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Islamist Regimes Take Over UNESCO

December 8, 2017

Islamist Regimes Take Over UNESCO, Gatestone Institute, Giulio Meotti, December 8, 2017

(UNESCO appears to reflect the UN as a whole, with the exception of the UN Security Council where, as a permanent member, America has a veto. Perhaps America should withdraw from the rest of the UN but retain her position on the Security Council, the only UN entity where we have a useful voice. — DM)

When Pablo Picasso painted the famous frescoes at UNESCO’s headquarter at Place de Fontenoy in Paris, UNESCO’s founding fathers dreamed of the rebirth of Western culture after the horrors of the Holocaust and Nazism. Now the West, intimidated by physical terror and political ransom, is allowing UNESCO to be seized by regimes that hang dissidents, lash women, execute gays, imprison Christians and leave their own people illiterate.

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The UN agency is currently dominated by the most oppressive regimes on education and culture. There is China, which recently let writer, poet and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo die an agonizing death in prison, where he was serving an 11-year jail sentence for his support of human rights and democracy. Then there is Iran, where a dean of journalism, Siamak Pourzand, committed suicide to avoid more persecution by the regime.

“UNESCO has been hijacked and abused as a tool for the persecution of Israel and the Jewish people, while concocting fake facts and fake history, meant to… rewrite global history.” — Carmel Shama Hacohen, Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO.

If UNESCO is really serious about reforming itself, it should immediately issue a statement against the Islamization of Turkey’s Hagia Sophia Cathedral, a UN World Heritage Site.

Hit by the departure of the United States and Israel, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recently welcomed its new Director-General, former French Minister of Culture Audrey Azoulay. Those who care about cultural diversity and Western civilization hailed her election, because the representative of Qatar’s Islamist regime had come close to winning UNESCO’s leadership race. But the real problem is that UNESCO has been abandoned to Islamist dictatorships. A battle to save the organization has begun.

Among the critics of UNESCO there is a tendency to dismiss this agency as “irrelevant“. Yet, so long as UNESCO exists, the West cannot allow repressive regimes to dominate the world’s highest body supposedly in charge of culture, science and education. Richard Hoggart, the British scholar who served as UNESCO’s assistant director general from 1970 to 1977, once asked: “Should Unesco Survive?“.

The UN agency is currently dominated by the most oppressive regimes in regard to education and culture. There is China, which in July let writer, poet and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo die an agonizing death in prison, where he was serving an 11-year jail sentence for his support of human rights and democracy. Then there is Iran, where a dean of journalism, Siamak Pourzand, committed suicide to avoid more persecution by the regime. Last week, the assistant director for Education of UNESCO, Qian Tang, was in Iran to advance “cultural cooperation” with the Islamic Republic, but the issue of cultural freedom in the Iran was not even raised by the envoy of the UN agency. There is also Pakistan, a country that has sentenced to death essentially for being a Christian mother of five, Asia Bibi, whose condition has never even been questioned by UNESCO. There is Qatar, where a poet, Rashid at Ajami, was sentenced to three years in prison for a poem critical of the emir Hamad bin Khalifa at Thani.

Irina Bokova, then Director-General of UNESCO, is pictured speaking at China’s official Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, on May 14, 2017. Two months later, the Chinese government let writer, poet and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo die an agonizing death in prison, where he was serving an 11-year jail sentence for his support of human rights and democracy. (Photo by Mark Schiefelbein – Pool/Getty Images)

UNESCO has become a grotesque forum, hosting shows such as that orchestrated by Cuba. Last June, Cuba complained of a minute of silence for Holocaust victims, but was able to hold another one for the Palestinians. At the opening of UNESCO’s 39th General Conference in Paris, the United Arab Emirates’ delegation placed a box containing a medal on the desk of each foreign delegation in honor of the UAE having sponsored the renovation of the conference hall. No box, however, was placed on the desk of Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama-Hacohen. These farces are nothing new at UNESCO. And they must end. The UN agency cannot allow the “uncivilized regimes“, as Shama-Hacohen called them, to continue to bully and vandalize Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.

Islamic regimes launched a takeover bid for UNESCO by investing massive financial resources and political lobbying at the UN cultural agency. Qatar, the wealthiest state in the world per capita, provided extremely generous financial support. That is why a Qatari representative, the former Minister of Culture Hamad bin Abdulaziz al Kawari, for days led the recent race for the leadership of UNESCO. The Simon Wiesenthal Center charged Qatar with bribing countries to win votes for the UN agency post. The Wiesenthal Center then launched an appeal to prevent Iran from becoming the head of UNESCO’s executive board. Meanwhile, Turkey, another country with an Islamist regime that bullies culture and freedom, joined the executive board.

This “lobbying” has enabled those Islamic countries to form the most powerful bloc at UNESCO. As Denis MacEoin has previously explained:

“Of UNESCO’s 195 member states, 35 are fully Islamic nations, another 21 are members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and four are OIC observer states. That makes 60 who represent a bloc favourable to Muslim-inspired resolutions.”

Qatar has been pivotal in sponsoring anti-Semitic resolutions. There was UNESCO’s resolution denying Jewish history in Jerusalem, Islamizing historically Biblical holy sites by magic wand legerdemain, as Islam did not even exist until 600 years later. In a speech to the UNESCO General Assembly last week, Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO Carmel Shama Hacohen said :

“UNESCO has been hijacked and abused as a tool for the persecution of Israel and the Jewish people, while concocting fake facts and fake history, meant to erase our history in Jerusalem and rewrite global history.”

The Islamists’ takeover of the agency does not affect only Israel. It undermines the universal noble goal of this UN agency, which should be the protection of cultural diversity, especially where it is endangered.

The Preamble of UNESCO’s Constitution says: “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed”. UNESCO is knowingly betraying its own message. It is allowing regimes that massacre the minds of men to take over the UN agency that claims to be precisely in charge of “defenses of peace”.

Last March, UNESCO’s then Director-General, Irina Bokova, expressed appreciation for Qatar’s support with a $2 million loan as part of a commitment by the Qatari authorities to donate $10 million to UNESCO. UNESCO’s headquarter in Paris hosted a forum sponsored by Saudi Arabia on “cultural and religious diversity“. It was a capitulation to barbarism; Saudi Arabia tortures bloggers such as Raif Badawi, sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison. UNESCO also held a three-day event entitled “Saudi Cultural Days” with Saudi art, food, customs and dances. Saudi King Abdallah Ibn Abdul Aziz donated $20 million to the UNESCO Emergency Fund. Donations to UNESCO have been promised by other Islamic countries, such as Algeria, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Qatar and Turkey.

The United Arab Emirates gave $6 million to UNESCO, while Kuwait gave $5 million. UNESCO now hosts the presentation of books such as The Foundations of Islam along with ISESCO, the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, whose director Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri met Flavia Schlegel, assistant director general of UNESCO, to advance the cooperation between the two agencies.

At its headquarters in Paris, UNESCO also promoted a project, “Fighting Islamophobia through Education“. As the French author Pascal Bruckner explained:

“The concept of Islamophobia masks the reality of the offensive, led by the Salafists, Wahhabis, and Muslim Brotherhood in Europe and North America, to re-Islamize Muslim communities — a prelude, they hope, to Islamizing the entire Western world.”

