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Moynihan's Moment: America's Fight Against Zionism as Racism. By Gil Troy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. 357 pp.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1975 fight in the United Nations against U.N. Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism, serves, ac- cording to author Gil Troy, as a "moment" of historic importance beyond the act itself. It was more than a "moment"-it was shift of momentum. According to Troy, Moynihan's passionate defense of Israel and Zionism was really a defense of the United States and Western democracies at a particularly grave moment in world history. While American criticism of the United Nations in response to the resolution was significant as a massive "grassroots repudiation of anti-Semitism," Moynihan's con- demnation of the United Nations more importantly signaled a shift in American domestic and international attitudes. (182) The momentum swung away from collective national guilt instigated by leftist radicals toward a bold patriotism that celebrated American values and refused to apologize for them. Moynihan's campaign against Resolution 3379 served as an opening shot across the bow of human-rights-abusing Third World dictators and the democracies that refused to challenge them.
While Moynihan and President Ronald Reagan did not sit on the...