Archive for the ‘UNESCO’ category

« WarSclerotic home page
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Time to Put the United Nations Out Of Business?

October 15, 2016

Time to Put the United Nations Out Of Business? Power Line,  John Hinderaker, October 14, 2016

(It’s worse than useless, but the Islamic states which infest it will keep it doing as it  does. Assuming that the UN continues to fester, the only reason I can think of for American to continue as a member is our veto power in the Security Council. — DM)

What, exactly, is the U.N. good for? Hundreds of thousands have been slaughtered in Syria, and no one looks to the U.N. for a solution, just as no one expects the U.N. to do anything about ISIS or al Qaeda. Wars have raged in Congo and across much of Africa, and the U.N. has done little but embroil itself in an unending series of sexual exploitation scandals. The Middle East has been in turmoil for years, from Libya to Afghanistan, and what contribution has the U.N. made? None. So the organization’s grandiose claims to be a force for world peace are hollow.

If the U.N. is useless with regard to actual international crises, what does it do? No doubt there are U.N. agencies here and there that do some good, although the cost of the larger organization is likely far greater than what it would take to fund the groups that are actually useful. More often than not, it seems that the U.N. is on the side of evil, as in the current UNESCO controversy.

Many of the member nations of the U.N. are engaged in a long-term project to delegitimize Israel, with the object of turning that country over to the surrounding Arabs and, presumably, driving out or killing the Jews who now live there. The latest phase of this effort is a proposed UNESCO resolution that attacks Israel on various grounds–nothing new there–and, most notably, implicitly denies the connection between Jews and Temple Mount, or Jerusalem.

YNET News explains:

The United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) passed a draft resolution on Thursday that failed to acknowledge the Jewish people’s ties to the Temple Mount, raising ire in Israel.

The proposal “strongly condemns the Israeli escalating aggressions and illegal measures against the Waqf Department and its personnel, and against the freedom of worship and Muslims’ access to their Holy Site Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al Sharif, and requests Israel, the Occupying Power, to respect the historic Status Quo and to immediately stop these measures.”

It omits the Jewish name for the holy site—the Temple Mount—and instead refers to it only by its Muslim name—Al-Haram Al Sharif.

First of all, Israel is not an “occupying power” in Jerusalem within the meaning of the Geneva Conventions. This is the usual nonsense perpetrated by international leftists. Beyond that, UNESCO’s attempt to deny that Jerusalem has any historical connection to the Jewish people is absurd. My reaction to this story is the same as Benjamin Netanyahu’s: Have they not read the Bible?

David conquered the Jebusites and captured Jerusalem 3,000 years ago. Jerusalem has been the center of Jewish life and worship ever since. Herod the Great raised the Second Temple, where Jesus taught and, according to the Gospels, drove out the money-changers. Jesus was arrested, tried and executed in Jerusalem. The Romans destroyed the Second Temple following the Jewish rebellion not long thereafter. Jews have lived in Jerusalem, and sought to return there from around the world, for millennia. Muslims arrived in the area roughly 1,600 years after the Jews, on the most charitable interpretation of history.

kingsolomonAn imagination of the ancient City of David

Temple Mount is exactly that–the site of the Second Temple, for sure, and perhaps, as tradition records, the location of Solomon’s temple and, long before that, the place where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac. To suggest that Temple Mount has no historical connection to the Jewish people, and the modern state of Israel, is ridiculous–precisely the sort of absurdism that international leftists, and especially Arabs, engage in. It would be like claiming that Washington, D.C. has no connection to the American people, only worse, by 2,750 years or so.

The Israeli government has gone to the length of issuing a publication detailing the millennia-long relationship between the Jewish people and the Promised Land. I admire the Israelis’ patience, but in their shoes, I think I would tell the lunatics–the UNESCO resolution was sponsored by Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan, and supported by any number of Europeans–to get stuffed.