Under UNESCO’s previous Director-General Irina Bokova, the organization allowed the “State of Palestine” to join as a member, despite its not being a state and despite the Palestinians’ clear failure to protect holy sites. Palestinians destroyed the Jewish holy shrine of Joseph’s Tomb and attacked the holy site known as Rachel’s Tomb, while Palestinian terrorists invaded the Christian holy site of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. UNESCO also kept silent when Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist terror group governing Gaza, destroyed the ancient Anthedon Harbor, which includes the ruins of a Roman temple and archaeological remains from the Persian, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine eras.

UNESCO’s concern for “endangered sites” — a travesty of language used by these regimes to mask the Islamization of Hebron’s Jewish cemeteries at the UN — quickly disappears when it comes to Christian churches in the Islamic world. Hagia Sophia, the great cathedral of Christianity in Istanbul, was re-Islamized by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The muezzin’s call to prayer resounded for the first time in 85 years since the country’s former leader, Ataturk, turned the cathedral into a museum. If UNESCO is really serious about reforming itself, it should immediately issue a statement against the Islamization of Hagia Sophia, a UN World Heritage Site.

Novelist and filmmaker Zulfu Livaneli, Turkey’s goodwill ambassador to the UNESCO, resigned in 2016; he accused the UN agency of hypocrisy for ignoring the destruction of a heritage site in Diyarbakir during clashes between the Turkish army and militants in his country’s mainly Kurdish southeast. “To pontificate on peace while remaining silent against such violations is a contradiction of the fundamental ideals of UNESCO,” said Livaneli, who had held the goodwill post to promote UNESCO values since 1996. More officials and personalities should take the same position protesting against UNESCO’s silence on many other destructions.

New UNESCO chief Azoulay said last week that the US “empty chair” cannot last. The American boycott, however, is not a matter of time, but of substance. The US and Israeli boycott will last until UNESCO returns to its original mission.

When Pablo Picasso painted the famous frescoes at UNESCO’s headquarter at Place de Fontenoy in Paris, UNESCO’s founding fathers dreamed of the rebirth of Western culture after the horrors of the Holocaust and Nazism. Now the West, intimidated by physical terror and political ransom, is allowing UNESCO to be seized by regimes that hang dissidents, lash women, execute gays, imprison Christians and leave their own people illiterate.

When did the West cynically decide that education and culture were worth less than a barrel of oil?

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

Categories: UNESCO
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The UN – here we go again

November 14, 2017

The UN – here we go again | Anne’s Opinions, 13th November 2017

UN – Useless Nations

It was action replay time at the UN General Assembly last week, as the UN lived down to our expectations and voted to condemn Israel 9 times:

GENEVA, Nov. 10, 2017 – The U.N. General Assembly will condemn Israel nine times today, “part of its annual ritual of enacting 20 Arab-sponsored resolutions singling out the Jewish state, and making no mention of Hamas stabbings, shootings or vehicular attacks against Israelis,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based monitoring group UN Watch. Click here for list of 9 resolutions.

By contrast, in this year’s session there will be a total of 6 condemnatory resolutions for the rest of the world combined — with one each on Syria, North Korea, Iran, Crimea, Myanmar, as well as one on the U.S. for its Cuba embargo.

All 193 UN member states participate in the initial committee vote today, and then almost always vote the same way in a second and final vote at the GA plenary in December.

“The U.N.’s assault on Israel today with a torrent of one-sided resolutions is surreal,” said Neuer.

“Even after Syrian president Bashar Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people within the past year, the U.N. is about to adopt a resolution — drafted and co-sponsored by Syria — which falsely condemns Israel for ‘repressive measures’ against Syrian citizens on the Golan Heights. It’s obscene,” said Neuer.

“While there will be a total of 20 resolutions against Israel this session, not a single U.N. General Assembly resolution is planned today or this year for gross human rights abusers such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Venezuela, China, Cuba, Pakistan or Zimbabwe.”

“At a time when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his state-controlled media incite to the continued stabbing and shooting of Israeli Jews, the U.N.’s response is to reflexively condemn Israel in nine separate resolutions, each of them one-sided, each of them utterly silent on Palestinian abuses.”

The resolution drafted annually by Syria condemns Israel for holding on to the Golan Heights, and demands Israel hand the land and its people to Syria.

Israeli military medics assisting wounded Syrians in April. Credit Dusan Vranic/Associated Press

“It’s astonishing,” said Neuer. “After the Syrian regime has killed its own people by the hundreds of thousands over six years, how can the U.N. call for more people to be subject to Assad’s rule? The timing of today’s text is morally galling, and logically absurd.”

“Today’s resolutions claim to care about Palestinians, yet the U.N. is oblivious to the dozens of Palestinians who have been slaughtered, maimed and expelled by Assad’s forces, and more than 3,000 victims killed since 2011.”

“Today’s farce at the General Assembly underscores a simple fact: the U.N.’s automatic majority has no interest in truly helping Palestinians, nor in protecting anyone’s human rights; the goal of these ritual, one-sided condemnations remains the scapegoating of Israel,” said Neuer.

“The U.N.’s disproportionate assault against the Jewish state undermines the institutional credibility of what is supposed to be an impartial international body. Politicization and selectivity harm its founding mission, eroding the U.N. Charter promise of equal treatment to all nations large and small,” Neuer added.

As a further example of the UN’s extreme insanity, there is a possibility that Iran will chair the next UNESCO Executive Board!

A diplomatic battle is under way to prevent Iran’s election to the post of UNESCO Executive Board chairman to replace Michael Worbs of Germany.

The words of Jeremiah in Eicha (Lamentations) illustrated perfectly at UNESCO

Israel has had a contentious relationship with the 58-member board, which in the past has approved resolutions that some say have ignored Jewish ties to Judaim’s holiest site, the Temple Mount.

US and Israeli efforts to block Iran received a boost on Wednesday when the Philippines was one of 27 countries the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s General Assembly elected to a four-year term on the board, effective immediately. Some of those countries are serving their second four-year terms.

In advance of the November 16 election, the board has been split between choosing Iran or South Korea to head the board, but it is possible that the Asia Pacific group will push the Philippines ambassador as a compromise candidate, a diplomatic source speculated in a conversation with The Jerusalem Post.

But the overall make-up of the board with the new members is seen as more hostile to Israel than the previous one.

Germany and the Netherlands lost seats and Turkey gained one. Jordan joined Egypt on the board, thereby providing additional support to any anti-Israel resolutions regarding Jerusalem in the future.

Whether Iran is elected or not, the result is almost irrelevant given the inherent hostility to Israel built in to the organization. The more important issue is the fact that a terror-supporting and revolution-exporting country, which is destabilising the Middle East and holding the world hostage to its desire to build nuclear weapons, could even be considered for such a symbolic post. In fact Iran should not be allowed to be a member of the UN at all.

Then again if the UN expelled every terror-supporting member state, there would be almost no UN left at all. Quite a comforting thought, all in all.

Israel’s Ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama Hacohen, slammed the organization as “the Titanic of international organizations”:

UNESCO is “the Titanic of international organizations,” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization said, accusing it of deliberately falsifying history to persecute the Jewish people.

