During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Israeli cities came under missile attack from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In hospitals across Tel Aviv and Haifa, Jewish and Arab doctors, nurses and patients took shelter together in sealed rooms as sirens wailed. The same scenes played out in the Knesset, where Arab and Jewish members of parliament continued their work under the same threat. These moments reflected the complex coexistence that has characterized Israel since its founding—a reality that contrasted sharply with the demonizing accusation, repeatedly amplified at the United Nations, that Israel is a racist regime.

In December of that year, the U.N. General Assembly repealed Resolution 3379, which it had adopted on Nov. 10, 1975, and which had declared that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial

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