The evil done by the United Nations is palpable, while the good is obscure and mostly presumed. Is there a compelling reason why hard-pressed American taxpayers should continue to support this organization? Is there a good reason why the U.N. should continue to exist? These are serious questions that should be debated. Unless someone has a good argument to the contrary, I incline to the view the the United Nations should go out of business.

Categories: UNESCO, United Nations
Tags: ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

UNESCO Shmunesco: denying history one fact at a time

October 13, 2016

UNESCO Shmunesco: denying history one fact at a time | Anne’s Opinions, 13th October 2016

(In UNESCO-World, black is white, up is down and Jerusalem has no connection to Judaism or Christianity. The mind boggles.– anneinpt)

The Kotel - to be renamed as the Muslim site Al Buraq according to UNESCO

The Kotel – to be renamed as the Muslim site Al Buraq according to UNESCO

It looks like Yom Kippur came a day too early for the UN, who have yet more apologizing and atoning to do. UNESCO voted today to deny any Jewish connection to Jerusalem. Yes, you read that right.

The UN passed a resolution Thursday denying the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall

The resolution was supported by 24 states, including Russia and China. 6 countries opposed and 26 abstained.

The resolution maintains that the Western Wall and Temple Mount will be referred to by their Arabic names and the Hebrew terms for the sites will only appear in quotation marks in UN references.

Earlier Israel had tried to prevent the decision, even asking the Vatican to help prevent the resolution. The Vatican enjoys observer status in UNESCO.

This vote differs only marginally, and more egregiously, from a previous vote taken in April: From the first link:

In a recent UNESCO meeting, Arab states and the Palestinian Authority have pushed a new resolution, explicitly describing the Temple Mount as an exclusively Muslim holy site, referring to the site of both ancient Jewish temples by its Arabic name: Haram a-Sharif.

This time, however, the proposed UNESCO resolution also touches upon the Western Wall that surrounds the Temple Mount. Like the Temple Mount, the Western Wall is also referred to by the Arabic name, with the Hebrew name included in brackets.

Israeli diplomats called the move an attempt to discredit the ancient Jewish connection to the Western Wall in the eyes of the international community.

The resolution does recognize the importance of Jerusalem in general to the three major Abrahamic faiths, but observers noted that this was likely an attempt to make an otherwise transparently anti-Israel measure appear more balanced. The order of faiths mentioned in connection to Jerusalem is Islam, Christianity, and Judaism last.

It seems that UNESCO just can’t get enough of denying Judaism’s connection to its holiest site and capital city.

If you want to get a glimpse of the insanity, take a look at Israellycool who posts the draft resolution – which in my anger I read as “daft resolution” which is surely a better descriptor. Some of the highlights:

Deeply deplores the failure of Israel, the occupying Power, to cease the persistent excavations and works in East Jerusalem particularly in and around the Old City, and reiterates its request to Israel, the occupying Power, to prohibit all such works in conformity with its obligations under the provisions of the relevant UNESCO conventions, resolutions and decisions;

Excuse me? Who is illegally excavating and destroying priceless artefacts from the First and Second Temple period? The Waqf, on the Temple Mount, that’s who! If Israel is responsible for any failure, it is of failing to stop the Waqf and throw them out for destroying our heritage and that of Christianity.

Calls on Israel, the occupying Power, to allow for the restoration of the historic status quo that prevailed until September 2000, under which the Jordanian Awqaf (Religious Foundation) Department exercised exclusive authority on Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif, and its mandate extended to all affairs relating to the unimpeded administration of Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif, including maintenance, restoration and regulating access;

I was not aware that the status quo had been changed. In fact the only people changing the status quo are the Waqf themselves who refuse to allow the slightest sign of Jewish prayer, and hardly a Jewish presence at all, on the Temple Mount. Again the Israeli police and government are complicit in this Waqf denial of religious rights, but since it is anti-Jewish denial I am surprised that UNESCO are objecting! (I am being sarcastic here in case anyone misses my British sense of humour).