Carmel Shama Hacohen argues with a Palestinian diplomat at UNESCO

In a scathing speech Friday to UNESCO’s 39th General Conference in Paris, Carmel Shama-Hacohen also slammed the United Arab Emirates for having given a gift to all member states but Israel, urging delegates to give it back in protest.

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“UNESCO is the Titanic of international organizations, which was hijacked and led by the Arab Group into crashing the iceberg of politicization, and which has been sinking ever since,” Shama-Hacohen said.

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He added: “Sadly, UNESCO has been hijacked and abused as a tool for the persecution of Israel and the Jewish people, while concocting fake facts and fake history, meant to erase our history in Jerusalem and rewrite global history.”

Shama-Hacohen dedicated a significant part of his speech to the UAE’s October 30 snub of Israel, though he did not name the Gulf state by name.

At the opening of the General Conference in Paris, the Emirati delegation had placed a box containing a silver medal on the desk of each foreign delegation in honor of the UAE having sponsored the renovation of the conference hall. No box, however, was placed on Shama-Hacohen’s desk.

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“Even the inauguration of this very hall was contaminated with the poison of politicization, as the donor state handed out to all member missions a greeting letter and a medal memorabilia: all member missions, aside from one — Israel,” the Israeli envoy said Friday. “How petty, how primitive, how pathetic.”

The incident made clear once again “that petro-dollars can buy much, but there’s no price tag on wisdom, manners and etiquette. Your wealth might be in money, but in dignity you are poorer than poor,” he added.

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“These wrongs are done in full daylight, and all keep quiet: silent accomplices to discrimination in sports: one of the foundations of education and culture, and silent accomplices to the attempts to isolate and ostracize Israel in the inauguration of this hall,” Shama-Hacohen said Friday.

“As for the silver medal, which was handed to you as a gift, I’d return it if I were you, so as not to partake in a despicable act which has no place in a free and enlightened world.”

Kol hakavod to those diplomats who took Hacohen at his word and handed him their medals:

Many foreign diplomats stationed at UNESCO gave him their medals — which bore a portrait of Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the deputy ruler of Dubai and the country’s finance minister of the UAE — in protest of the UAE’s move, the Israeli envoy said.

“My initial instinct was to put it to good use as a doorstop,” he said. “However, after giving it some more thought, I decided to donate them to the Syrian refugees who are wandering the cold streets of Paris. These refugees include infants and children, who escaped the atrocities of the Syrian regime and the chemical attacks of that member of the Arab Group against its own women, children and innocent civilians.”

He added: “If you only invested in them 1% of the efforts you put in here against Israel, their lives would have been better.”

Watch his speech below. If only his English was better pronunciated he would make a much bigger impact. Nevertheless, kol hakavod on an excellent speech:

As a palate cleanser listen to UN Ambassador the UN Nikki Haley’s fantastic speech to the Israel-American Council as she blasted the previous Obama administration for its betrayal of Israel at the UN, and pledged staunch American support for Israel:

Nikki Haley is a shining example of what a diplomat should look like. Sadly she is a rare diamond in a pig sty.

Categories: Anti-Israel, Anti-Zionism, Nikki Haley, UNESCO, United Nations and Israel
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US to withdraw from UNESCO due to ‘anti-Israel bias’

October 12, 2017

US to withdraw from UNESCO due to ‘anti-Israel bias’, Washington Examiner, Melissa Quinn, October 12, 2017

The United States is withdrawing from UNESCO because of what the Trump administration said is a “continuing anti-Israel bias” from the education and science organization.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement Thursday the U.S. would be pulling out of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization by the end of the year.

“This decision was not taken lightly, and reflects U.S. concerns with mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organization, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO,” Nauert said.

The State Department said it plans to “remain engaged” with the organization as a non-member.

This isn’t the first time the U.S. has pulled out of UNESCO.

Former President Ronald Reagan withdrew the U.S. from the organization in 1984, and former President George W. Bush rejoined the cultural group in 2002.

In 2011, the Obama administration cut funding to UNESCO after member states admitted Palestine as a member.

Categories: Trump administration and Israel, UN and Israel, UNESCO
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Israel blasts UN naming Hebron a Palestinian site

July 7, 2017

Israel blasts UN naming Hebron a Palestinian site, DEBKAfile, July 7, 2017

Israel blasted as “shameful and anti-Semitic” the UNESCO designation of Old Hebron and the Cave of the Patriarchs as “Palestinian heritage sites in danger.” “Not a Jewish site?” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asked, after 12 countries voted in favor, three against and six abstained from the resolution in a secret ballot held Friday, July 7, in Krakow, Poland. “Who is buried there, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah, our patriarchs and matriarchs,” Netanyahu said.

“Everywhere else in the Middle East mosques, churches and synagogues are being destroyed. Only in Israel is freedom of worship guaranteed.”

The Cave built over the site purchased, according to the Bible, by Abraham is Judaism’s second holiest site after Jerusalem and Islam’s fourth. Both faiths worship there at separate times. By Jewish tradition, Hebron is hallowed as the first seat of King David’s kingdom’s 3,000 years ago.

“We’ll continue to safeguard the Cave of the Patriarchs, freedom of religion and truth,” Netanyahy vowed.

President Reuven Rivlin tweeted: “UNESCO seems intent on sprouting anti-Jewish lies, while it remains silent as the region’s heritage is destroyed by brutal extremists.”

Opposition Yesh Atid leader, Yair Lapid, called UNESCO’s decision “a despicable falsification of history. Does UNESCO not believe that the Bible is heritage?”

The decision was hailed by Palestinian officials as a diplomatic victory against pressure from Israel and the US to derail the vote. Israel failed to have the motion on Hebron blocked, despite the personal intervention of the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley.

This UN body consistently passes anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian resolutions. Tuesday, UNESCO carried a Jordanian-drafted resolution declaring Israel an ‘occupying power’ in Jerusalem’s Old City and denying the Jewish state’s right to sovereignty in its capital.

Categories: Cave of the Patriarchs, UN and history, UN and Israel, UN and Palestinians, UNESCO
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Israel Bars UNESCO Team From Hebron Field Visit

June 25, 2017

Israel Bars UNESCO Team From Hebron Field Visit, Jerusalem Post, Tovah Lazaroff, June 25, 2017

Southern view of the Cave of the Patriarchs . (photo credit:WIKIMEDIA)

The Tomb of the Patriarchs is Judaism’s second most holy site, after the Temple Mount and the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The Herodian Structure built around the tombs houses uniquely houses both Jewish prayer sanctuaries and the Ibrahimi Mosque.

The bulk of the Palestinian city of Hebron is located under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority. But the Tomb of the Patriarchs and some of its Old City, are located in a small area of the city under Israeli military control. Some 1,000 Jewish live in that section of the city.

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Israel has refused to allow a UNESCO investigatory team to make a field visit to Hebron in advance of pending July vote to register its Old City on the list of World Heritage in Danger under the “State of Palestine.”

This is a “principled and strategic” stand, Israel’s Ambassador to UNESCO in Paris Carmel Shama HaCohen said on Saturday.

