sovereignty and did not mention specific
human rights violations, let alone genocide.104 Only in 1980, nearly five years after the atrocities
began, did the UNCHR finally pass a resolution condemning the genocide.

The hard left was similarly uninterested in the Cambodian genocide. While millions were being
murdered, many leftists dismissed the atrocities as western propaganda. Activists Gareth Porter
and George Hilderbrnd wrote, “Cambodia is only the latest victim of the enforcement of an
ideology that demands that social revolutions be portrayed as negatively as possible, rather than
as a response to real human needs….” According to the pair, what “was portrayed as [the Khmer
Rouge’s] destructive backward-looking policy motivated by doctrinaire hatred was actually a
rationally conceived strategy for dealing with the problems that faced postwar Cambodia.” Noam
Chomsky also dismissed the genocide, writing that “if Cambodian terror did not exist, the
Western propaganda systems would have had to invent it, and in certain respects they did.” He
unabashedly wrote that blaming solely the Khmer Rouge for deaths from malnutrition and disease
was as “if some Nazi apologists were to condemn the allies for postwar deaths from starvation
and disease in DP camps.”

Instead of focusing on the savage mass murder of more than a million civilians in Southeast Asia,
the global community chose instead to use its limited time and resources to try to delegitimize
Israel. Just a few months after the Cambodian atrocities began, the General Assembly adopted
the most infamous resolution in its history, resolution 3379, declaring that “Zionism is a form of
racism and racial discrimination.” 72 countries voted in favor, including, ironically, Cambodia. 35
voted against and 32 abstained. This and other similar actions by the General Assembly led Abba
Eban to proclaim that if Algeria offered a resolution than the earth was flat and Israel flattened it,
it would pass 72 to 35, with 32 abstentions. The United States representative to the United
Nations, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, fumed that “the United States rises to declare before the
General Assembly of the United Nations and before the world that it does not acknowledge, it
will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.”

The result of this resolution was that “Zionists” were blacklisted and banned from speaking at
several colleges and universities that had “anti-racist” speaking policies. Not a great victory for
“human rights” or for freedom. In a world, where genocide, slavery, disappearances, torture,
systematic rape, murder of dissidents and other grave violations of human rights were being
routinely perpetrated by its member nations, Zionism and Israel became the number one enemy of
the U.N., with more resolutions condemning Israel than all the other member nations combined.

104 The record of the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) on the matter is much the same. In March 1978
the United Kingdom petitioned the UNCHR to appoint a special rapporteur for human rights in Cambodia.
Syria, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia blocked the move. Instead of appointing a rapporteur, the commission
invited comment by the Khmer Rouge, referred the matter to a sub-committee, and (despite the ongoing genocide)
delayed consideration of the matter until 1979. By the 1979 meeting of the commission, Vietnam had already
invaded Cambodia and effectively ended the killings. Yet again, however, the commission delayed consideration
of the Cambodia matter.

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