Firmly deplores the continuous storming of Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif by Israeli right-wing extremists and uniformed forces, and urges Israel, the occupying Power, to take necessary measures to prevent provocative abuses that violate the sanctity and integrity of Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif;

Let’s have a look at those storming Jews:

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/07/gangs-of-jewish-settlers-resumed.html

“Storming” Jews on the Temple Mount. Some storm!

I do not think “storming” means what you think it means.

Deprecates the continuing Israeli unilateral measures and decisions regarding the Ascent to the Mughrabi Gate, including the latest works conducted at the Mughrabi Gate entrance in February 2015, the instalment of an umbrella at that entrance as well as the enforced creation of a new Jewish prayer platform south of the Mughrabi Ascent in Al-Buraq Plaza “Western Wall Plaza”, and the removal of the Islamic remains at the site, and reaffirms that no Israeli unilateral measures, shall be taken in conformity with its status and obligations under the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict;

OK, as soon as I saw the words “Al Buraq” I stopped reading. Anyone who believes in a flying horse but not in the retaining wall of Solomon’s Temple needs their head examined.

Israellycool remarks:

For our part, Israel’s Mission to UNESCO in Paris has given board members and international diplomats a brochure detailing the deep historical connections Judaism has to those sites. You can see the brochure here.

“These facts and evidence will leave no doubt, and without undermining other connection of other religions to the holy places in Jerusalem, of the deepest and longest Jewish presence in Jerusalem since ancient times,” Ambassador to UNESCO Carmel Shama-Hacohen wrote.

It has come to this, Israel having to send out brochures to somehow prove our connection to sites Jews have been praying, crying and mourning at for thousands of years? I doubt a glossy brochure will convince anyone who does not already see the truth.

I think it is pathetic that Israel has to give out brochures to explain the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Since this connection forms the core basis of Judaeo-Christian Western civilization, anyone who does not know is not interested in knowing, and no amount of propaganda or educational leaflets will change their minds.

In my opinion Israel should make a dignified withdrawal from UNESCO and cut off all contact with that corrupt, absurd, ridiculous and shameful organization. When they come to their senses, maybe we can consider returning. I can see absolutely no upside to belonging to an institution that not only denies history, but denies current events that are taking place in full view of the international media in real time.

As I type these words I can hear the banging and clanging of Sukkot being built in our parking lot, as well as in neighbours’ gardens. On Sunday night the festival of Sukkot will begin, one of the three pilgrimage festivals when the ancient Jews made their way to – gasp – Jerusalem! To – gasp! – The Temple! Not to Haram al Sharif. Not to Al Aqsa. The Temple.

Their they brought offerings from their harvest to give thanks to G-d for His bounty. The offerings were presented, not to Sheikhs and Imams at the al Aqsa Mosque but to the Priests, the Cohanim, in the Temple, there on that very same Temple Mount, the Har Habayit.

No amount of renaming sites and rewriting history will change those facts.

Shame on the UN, shame on UNESCO and shame on every one of those countries who voted yes and even those who abstained. (What? They couldn’t make up their minds? My mind boggles).

My mother had a good suggestion: Let us present a draft resolution that Mecca is a holiday spa in Arabia. Let’s see how they like that!

Here is a selection of Twitter reactions:

https://twitter.com/TuttleSinger/status/786615975839956992

https://twitter.com/starlynscom/status/786625595228626944

I’ll let the final word go to the Board of Deputies of British Jews:

Categories: Temple Mount, UNESCO
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments: 2 Comments

UNESCO says Jews have no connection to Temple Mount

October 13, 2016

UNESCO says Jews have no connection to Temple Mount, Israel National News, Yoel Bomb, October 13, 2016

(Here’s a link to UNESCO’s October 12th “Item 25: OCCUPIED PALESTINE.” Overt bias in favor of “Palestine?” Perish the thought. — DM)

templemount

The UN passed a resolution Thursday denying the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall

The resolution was supported by 24 states, including Russia and China. 6 countries opposed and 26 abstained.