Hebron’s Old City, including the Tomb of the Patriarchs, is one of the 35 sites the World Heritage Committee plans to consider for inscription on the World Heritage List when it meets in Krakow, Poland from July 2-12.

The Palestinian Authority has fast tracked the inscription process by claiming that the site is endangered.

Since UNESCO recognized Palestine as a member state in 2011, the Palestinian Authority has similarly fast tracked inscription of two other sites on the list of World Heritage in Danger. This includes the Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route in Bethlehem in 2012 and the ancient terraces of Battir (2014).

The International Council on Monuments and Sites, a professional body, which investigates nomination requests and provides recommendations for inscription on the list of World Heritage in Danger had recommended that both nominations go through the normal process after making field visits to both sites.

This time Israel has rejected its request to make a field visit to Hebron, this includes a refusal to grant entry visas to Israel for the group, Shama HaCohen said.

The 21-member World Heritage Committee rejected the ICOMOS conclusions not to place the Church of the Nativity and the terrace of Battir on its endangered list, Shama HaCohen said.

Therefore, it’s “a shame to waste the time and money” of the ICOMOS committee whose recommendations are otherwise typically adhered to with regard to the inscription process, Shama HaCohen said.

“Israel won’t take part in and won’t legitimize any Palestinian political moves under the guise of culture and heritage,” Shama HaCohen said.

The only steps it will take is to wage a diplomatic campaign to organize a large majority to block a process filled with “lies that plots against the state of Israel as well as the history and the connection of the Jewish people to this important holy site,” Shama HaCohen said.

“We are in the midst of a campaign against the opening of an additional Palestinian front in the religious and cultural war they are trying to force on us,” Shama HaCohen said.

He added that he hoped that this time around Israel would succeed in blocking the move.

The Tomb of the Patriarchs is Judaism’s second most holy site, after the Temple Mount and the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The Herodian Structure built around the tombs houses uniquely houses both Jewish prayer sanctuaries and the Ibrahimi Mosque.

The bulk of the Palestinian city of Hebron is located under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority. But the Tomb of the Patriarchs and some of its Old City, are located in a small area of the city under Israeli military control. Some 1,000 Jewish live in that section of the city.

The PA has warned that Israeli actions have placed the Herodian structure and Hebron’s historic Old City in danger. It has provided UNESCO with a list of complaints that includes placement of road blocks and checkpoints, the tear gas used to quell Palestinian demonstrations and failure to make necessary repairs. It has included in that list recent attempts by the Jewish residents of the city, to purchase property on Shuhadah Street.

Israel has rejected all claims that it has harmed the Tomb or the structures in the Old City.

It has further argued that Israel’s military control of that area of the city is based on a 1997 agreement with the PA. It has told UNESCO that any inscription of the site should be done at the request of both Israel and the Palestinians.

Categories: Jewish holy sites in Israel, Tomb of the Patriarchs, UN and Israel, UNESCO
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Europe’s Compassionate Hatred of Israel

December 22, 2016

Europe’s Compassionate Hatred of Israel, Gatestone Institute, Bat Ye’or, December 22, 2016

(Please see also, Obama sits while the UN moves toward a boycott of Israel. — DM)

The Jerusalem Declaration of UNESCO seeks to Islamize, with the help of many governments in Europe and other Christian countries, the ancient history of the people of Israel.

But what does this declaration mean for Europe and Christianity? Wasn’t Christianity born out of Israel? Wasn’t Jesus a Judean Jew, as were the apostles and evangelists? Or was it Islam that Jesus was preaching, in Arabic and in the mosques?

Where are the great Catholic or Protestant voices to protest against this Islamization of Christianity? This passivity, this indifference makes you think that Europe will soon look more like Lebanon.

European countries recognize terrorism everywhere except in Israel, where they themselves are allies of these terrorists whom they call “freedom fighters” or “militants”, against “occupation”.

This alliance has ruined Europe — because the enemies of Israel are also enemies of Christianity and of Europe. How can you ally yourself with those who want to destroy you, without in fact dying yourself?

The same obsessive hatred Hitler had for Israel, which led to the ruin of Europe, has persisted today in the European Union against the Jewish State. The great irony is that in trying to destroy Israel, Europe has destroyed itself.

Today we are witnessing the coming of the worldwide caliphate. This expression means that the Muslim view of history is currently prevailing in international institutions. We see it with the Jerusalem Declaration of UNESCO, this palace of revisionism. The Jerusalem Declaration seeks to Islamize, with the help of many governments in Europe and other Christian countries, the ancient history of the people of Israel.

The Venice Declaration of 1980, issued by the European Community, which tried to force Israel to survive in an indefensible territory, already prescribed its disappearance and replacement with a people that had never even manifested itself before 1969 — and all with the assistance of the Soviet Union and especially France. The Islamization of Jerusalem and the delegitimization of the State of Israel were already set out in the Venice Declaration, which to this date the European Union has continued to view as valid.

The Venice Declaration of 1980 was a gift from the European Community to the Arab League, aimed at reestablishing good economic relations with Arab countries, which had been angered by the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979, a peace Europe had not been able to prevent. Jewish holy sites and the survival of the Jewish State were sacrificed by the European Community in exchange for petrodollars.

Since that time, the European Union has expressed remorse for the Holocaust and love and compassion for Israel, but has continued to support, fund and encourage a population whose mission is the destruction of Israel, as proclaimed in its doctrine, and with which Europe is quite familiar. European countries zealously spend billions to promote a worldwide Palestinian campaign of hatred against the State of Israel. They recognize terrorism everywhere except in Israel, where they themselves are allies of these terrorists, whom they call “freedom fighters” or “militants”, against “occupation”. The so-called “Jewish occupation” of Judea and Samaria refers to land that was conquered by war and occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967, and from where Palestinian Jews were killed, or dispossessed and expelled.

Does not this policy, championed by France, remind you of something? During WW II, the Pétain-Hitler and the fascists’ alliance with the Mufti of Jerusalem, head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, sought the extermination of the Jewish people, whom they accused of being the cause of evil. Today, this same policy, this same alliance, has set itself the same objective with the same motivation: Israel, to them, is the cause of the wars in the Middle East and must be wiped out. Men from the 1940s have passed away, but their heirs kept their policy, disguising it under compassion and love, driving Israel to suicide “for its own good”. Of course!

2146During WW II, the alliance of Pétain and Hitler with the Mufti of Jerusalem sought the extermination of the Jewish people, whom they accused of being the cause of evil. Today, this same policy, this same alliance, has set itself the same objective with the same motivation: Israel must be wiped out.

Now, with the declaration of UNESCO, we are witnessing the suppression of the history of the Israeli people – the “Holocaust of Memory”, as defined by Giulio Meotti — with the EU joining in.

But what does UNESCO’s declaration mean for Europe and Christianity? Wasn’t Christianity born out of Israel? Don’t churches tell the history of the people of Israel in their paintings, sculptures and stained glass windows? And isn’t the Bible, this historical shrine of the people of Israel for more than two millennia, left open on every pulpit of these churches? Hasn’t it been read? Commented on for twenty centuries? Wasn’t Jesus a Judean Jew, as were the apostles and evangelists?

