This claim is demonstrably and doubly false. The United Nations General Assembly resolution it references — Resolution 3379, passed on November 10, 1975 — was not only a product of Cold War political manipulation, but was explicitly and overwhelmingly revoked by the same body sixteen years later. Beyond its revocation, UN General Assembly resolutions are, by the express design of the UN Charter, non-binding recommendations, not enforceable international law. To assert that this resolution "remains in force today" is a straightforward factual error; to assert it ever constituted "binding international law" reflects a fundamental misunderstanding — or deliberate misrepresentation — of how international law actually works.

The Facts

Resolution 3379, passed on November 10, 1975, with a vote of 72 in favor, 35 opposed, and 32 abstentions, was the product of an orchestrated Cold War-era coalition of Soviet-bloc states, Arab League members, and non-aligned nations. Even at the time of its passage, it was condemned by Israel, the United States, and Western democracies as a politically motivated slander with no basis in law or history. Then-U.S. Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in a landmark speech to the General Assembly, called the resolution "a lie" and declared that the United States "does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act."

On December 16, 1991, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 46/86, which formally and unambiguously revoked Resolution 3379. The vote was 111 in favor of revocation, 25 against, with 13 abstentions — a resounding repudiation. The text was deliberate and clear: the Assembly "[d]ecides to revoke the determination contained in its resolution 3379." No UN body has re-adopted or reinstated any equivalent determination since. The AJC noted at the 30th anniversary of the revocation that "by revoking resolution 3379, the UN determined that Zionism is not a form of racism — a determination it has not made regarding any other national movement."

• Resolution 3379 (1975) was revoked in 1991 by an overwhelming majority of 111 UN member states — it does not remain "in force" by any measure.
• UN General Assembly resolutions are non-binding under Articles 10–14 of the UN Charter; only UN Security Council resolutions issued under Chapter VII carry mandatory legal force on member states.
• The United States formally and consistently opposed Resolution 3379, with President George H.W. Bush signing a joint congressional resolution in June 1990 calling upon the UN to repeal it, calling the resolution "pernicious."
• Zionism is defined by the ADL, UN Watch, and mainstream international law scholars as the national self-determination movement of the Jewish people — legally and categorically equivalent to other recognized national liberation movements.
• The 1947 UN Partition Plan (Resolution 181) endorsed Jewish statehood in the land of Israel, affirming that Jewish self-determination is not a violation of international norms but an expression of them.

Historical Context: A Resolution Born of Cold War Politics, Not Law

Resolution 3379 was not the product of rigorous legal deliberation. It emerged from a highly politicized bloc of states during the height of the Cold War, orchestrated by the Soviet Union — itself a state with a documented record of state-sponsored antisemitism — alongside Arab League members and sympathetic non-aligned governments. The resolution cynically linked Zionism to apartheid and South African racism not through any legal analysis, but through propaganda leaflets and political horse-trading at the United Nations. Ambassador Moynihan noted at the time that many of the resolution's co-sponsors and supporters were themselves "guilty of the horrible crimes of anti-Semitism and discrimination to this very day."

Zionism's actual historical and legal character is not ambiguous. As the ADL describes it, "Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, which advocates for the right of Jews to self-determine in their ancestral homeland, Israel." The movement for Jewish national restoration pre-dates Resolution 3379 by nearly a century, rooted in a 4,000-year Jewish connection to the land. Modern political Zionism emerged in 19th-century Europe in direct response to violent antisemitism and the statelessness of the Jewish people. It parallels, in structure and legitimacy, the national liberation movements of dozens of other peoples recognized as fully lawful by the United Nations itself — including many of the nations that voted for Resolution 3379.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, the defeat of Iraq in the Gulf War, and the opening of the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference created the geopolitical conditions that finally allowed the international community to correct the record. Notably, Egypt, Morocco, and other moderate Arab states chose not to participate in the vote against revocation, signaling a regional shift away from the most extreme anti-Israel postures. The revocation was not a close call — it was a landslide, and it was irreversible.

Conclusion: An Antisemitic Myth Dressed as Legal Argument

The claim that international law brands Zionism as racism is not a legal argument — it is antisemitic propaganda that selectively cites a dead, non-binding, 50-year-old resolution while deliberately concealing its formal revocation. It denies the Jewish people the right to national self-determination that every other people on earth is accorded, and it weaponizes the language of human rights to achieve the opposite of human rights: the delegitimization of the world's only Jewish state. The AJC rightly warned that adversaries of Israel have sought to reintroduce this same Zionism-racism equation under the new label of "apartheid" — a transparent re-packaging of the same discredited smear.

The factual record is unambiguous: the UN itself corrected this error by a decisive supermajority; international law has never recognized the original resolution as binding; and Zionism, as a national liberation movement rooted in millennia of Jewish history, culture, prayer, and presence in the land of Israel, is a legitimate expression of the universal right of peoples to self-determination. Repeating the lie does not revive the resolution. It reveals the intent of those who spread it.