The resolution maintains that the Western Wall and Temple Mount will be referred to by their Arabic names and the Hebrew terms for the sites will only appear in quotation marks in UN references.

Earlier Israel had tried to prevent the decision, even asking the Vatican to help prevent the resolution. The Vatican enjoys observer status in UNESCO.

Categories: Israel, Temple Mount, UNESCO, Western Wall
Tags: , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

Archaeologists Restore Second Temple Tiles Desecrated by Waqf

September 7, 2016

Archaeologists Restore Second Temple Tiles Desecrated by Waqf, Clarion Project, Elliot Friedland, September 7, 2016

tiles-restored-second-temple-ip

It is motivated by the same contempt for the non-Islamic past that led the Islamic State to destroy so many of Syria and Iraq’s irreplaceable ancient ruins.

**********************

A team of Israeli archaeologists have reconstructed the floor tiles used in the biblical Temple of Herod the Great. The find marks a breakthrough in biblical archaeology, but also shows how the Jordanian Waqf, which controls the site, has been careless at best with the site’s Jewish heritage.

In 1999, the Waqf which controls the Temple Mount (known as the Haram al-Sharif to Muslims), created a new entrance using bulldozers.

“Approximately 400 truckloads saturated with the history of Jerusalem were illicitly removed – barbarically removed – from the Temple Mount by the Islamic Waqf in November 1999 to promote a political agenda,” said Dr. Gabriel Barkay, co-founder of the Temple Mount Sifting Project and professor emeritus of the Hebrew University, speaking to the Jerusalem Post.

“All of that was dug up with bulldozers in a place where even a toothbrush is too large a tool to carry out excavations.”

At the time, Israeli archaeologists charged that the process of building the entrance should have been documented carefully and all debris sorted through during the construction process.

Instead they removed thousands of tons of debris full of archaeological treasures and dumped them at a nearby landfill. A team of Israeli archaeologists has been sifting through the dirt for the last 10 years. They have found thousands of antiquities.

Now the project has been vindicated as it has been able to piece together the floor tiling used by King Herod in his renovations of the Temple, proof that the Waqf’s excavations damaged antiquities from the site. Herod ruled at the time of Jesus of Nazareth, and it is at Herod’s temple that many episodes recorded in the gospels took place.

“This represents the first time that archaeologists have been able to successfully restore an element from the Herodian Second Temple complex,” Zachi Dvira, co-founder and co-director of the Temple Mount Sifting Project announced at an unveiling of the restored tiles. “It enables us to get an idea of the Temple’s incredible splendor.”

Islamist supremacists have long sought to deny Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and to secure it as a site only for Muslims. This is symptomatic of the extremist ideology that brooks no dissent or pluralism and which seeks to eliminate all culture it does not control.

It is motivated by the same contempt for the non-Islamic past that led the Islamic State to destroy so many of Syria and Iraq’s irreplaceable ancient ruins.

And, it is the same drive which leads to attempts to use bodies like UNESCO to erase Jewish history on the Temple Mount and formally declare it a Muslim shrine.

This discovery proves both the non-Islamic connections to the site as well as the damage done to antiquities by the actions of the Jordanian authorities.

Categories: Islamists and Jewish history, Israel, Jerusalem, Jordan, Temple Mount, UNESCO
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Forget NATO. Trump Should Defund the UN

May 18, 2016

Forget NATO. Trump Should Defund the UN, PJ Media, Roger L. Simon, May 17, 2016

(Please see also, Where UNESCO and ISIS Converge. — DM)

Trump fire UN

The courage to go after sacred cows is one of Donald Trump’s more appealing, if controversial, traits.   He raised the issue of NATO, contending the USA pays far too much of the freight in the mutual defense pact.

Such proposals, the candidate has made clear, are not so much policies as “suggestions” or what one might call, from his business perspective, negotiating positions.

Regarding the NATO suggestion, frankly, I am of two minds.  While it’s clearly arguable the American contribution is excessive, the investment might be necessary for the preservation of the alliance (weak as it is) and to maintain the necessary U.S. leadership position.  “Leading from behind” has been one of the obvious fiascoes of the 21st century.