Or was it Islam that Jesus was preaching, in Arabic and in the mosques?

If Israel never had a history in Judea, then Christianity and the Bible are lies. Are the ancient texts attesting to the existence of Israel from the time of the Pharaohs, Assyria, the Greeks, the Romans all lies? And the Arch of Titus in Rome, did that Menorah on there come from the mosque? There were not even any mosques around at that time — not even in Arabia.

What the UNESCO’s declaration is forcing us to accept is not just the destruction of our identity and culture, and the replacement of Christianity — a graft of Israel — with the Muslim faith, but also the destruction of the principle underlying Western civilization itself: reason, the very thing that lifts man above the beasts. We see that Israel, in its defense of the historical principle of its legitimacy, is also theologically protecting the legitimacy of Christianity, also linked to the Bible.

But if this declaration is not true, then the Jewish State’s sovereignty over Jerusalem is legal. And if it is legal, why has no one heard the protests of human rights defenders? How many Christians are there in the world? Two and a half billion? How many of these protested? A million? A hundred thousand? Ten thousand? Fifty, if that? And where are the great Catholic or Protestant voices to protest against this Islamization of Christianity? This passivity, this indifference, makes you think that Europe will soon look more like Lebanon.

This UNESCO declaration, to which Europe raised no objections — with the exception of four countries, whose abstention was not a protest, but an act of cowardice — is the very charter of the Islamization of Europe and of Christianity. It details a policy that dovetails with what we see unfolding with mass-immigration and its consequences starting in 1973, the date when the European Community allied itself with the enemy of Israel, the PLO. It is this policy of alliance with the enemies of Israel that led to the abandonment of the Lebanese Christians when they were attacked by the Europe-supported Palestinians. It was this policy that led to the denial of the history of jihad, of dhimmitude and of the tragedy of Christians, hostages in the Arab world — because Palestinians embody jihadist and dhimmitude values against Jews, Christians and Europe.

Europe’s alliance with the enemies of Israel, for the purpose of delegitimizing and destroying it, has simply continued the policies of Hitler and Pétain; but how can you destroy Israel without destroying Christianity? What would Christianity be without the Bible, the prophets, a Jewish Jesus, the universal values that these teach? This alliance has ruined Europe — because the enemies of Israel are also enemies of Christianity and of Europe. How can you ally yourself with those who want to destroy you, without in fact dying yourself?

The same obsessive hatred Hitler had for Israel, which led to the ruin of Europe, has persisted today in the European Union against the Jewish State. The great irony is that in trying to destroy Israel, Europe has destroyed itself.

The people of Europe will regain their freedom and identity by extricating themselves from this Euro-Arab alliance that joins them in a genocidal scheme against Israel and the West, in which they themselves are both protagonists and victims. Then and only then will they be able to help those Muslims who are bravely struggling to release their brethren from the hatred disfiguring the human face — jihadi hatred — and persuade them to accept human diversity. We have neglected these Muslims. They have been fighting alone for both them and us. It is imperative to help them.

Categories: History of Jews in Israel, Islam and Christianity, Islam and Judaism, Islamic hatred of others, Islamic supremacy, Islamists vs Israel, Israel and Europe, Israel and UN, UNESCO, UNESCO Jerusalem Declaration
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Qatar’s Shopping Spree to Buy and Displace the West?

November 11, 2016

Qatar’s Shopping Spree to Buy and Displace the West? Gatestone Institute,Giulio Meotti, November 11, 2016

Qatar sits on the executive board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN agency that has just erased 3000 years of Jewish history in Jerusalem, and has set its sights on the main chair at UNESCO: as the successor of UNESCO’s secretary general, Irina Bokova.

Human rights organizations have already promoted a campaign to prevent Qatar’s Kawari from taking the UNESCO seat. Citing a vast amount of anti-Semitic material present at the Doha Book Fair, Kawari’s flagship, the Simon Wiesenthal Center launched a campaign against his candidacy.

Qatar is the puppeteer behind UNESCO’s anti-Semitic resolution on Jerusalem, and a world center of Islamic extremism. Qatar does not make a secret of trying to submit Western culture to the Muslim crescent.

The Soviet Union, during the Cold War, invested in propaganda operations in the West to subvert capitalism and democracy. Communism found precious allies in the so-called “useful idiots” who facilitated Soviet work in academia, newspapers and publishing houses. Political Islam has been using the same convenient outlets and mechanisms to spread Islamic sharia law in the West.

The old role of Soviet propaganda has now been taken up by Islamic regimes. Qatar, for instance, is not only interested in buying large segments of Europe’s economy (Hochtief, Volkswagen, Porsche, Canary Wharf and Deutsche Bank), but also in playing a key role in Europe’s culture.

Qatar sits on the executive board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN agency that has just erased 3000 years of Jewish history in Jerusalem, and has set its sights on the main chair at UNESCO: as the successor of UNESCO’s secretary general, Irina Bokova.

The favorite for this race is, in fact, the former minister of culture of Qatar from 2008 to 2016, Hamad bin Abdulaziz al Kawari, who currently serves as “cultural adviser to the Emir,” Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. In 2017, the UNESCO leadership is supposed to go to a representative of the Arab world, according to the rule of geographic rotation; Kawari will have to defeat the candidacy of a Lebanese and an Egyptian.

Kawari recently landed in Rome, apparently to start his promotional tour, and he met with its mayor, Virginia Raggi, who received the Islamic emirate’s delegation. Kawari received an honorary degree from Tor Vergata University, Rome’s second most important university. The photo of the ceremony speaks volumes about political Islam’s level of penetration in Europe’s academic culture. Abdullah Bin Hamad Al Attiyah, Qatar’s former deputy prime minister, even spoke at Tor Vergata.

2037Qatar’s Hamad bin Abdulaziz al Kawari (center), who serves as “cultural adviser to the Emir,” is pictured receiving an honorary degree from Rome’s Tor Vergata University last month. (Image source: Askanews video screenshot)

Kawari also had a meeting with Italy’s minister of culture, Dario Franceschini and minister of education, Stefania Giannini.

Last June, Kawari was also in the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis and sign an agreement between the Vatican Apostolic Library and the Qatar Foundation for Education. Kawari, fluent in Arabic, English and French, is an affable man of the world, at home in Paris, where he graduated from Sorbonne University; his climb to the leadership of UNESCO has the support of the rulers of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia.

Human rights organizations have already promoted a campaign to prevent Kawari from taking the UNESCO seat. Citing a vast amount of anti-Semitic material present at the Doha Book Fair, Kawari’s flagship, the Simon Wiesenthal Center launched a campaign against his candidacy. In a letter to Kawari, Shimon Samuels, Director for International Relations of the Wiesenthal Center, said the material on display every year in Doha “violates the values promoted by Unesco“.

Samuels listed at least 35 anti-Semitic titles, including nine editions of the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, four editions of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, and four editions of Henry Ford’s The International Jew. “From this point of view, Doha is far from Paris,” said Samuels, referring to the general headquarters of UNESCO.

