World Notes United Nations

Applause swept through the General Assembly hall as the vote flashed on the electronic tally board: 111 to 25. By that sweeping majority, the United Nations revoked the resolution equating Zionism with racism, eliminating Israel's main reason for resenting the world body. Said a jubilant Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy: "It ends a conspiracy to distort the truth."

The resolution was devised in 1975 by the U.S.S.R. to win Arab fealty against the U.S. in the superpower struggle for dominance in the Middle East. But the end of the cold war and the eruption of the gulf war dramatically altered U.N. dynamics, and President Bush began lobbying for repeal. Washington also hoped that erasing the resolution would encourage Israeli reasonableness as Middle East peace talks got under way.

The nay votes were cast mostly by Arab and Muslim states plus the communist countries of Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam. An Arab spokesman argued that repeal would only "whet the appetite of Israeli extremists' creeping annexation," and Saudi Arabia's U.N. Ambassador, Samir Shihabi, boycotted the session. Biggest winner: the U.N., freed of an albatross.