But I have another, somewhat similar, suggestion for Donald about which I have no ambivalence.  It’s time for the U.S. seriously to curtail, if not end, its mammoth annual contribution to the United Nations that dwarfs those made by all the other 192 member-states.

Here’s how CNS News reported the situation in 2012:

In one of its last actions of the year, the United Nations General Assembly on Christmas Eve agreed to extend for another three years the formula that has U.S. taxpayers contributing more than one-fifth of the world body’s regular budget.No member-state called for a recorded vote, and the resolution confirming the contributions that each country will make for the 2013-2015 period was summarily adopted. The assembly also approved a two-year U.N. budget of $5.4 billion.

The U.S. has accounted for 22 percent of the total regular budget every year since 2000, and will now continue to do so for the next three years.

That’s 22 percent for virtually nothing.

While the UN many have been formed in an outburst of post-World War II idealism, it has descended into an international society for Third World kleptocrats of mind-boggling proportions—the Iraq War  oil-for-food scandal being only one nauseating example--who engage in non-stop Israel-bashing to distract their populaces from their own thievery. What in the Sam Hill do we get out of that?

Everybody knows this, of course. When critical negotiations take place (i.e., the Iran nuclear talks, speaking of fiascoes, and the Syrian peace talks, not that they have much chance of success), they are removed from the UN and conducted between the serious players. No one is curious about what Zimbabwe’s Mugabe has to say, at least one hopes not.

Now it’s certain this suggestion—defunding the UN—would be treated with (feigned) uncomprehending derision by Hillary and even more contempt by Bernie, who would most probably like to cede US hegemony to the United Nations anyway, assuming some good socialist, like Venezuela’s Maduro or Brazil’s Rousseff (well, maybe not her), was secretary-general.

But the American voter, I would imagine, when informed of even a smattering of the facts, would support Trump in defunding or, more likely, greatly curtailing America’s financial support of the United Nations.  It’s a negotiation, after all.

Maybe the UN can be reduced to a few divisions of more practical use like the World Health Organization. UNESCO has, sadly, already gone the way of political insanity. Whatever the case, a smaller UN footprint in NYC would be a big step in the right direction. Think what a positive it would be for the traffic and parking situation on the East side of Manhattan.

 

Categories: Donald Trump, NATO, UNESCO, United Nations
Tags: , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

UNESCO’s Collapse of Credibility

May 13, 2016

UNESCO’s Collapse of Credibility, American Thinker, Michael Curtis, May 13, 2016

Lying and spinning history are becoming an international disease.  On May 3, 2016, the world learned that the White House had deliberately falsified information about Obama administration’s relations with Iran.  A month earlier, the spinning and falsification of history had been demonstrated at the headquarters in Paris of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.  

Yet the difference between the two is meaningful.  Whatever one’s views of the correctness of U.S. policy on Iran, the White House acted for political reasons, though falsely, to score a policy success.  UNESCO was created in 1945 after World War II not as a political body, but to contribute to peace that would be established on the basis of humanity’s moral and intellectual solidarity.

UNESCO betrayed its own principles and ethos by the resolution, passed by the Executive Board on April 16, 2016.  Not only inaccurate historically and factually, the resolution was one partly of self-protection for reasons of security, but mainly based on hatred and animosity toward the State of Israel and, on the part of some countries, of anti-Semitism.

The resolution, submitted by seven Arab countries including Egypt, passed by 33 in favor, 6 against, and 17 abstentions.  France, Spain, Russia, and Sweden voted in favor; the U.S, the U.K., and Germany voted against.  The vote of France, which has experienced terrorist massacres in Paris, was particularly surprising and disappointing.  UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova dissociated herself from the resolution, saying it was a political decision by the economic council and the management council of UNESCO and that she herself was opposed to it.