Qatar is the puppeteer behind UNESCO’s anti-Semitic resolution on Jerusalem, and a world center of Islamic extremism. Doha just held a meeting between the Palestinian Authority’s leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and the heads of Hamas, a terrorist organization devoted to the destruction of the State of Israel. Qatar does not make a secret of trying to submit Western culture to the Muslim crescent. The only question is, which country’s culture will UNESCO erase next?

The Qatari royal family is now much involved in “the arts.” According to the BBC, “To take a recent example, the Qatari royal family sponsored the Tate’s Damien Hirst retrospective. It’s now moved to Doha, where Tate director Nicholas Serota attended the official launch.” Major works by Warhol, Bacon, Rothko, Koons and Hirst are all thought to have made their way to Qatar.

Qatar is buying academic chairs in Europe’s universities, such as the pact between Doha and Rome’s Tor Vergata. What is the university presumably expected to do for Qatar in exchange for that? Qatar academic purchases are also the subject of Le Monde’s investigation entitled, “Tariq Ramadan: le sphinx,” which details how Tariq Ramadan, the well-known European Muslim intellectual, was been able to obtain a chair at the University of Oxford. Mediapart, the French leftist magazine, ran a long exposé about Tariq Ramadan as “Qatar’s showcase.”

The Qatari monarchy, in 2015 alone, donated £11 million to renew Oxford’s St Antony’s College, where Tariq Ramadan works. Sheikha Moza, the wife of Emir Al Thani, inaugurated the magnificent building designed by the late architect, Zaha Hadid.

Qatar also financed the creation of an Islamic section at the Bloomsbury publishing house and the “Doha Debates” program that aired on the BBC. It would be interesting to know how Qatar’s sharia can find agreement with the sybaritic Bloomsbury’s British culture.

The attorney-general of Qatar also signed an agreement with the president of Sorbonne University, Philippe Boutry, in Paris, for the enrollment of hundreds of migrants from the Middle East. The Sorbonne accepted 600,000 euros a year, for three years.

Many British universities also receive large donations from Qatar. University College London, for example, has an archeology campus in Qatar. The Qatar Development Fund recently donated $4.3 million to the Margaret Thatcher Scholarship Trust at Oxford University.

Qatar is also having a shopping spree in American universities, and is funding their university departments in the Arabian desert. Universities such as Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Texas A&M and Virginia Commonwealth have all signed agreements with Emir Al Thani. Each will receive $320 million dollars a year.

Students of American Universities based in Doha are also invited to attend the sermons of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual mentor of the Muslim Brotherhood, who is known for his hate-ridden religious edicts. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has called it “outrageous” for Cornell University to decide to open a campus in Doha while the kingdom funds Hamas’s war against Israel.

The Financial Times once called Qatar “the world’s most aggressive deal hunter.” Emir Al Thani is now promoting a takeover of Western culture. But very few in Europe seem to care about that. Is it because “it is difficult to avoid its money and influence“, especially for an economically depressed Europe? With their telling silence, are they simply aligning with Qatar’s sharia rulers, and hoping they will chosen to be bought out next?

Categories: Academia and Islamists, Antisemitism, Arab nations, Human rights organizations, Islamist organizations, Israel, Jerusalem, Palestinians, Qatar, UNESCO
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In UNESCO, Palestinians claim ownership of Dead Sea Scrolls

November 7, 2016

In UNESCO, Palestinians claim ownership of Dead Sea Scrolls, Jihad Watch, , November 7, 2016

As is if were not bad enough that UNESCO recently passed a resolution declaring the Temple Mount to be Muslim, not Jewish, now the Palestinian Authority plans to seize ownership of the Dead Sea Scrolls and “demand that UNESCO order Israel to surrender the artifacts.”

Among the Scrolls are partial or complete copies of every book in the Hebrew Bible (except the book of Esther)….

The Qumran Caves Scrolls preserve a large range of Jewish religious writings from the Second Temple period, including parabiblical texts, exegetical texts, hymns and prayers, wisdom texts, apocalyptic texts, calendrical texts, and others.

The Green Line is an administrative default border (an armistice line) that never existed prior to 1949, and was created under arbitrary conditions following Israel’s Independence War.

This latest attempt to hijack history comes after Palestinians have advanced the irrational argument that Jesus was a Palestinian because Bethlehem is administered by the PA; never mind that Jesus (Yeshua) was “from the House of David” according to Scriptures. Palestinian Media Watch has cited the regularity of the references to “Jesus the Palestinian” by prominent Palestinians, including the Governor of Ramallah, Leila Ghannam (“We all have the right to be proud that Jesus is a Palestinian”); senior PA leader Jibril Rajoub  (“The greatest Palestinian in history since Jesus is Yasser Arafat“); and an editorial in the PA official daily — Al-Hayat Al-Jadida — that referred to the “holy Trinity” of Arafat, Abbas and Jesus.

Pure lies and fabrication of history are nothing new for Islamic supremacists hell-bent on degrading, delegitimizing, destroying and even attempting to erase Israel’s presence in ancient Biblical history. And now they know that at UNESCO, they will find willing accomplices. The Dead Sea Scrolls in themselves bear witness to the ancient Jewish presence in the land; that may be why the Palestinians want to get hold of them, so as to try to make sure that people aren’t able to use them to make the case for Israel.

deadsea-scroll“In UNESCO, Palestinians claim ownership of Dead Sea Scrolls”, by Shlomo Cesana, Israel Hayom, November 6, 2016:

The Palestinian Authority is planning to claim ownership of the Dead Sea Scrolls and demand that UNESCO order Israel to surrender the artifacts, Israel Hayom learned over the weekend.

Discovered in the Qumran Caves in the eastern Judean Desert between 1947 and 1956, the scrolls — a trove of 981 different texts dating back to the time of the Second Temple — are believed to be the work of members of a Jewish sect known as the Essenes.

The majority of the scrolls are written in Hebrew, some are written in the Aramaic dialects common to the area at that time, and a handful of parchments are written in Greek.

The Palestinian’s first move on the matter took place last week, during a meeting of UNESCO’s subcommittee on the retrieval and return of cultural property to its countries of origin, which operates in an advisory capacity.

Israel, which is not a member of the committee, has observer status in the forum.

The Palestinian delegate claimed that as the scrolls were found in an archeological dig beyond the Green Line, Israel has taken possession of then illegally.

Qumran is located in Area C of the West Bank, which under the 1993 Oslo Accords is under Israeli civil and military control.

Israeli Ambassador to UNESCO Carmel Shama-Hacohen lambasted the Palestinians’ gall.

“This is another provocative and audacious, attempt by the Palestinians to rewrite history. The Dead Sea Scrolls are factual and weighty archeological evidence……

Categories: Dead Sea Scrolls, Israel, Jews, Palestinian Authority, UNESCO
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The Hostility and Hypocrisy of Left-Wing Israeli NGOs

October 31, 2016

The Hostility and Hypocrisy of Left-Wing Israeli NGOs, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Noah Beck, October 31, 2016

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Israeli human rights group B’Tselem recently appeared before a special session of the United Nations Security Council, excoriating Israel and pleading with the body to act against Israel’s settlements.

