To mark the twentieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations designated 1968 to be the International Year for Human Rights. The call went out to peoples and States all over the world to give particular thought then to the question of human rights and freedoms and contribute to their promotion and protection. Wherever the subject is raised, discussion will no doubt dwell upon the problems of the present and the future. I believe, however, that this is a suitable occasion to widen the scope, to cast a glance over the past, and to review the role of the Jews and of the “Jewish Question” in the nineteenth, and in the early years of the twentieth, century in instilling the concept of human rights into the conscience of mankind; it is also an opportunity to examine the part played by the Jews in the advancement of those rights at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919–1920.

From an historical point of view, the modern concept of human rights springs essentially from the rationalistic and cosmopolitan philosophy of the Enlightenment prevailing in the second half of the eighteenth century, and from the declarations framed at the end of that century in North America and, subsequently, in France during the Revolution. It was these declarations that laid the foundations of the democratic and liberal State. But the roots of the concept can be traced back to the Stoic philosophy of ancient Greece, to the teachings of the early Roman philosophers and lawyers and to the tenets of the medieval theologians; and it is, indeed, strange that only rarely have those engaged in the history of it made mention of the fact that ancient Hebrew religious thought, too, is concerned with the inherent dignity of Man and gives special prominence to the principle that all who are created in the image of God are equal—a principle clearly reflected in the status which the law of Moses assigns to “the stranger that sojourns among you”, and in the liberal attitude of that law towards the slave, as compared with that of other peoples.

Numerous and complex problems relating to the prohibition of the use of force in international relations have arisen in the protracted Arab-Israel conflict. One of these—and certainly not the least important—is whether there exists any foundation, from a legal point of view, to the claim by the Arab States that the Charter of the United Nations and general international law entitled them to resort to armed force in order to take back the territories occupied by Israel in the Six Day War of 1967. This claim to a right to a military option has been put forward not only in slogans flaunted in fiery speeches by second-rate politicians or extreme party leaders, but by the Heads of State responsible for the formulation of their countries' foreign policy.