UNESCO does not have a good record regarding Israel and Jewish holy places.  In 2010, and again in October 2015, resolutions proclaimed that Rachel’s tomb near Bethlehem and the Cave with the tombs of the Jewish patriarchs in Hebron (Ma’arat HaMachpela), which are mentioned in Genesis, are Islamic holy sites.  The new 2016 resolution reaffirms that the two sites are an integral part of “Palestine” and calls on Israel to end its illegal archeological excavations there.

The resolution in strong terms condemned Israeli actions in east Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip, but most pointedly it concentrated on supposed Israeli actions on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the Plaza of the Western Wall in the Old City.  The resolution referred to the area of the Temple as al-Aqsa Mosque/al-Ha-ram al Sharif, and to the Western Wall as al-Buraq Plaza, implying they are regarded as Muslim areas.  UNESCO thus refused to recognize the 3,000-year historic and religious connection between the Jewish people and those holy sites in Jerusalem and in Israel.

For some years the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have used spin and false rumors that Israel intended to change the status quo on the Mount.  The UNESCO majority accepted the spin and charged that Israel does not respect the integrity, authenticity, and cultural heritage of the mosque as a holy site of worship.  The resolution requires Israel to restore the status of the Mount to what it was before 1967.

This in itself is the height of hypocrisy as well as the rewriting of history.  Two things are pertinent.  One is that since 1967 and Israeli control of Jerusalem, all faiths have had access to the holy places in the city.  By comparison, in the period, 1948 to 1967, when the area of Jerusalem and the West Bank were under Jordanian control, the city was physically divided, Jewish civilians were attacked, and 57 synagogues were destroyed.

The second factor is that conditions in the disputed area changed in September 2000, when Arafat deliberately started the Second Intifada and falsely declared that Israel was about to change access to the Mount.  In fact, at that time, the Jordan Wakf had full control of the area, including access to it.  Today, the site is under the authority, but not the control, of the Wakf.  It was the very Palestinian riots provoked by Arafat that led to Israeli control of access to the site for security reasons.

Today, only Muslims are allowed to pray on the Mount.  Jewish worship has been forbidden there since 1967.  The resolution calls on Israel not to restrict Muslim worshippers from access to the mosque, but Israel has never had any intention to do so.

Not surprisingly, the UNESCO majority accepted the Palestinian Narrative of Victimhood and saw Israel as the repressive occupying power.  But it is morally reprehensible that it agreed to the Palestinian attempt to erase the historic connection between the Jewish people and its holy sites.  In addition, the majority forgot that the Palestinian Authority has laid claim not simply to Jewish sites, but also to the Christian Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

The one-sided resolution continued its misleading and false charges.  It condemned Israeli plans to build a prayer space for women at the Western Wall.  It charged that Israel had placed Jewish fake graves in spaces in Muslim cemeteries on Wafk property near the Temple.  It condemned the “new cycle of violence” since October 2015 but laid the blame on the victims of terrorism in Israel.  It accused Israel of the continued conversion of many Islamic and Byzantine remains into the “so-called” Jewish ritual baths or Jewish prayer places.

Again not surprisingly, without mentioning the continuing rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel and the projected use of tunnels in order to attack Israel civilians, UNESCO deplored the continuous Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip and the intolerable number of casualties among Palestinian children.  UNESCO appears ignorant of the reports including the important one by Amnesty International that indicates the use of children by Hamas for military purposes and stresses the war crimes committed by Hamas.

It is shameful that UNESCO, set up for peaceful purposes to promote intercultural dialogue, has been misused for political purposes.  Its one-sided resolutions against Israel and its citizens demonstrate that it has become a vehicle for hatred, not peace.

 

Categories: Iran scam, Israel, Lies, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian terrorists, Temple Mount, UNESCO
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Where UNESCO and ISIS Converge

April 20, 2016

Where UNESCO and ISIS Converge, Front Page Magazine, Caroline Glick, April 20, 2016

UNESCO

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 

Last month, UNESCO’s director general Irina Bokova issued a statement congratulating Russian- backed Syrian forces for liberating the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State (ISIS).