In 1975, the UN famously declared that “Zionism is racism” and, four decades later, the organization continues to hound Israel. In each of the last four years, as the Syrian bloodbath claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, there were at least five times as many resolutions condemning Israel as those rebuking the rest of the world.

The UN’s cultural body, UNESCO, recently passed a motion ignoring any Jewish (or Christian) historical ties to East Jerusalem holy sites, referring to the Temple Mount and Western Wall only by their Muslim names and condemning Israel as “the occupying power.” It turns out that some of Israel’s left-wing NGOs worked to help produce the UNESCO motion.

Given the UN’s chronic hostility, efforts by Israeli NGOs to persuade the UN to act against Israel are arguably treasonous. Indeed, one attorney and activist for Israel’s left-leaning Labor party filed a police complaint alleging treason against B’Tselem, arguing that the NGO has harmed state sovereignty, tried to give land away to a foreign entity, and taken steps that could cause a war.

Israeli democracy is extremely tolerant, to the point of allowing its members of parliament to openly support terrorism and terrorist groups. Last March, several Israeli Arab Knesset members condemned Arab states for labeling Hizballah a terrorist organization, even though it has been at war with Israel for decades and regularly threatens new hostilities.

Last February, members from the Joint (Arab) List paid a solidarity visit to relatives of Palestinian terrorists security forces killed to stop them from murdering Israelis. In 2014, MK Hanin Zoabi (Balad) drew praise from Hamas by asserting that the kidnappers of three missing Israeli youths were “not terrorists.” Hamas’s connection to the young men’s abduction and murder helped to spark the third war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Thus, Israel already has plenty of dissenting voices and activists without foreign intervention. Nevertheless, foreign interests have identified Israeli NGOs as the soft underbelly of Israeli democracy and have leveraged them to promote their own agendas. The problem became so acute that a watchdog, NGO Monitor, was formed in 2002 to track the self-hostility being funded largely by European and other foreign sources. As the organization notes: “NGOs lack a system of checks and balances, and…provide accountability to their funders and activist members, and not to the citizens or societies whose lives are directly impacted by their activities.”

NGO Monitor also notes that, even though most of the foreign government funding for these Israeli NGOs is “formally designated for ‘educating the Israeli public’ and ‘changing public opinion’ (both in violation of the norms on non-interference in other democracies), these Israeli NGOs are very active externally, in the delegitmization and political warfare against Israel.”

These left-wing Israeli NGO’s receive money from about two dozen foreign governments, and some private organizations. That includes millions of dollars from billionaire George Soros.

In Catch the Jew, author Tuvia Tenenbom exposed how foreign-funded “human rights” and “cultural” organizations in Israel tend to serve as vehicles for attacking Israel. By presenting himself to interview subjects as “Tobi the German,” Tenenbom elicits some surprising confessions. For example, the New Fund for Cinema and TV, a foreign-funded Israeli cultural NGO, told him that that about 80 percent of political documentaries made in Israel are co-produced by Europeans. That includes a documentary called “10%—What Makes a Hero,” which equates Israel’s military with the Nazis. Such films would be too scandalous to be produced in Germany, but German-sponsored NGOs can safely pay left-wing Israelis to make such movies.

Some foreign funders of Israeli NGOs have even unwittingly enriched Hamas. Last August, Hamas allegedly siphoned off “tens of millions of dollars” from World Vision, a U.S.-based charity, and used the funds for weapons purchases, tunnel construction, and other military activities.

The Knesset passed a law in July requiring disclosure of foreign funding sources for NGOs that get more than half of their money from overseas. The law is “clearly aligned with the American Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA),” wrote legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich.

“Israel is unique in the sheer scale of the foreign government sponsorship of domestic political groups,” he wrote. “For example, the European Union alone has in recent years given roughly 1.2 million Euro a year for political NGOs in the US and roughly an order of magnitude more in Israel—a vastly larger per capita amount.”

The Obama administration opposes foreign influence only when that influence promotes a dissenting view. President Obama opposed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Congress against the Iranian nuclear deal, but was happy to give a speech to the UK parliament against Brexit. The Obama administration critiqued Israel’s NGO-funding-disclosure law, even though it sent U.S. taxpayer money to an Israeli NGO working to oust Israel’s prime minister.

The same hypocrisy seems to prevail among Israel’s foreign-funded NGOs. They ostensibly exist to promote democracy and peaceful co-existence, but are conspicuously silent when Palestinian institutions violate those ideals. Such silence enables abuse by Palestinians and promotes a distorted and incomplete picture of the complex reality in which Israelis operate. Foreign-funded Israeli NGOs remained silent  after the Palestinian Authority arrested Palestinians who visited a Sukkah in a symbolic peace event promoting coexistence.

“These organizations are silent when the Palestinian leadership pays salaries to the families of terrorists, glorifies murderers and calls streets and city centers after them,” Netanyahu said. “These organizations prove again and again that they are not actually interested in human rights, but only in shaming Israel and libeling it around the world.”

If Israel’s left-wing NGOs truly are committed to democracy and peace, why haven’t they condemned the PA’s efforts to prevent “normalization” with Israel? In 2014, Jibril Rajoub, the deputy secretary of the Fatah Central Committee and the head of the Palestinian Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs, condemned a coexistence-promoting soccer match between Israeli and Palestinian youths on a southern kibbutz, as “a crime against humanity.”

Last week, a Palestinian newspaper came under intense criticism for publishing an interview with Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman. The Jerusalem-based newspaper Al-Quds was denounced by Hamas, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, and the supposedly “moderate” PA. The “chilling effects” and anti-peace message implicit in the harsh reactions to the interview have yet to catch the attention of any left-wing NGOs supposedly working for peace and democracy.

Categories: B'Tselem, Israeli left, Israeli settlements, NGO's, UNESCO
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Column One: Checkmating Obama

October 27, 2016

Column One: Checkmating Obama, Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick, October 27, 2016

Obama has waited eight years to exact his revenge on Israel for not supporting his hostile, strategically irrational policies. And he has no interest in letting bygones be bygones.

wailingwallobamaObama at the Western Wall. (photo credit:AFP PHOTO)

In one of the immortal lines of Godfather 2, mafia boss Michael Corleone discusses the fate of his brother, who betrayed him, with his enforcer.

“I don’t want anything to happen to him while my mother is alive,” Corleone said.

Message received.

The brother was murdered after their mother’s funeral.

Last week it was reported that the Obama administration has delivered a message to the Palestinian Authority. The administration has warned the PA that the US will veto any anti-Israel resolution brought before the UN Security Council before the US presidential elections on November 8.

Message received.

Open season on Israel at the Security Council will commence November 9. The Palestinians are planning appropriately.

Israel needs to plan, too. Israel’s most urgent diplomatic mission today is to develop and implement a strategy that will outflank President Barack Obama in his final eight weeks in power.

Lobbying the administration is pointless. Obama has waited eight years to exact his revenge on Israel for not supporting his hostile, strategically irrational policies. And he has no interest in letting bygones be bygones.

Before turning to what Israel must do, first we need to understand what Israel can do.

A good place to begin is by considering what just transpired at UNESCO, where twice in a week, UNESCO bodies resolved to erase 3,000 years of Jewish history in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

The fight that Israel waged at UNESCO is not the fight it needs to wage at the Security Council. The stakes at the Security Council are far higher.

Like the UN General Assembly, UNESCO’s decisions are non-binding declarations that have no legal or operational significance. As such, there is no reason to expend great resources to fight them. For Israel, the goal of the fight at UNESCO is not to defeat anti-Israel initiatives. That is impossible given the Palestinians’ automatic majority.

The purpose of the fight at UNESCO is to humiliate European governments that side with antisemitic initiatives, and to weaken the congenitally anti-Israel body itself.

The government achieved both of these objectives. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s disavowal of his own government’s abstention from the vote on the first resolution – like the similar position taken after the fact by the Mexican government – was a diplomatic victory for Israel.

So too, the fact that UNESCO’s own Secretary-General Irina Bukova felt compelled to disavow her own agency’s actions by rejecting the resolution’s denial of the Jewish people’s ties to Jerusalem was a significant victory for Israel. Her statement was deeply damaging for UNESCO and its reputation.

Finally, the fact that Tanzania and the Philippines voted against the resolution was a testament to Israel’s capacity to convince other governments to abandon their traditional pro-Palestinian voting pattern.

The Palestinians won the vote at UNESCO because they are more powerful diplomatically than Israel. They have an automatic anti-Israel majority. But they weren’t empowered by their victory. To the contrary. They were bloodied by it.

In a sign of their weakening hold on member nations, the Palestinians and Jordanians felt compelled to send a threatening letter to the members of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee lest they dare to vote against the resolution. Powerful players don’t make threats. They don’t need to.

Israel’s experience at UNESCO teaches us that there are governments that are open to counteroffers. Israel doesn’t need to hide in America’s shadow. It is capable of working on its own to blunt the impact of the Palestinians’ automatic majority. And it will need to use all of its resources to fend off a US-backed assault at the Security Council.

Unlike UNESCO, the Security Council can pass legally binding resolutions. Israel needs to be prepared to bring all of its resources to bear to prevent such a resolution from being adopted against it. Obama’s intention to abandon Israel at the Security Council means that Israel comes to this battle severely hobbled.

But there is one advantage to the US’s betrayal.

Over the years, Israel’s ability to trust the US to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the Security Council was been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the US has secured Israel from diplomatic assaults. But on the other hand, our ability to trust Washington has made us diplomatically lazy and ineffective.

Safe in Washington’s shadow, we have behaved as through all diplomacy is public diplomacy. That is, we have pretended that statecraft begins and ends with making the moral or strategic case for our side against the other guys.

But public diplomacy is just one diplomatic tool.

The Syrian regime, for instance, has no moral case for securing international support. Bashar Assad didn’t convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to support him by arguing that he is better than alternative regimes. He bought Putin’s support by offering him permanent air and naval bases in Syria.

Then there is Morocco, another weak state with no public diplomacy case to make. Last March, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon outraged Rabat when he acknowledged the plain fact that Western Sahara, which Morocco occupies, is “occupied territory.”

Morocco quickly secured the support of Spain and France and launched an all-out onslaught against Ban. How did Morocco manage?

Morocco’s most powerful diplomatic resource is its control over migration flows from North Africa to Europe. Anytime it wishes, Rabat can open the migratory floodgates just as easily as it can keep them shut. And the French and Spanish know it.

In less than a month, Ban issued repeated abject apologies.

Game. Set. Match. Morocco.

From reports to date, it appears that shortly after the US elections on November 8, the Malaysians or Egyptians will submit a Palestinian-backed resolution that defines Israeli communities in united Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria as illegal. If the resolution is brought to a vote, the US will fail to veto it.

Such a resolution, or a resolution obligating Israel to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines, would cause Israel grave harm.

So what resources does Israel have to prevent this from happening?

Of course, we have public diplomacy. And that might work with some friendly nations. But it won’t get us over the top. We need to learn from the Syrian and Moroccan examples and consider what we have to offer Security Council members in exchange for their support in scuttling the approaching onslaught against us.

One such resource is the US Congress. Israel’s allies in Congress are sickened by the Obama administration’s devastating Middle East policies. A solid majority of lawmakers can be trusted to support actions that will reinforce Israel’s position.

Israel has other resources as well that we can trade on. We have natural gas. And we have technologies that the governments of the world require to surmount the challenges of the 21 century. There is no reason to give these resources away when we can trade them for diplomatic support.

As for the Palestinians, as the UNESCO vote showed, they are less popular now than at any time in the past 40 years. All they have to offer is threats and antisemitism. Both are powerful weapons.

But they are no longer invincible.

Israel’s goal must be to use our resources at the Security Council in a manner that will make it impossible for Obama to enable an anti-Israel resolution to pass.

A method for achieving this goal has two components. The first component is to convince a friendly country on the Security Council to propose a balanced resolution that would counter the Palestinian-backed Israel-bashing one.

Such a resolution could include four points. First, it could deplore efforts to deny Jewish history in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

Second, it can condemn the PA/PLO for their continued unlawful funding of terrorists.

Third, it can urge Israel to restrain settlement construction in areas that in previous negotiations have been identified as likely territory for a future Palestinian state.

Fourth, it can call on Israel and the PA to reinstate negotiations immediately without preconditions.

Israel has friendly ties with a few Security Council members, among them Uruguay and New Zealand. In the final weeks of the Obama era, it is possible that Israel will be able to convince one of them to submit a balanced resolution along these lines.

Obama would be hard-pressed to oppose such a resolution in favor of one that singles Israel out for rebuke.

But that still is insufficient. Obama can make Uruguay and New Zealand a better offer if he wishes.

And so we move to the second aspect of the plan.

If we learn nothing else from the Obama era, we must recognize that the time has come for Israel to stop sufficing with just one Security Council veto. Most states have several. And we need a few more.

Russia today is the best place to start our search for a second veto.

Putin is a dealmaker. As his agreement with Assad showed, he is willing to consider attractive offers. Obviously, Israel won’t offer Russia bases. But we do have other things to offer Putin in exchange for a veto.

For instance, in exchange for a Russian veto at the Security Council, Israel can offer Putin to lobby the US Congress to cancel US sanctions against Russia over Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Israel has no dog in that fight. And the sanctions are not getting the US anywhere.

Putin might go for the deal for two reasons. First, by stepping into the breach and defending Israel against Obama, he will humiliate Obama.

Second, if Israel succeeds with the Congress, he will reap economic rewards.

For his part, Putin wouldn’t even have to openly side with Israel. All he would have to do is announce that in the interests of regional stability, Russia will not support an unbalanced resolution on Israel and the Palestinians.

If Putin supports a balanced resolution, Obama will be checkmated. His plan to take revenge on Israel for not following him off the strategic cliff will be foiled. Israel will have survived his presidency.

None of this will be easy. And success is far from assured. There are many more ways for Israel to fail than succeed. Our diplomatic weakness remains a millstone around our neck. But as the UNESCO resolutions showed, attacking Israel is no longer cost free. We are not powerless in the grip of circumstances. We have cards to play.

And now is the time to play them for all they are worth.

Categories: Israel and UN, Obama and Israel, Obama and Palestinians, Palestinian Authority, UN Security Council, UNESCO
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