Bokova said Palmyra “carries the memory of the Syrian people, and the values of cultural diversity, tolerance and openness that have made this region a cradle of civilization.”

Bokova added, “The deliberate destruction of heritage is a war crime, and UNESCO will do everything in its power to document the damage so that these crimes do not go unpunished. I wish to remind all parties present of the absolute necessity to preserve this unique heritage as an essential condition for peace and the future of the region.”

Last week, UNESCO’s executive board passed a resolution unanimously outlining the steps the organization would take to rebuild the devastated site, whose major monuments were destroyed or damaged during the city’s 10 months under ISIS rule.

All of this, is all very well and nice.

The problem is that UNESCO commits the very crimes for which it condemns ISIS. Indeed, it committed the crime of seeking to wipe out history, whose preservation is “an essential condition for peace and the future of the region,” the day it passed its resolution on Palmyra.

Right after UNESCO’s board unanimously passed its resolution on Palmyra, it also passed a resolution whose goal is to erase Jewish history in the land of Israel.

The resolution, titled merely “Occupied Palestine,” (a country that doesn’t even exist), defined the Temple Mount, Judaism’s most sacred site, as an exclusively Muslim site. Jews who visit it were referred to derisively as “right wing extremists.”

The Western Wall, Judaism’s second holiest site, was similarly referred to as an exclusively Islamic site.

The resolution reinstated a previous resolution’s false claim that the tombs of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people in Hebron and Bethlehem are mosques. The resolution, like the one from last week, was also a war crime, where UNESCO acted with malice to destroy the historical record.

In another act of cultural aggression, whose goal is to destroy the historical record, in last week’s resolution UNESCO falsely and maliciously referred to Jewish cemeteries as “fake graves,” in “Muslim cemeteries.”

And if that weren’t enough, UNESCO denounced Israel for the “conversion of many Islamic and Byzantine remains into so-called Jewish ritual baths or into Jewish prayer places.”

UNESCO’s acts are not the ravings of lunatic extremists or genocidal imperialists shouting about caliphates, crucifying and enslaving innocents. The latest resolution was sponsored by supposedly moderate Islamic countries, two of which – Jordan and Egypt – have peace treaties with Israel.

Support for the resolution wasn’t limited to Islamic countries voting as a bloc. France, Spain, Sweden, Slovenia, India, Russia and Argentina were among the nations who voted in favor of a decision that referred to the Western Wall in scare quotes.

The US sits on UNESCO’s executive board despite its open anti-Semitism. By doing so, the US grants legitimacy to a body which is waging a culture war against Israel no less determined – and arguably no less criminal– than ISIS’s war against all vestiges of non-jihadist culture in Syria, Iraq and throughout the world.

And why shouldn’t it act in this way? Much of the cultural elite in the Western world has joined UNESCO in its campaign to erase Jewish civilization from the historical and scientific record.

UNESCO’s culture war against Israel is of course led by the Palestinians. The entire Palestinian national narrative is based on a conscious cooptation and theft of Jewish history. The Palestinians themselves understand exactly what they are doing.

In 2011, The Guardian and al Jazeera published what they referred to as “the Palestine Papers.” The papers were taken from the PLO ’s negotiations support unit, charged with instructing Palestinian negotiators with Israel about their positions in the talks.

Among the papers was one that explained why the Jewish connection to the entire land of Israel – rather than just to Judea and Samaria – must be denied at all costs.

“Recognition of the Jewish people and their right of self-determination may lend credence to the Jewish people’s claim to all of Historic Palestine,” the document warned.

That document was nothing new. Rather, it was simply a restatement of the PLO Charter. The charter states, “Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaisim, being a religion is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.”

PLO chief and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas lives by these lies.

He has repeatedly denied the historical record, proclaiming that there was never a Jewish temple in Jerusalem and that Jews have no history in the land of Israel.

No Palestinian leader has ever disagreed with him.

Rather, the PLO has a long, unbroken record of committing war crimes no different from ISIS’s in deliberately destroying Jewish antiquities, starting with the Temple Mount, which, since the PA was established in 1994 has been the focus of sustained campaign of destruction ordered by PA leaders and conducted by Palestinians.

Like the Temple Mount – the cradle not only of Judaism but of Christianity as well – so Jewish sites throughout Judea, Samaria and Gaza have been systematically plundered, torched, vandalized, turned into mosques and destroyed by the Palestinians, often acting on orders from the PA . The Shalom al Yisrael synagogue in Jericho was first destroyed immediately after the PA took control of the city in 1994. The same is the case of the ancient synagogue in Gaza. Joseph’s Tomb and in Nablus was torched and turned into a mosque.

In 2014 UNESCO declared the ruins of Bar Kochba’s fortress of Beitar a World Heritage Site. Except that they called it Battir. And they said it was a Roman site.

And they erased its Jewish roots, claiming the terraced agriculture the Jews of ancient Israel developed was a Roman innovation.

When UNESCO began considering Beitar’s application for its protected status, The New York Times eagerly published its historical revisionism.

This is not surprising. The Times has repeatedly reported stories whose purpose is to erase the Jewish history of Israel. Last October, the Times published a story about the Temple Mount which cast aside mountains of evidence, gathered over decades by professional archaeologists, in order to question whether the Jewish temples were really located there.

In elite universities, students receive doctorates and go on to receive tenure despite, or perhaps due to their publication of politicized research, which free from evidence, demonizes Israel and Israelis as colonialist implants with no history or rights to Israel.

For instance, in 2007, Barnard College granted tenure to Nadia Abu El-Haj. In 2001, El-Haj, an anthropologist with no training or experience in archaeology, published Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society.

In her book, El-Haj alleged that Israeli archaeologists have deliberately falsified their findings. El-Haj claimed that the artifacts and sites they discovered and excavated were actually Islamic but the Jews hid the evidence. Jews, she said, also destroyed Christian sites with bulldozers.

Harvard Professor James Russell referred to her book as “malign fantasy,” designed to demonstrate the “colonial essence” of Zionism by denying the history of “Jewish sovereignty and long historical presence.”

But most of El-Haj’s esteemed colleagues applauded her act of academic aggression against history and science. Her colleagues at Barnard rewarded her with tenure. Her colleagues throughout the academic world showered her book with applause.

In so doing, they, like the governments that supported the UNESCO resolution denying Jewish history, and condemning Israel for stubbornly defending its heritage, and like the New York Times and other elite publications that publish as fact Palestinian historical falsehoods, are committing the same war crime that ISIS committed in Palmyra. They are, in Bokova’s words, engaging in “the deliberate destruction of heritage.”

Just as Bokova pledged to document all of ISIS’s war crimes against ancient heritage sites “so that these crimes do not go unpunished,” so Israel should document the actions of UNESCO and its allies that aid and abet the destruction of Jewish heritage sites.

History itself will convict them.

Categories: Israel, Jewish history, UNESCO
Tags: , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

The loss of Jewish rights on the Temple Mount – cause and effect

April 18, 2016

The loss of Jewish rights on the Temple Mount – cause and effect | Anne’s Opinions, 18th April 2016


(“Appeasing the crocodile, hoping to be eaten last” is the truest description of the weak-willed appeasement by the Israeli government of Muslim intimidation in Jerusalem, and on the Temple Mount in particular. How can we in Israel expect the world to stand up for us when we ourselves do not stand up for our own rights? And how can we expect the West to contend with radical supremacist Islam when our own, ostensibly right-wing Israeli government is so eager to appease the Muslims at the expense of the Jews? –anneinpt).

I know that I go on a bit (OK, a lot) about Israeli sovereignty in Israel, including Judea and Samaria, and Jewish rights on the Temple Mount in particular, but this week the cause and effect of not enforcing our own sovereignty was highlighted in startling clarity.

It started with Joint Arab List MK Jamal Zahalka who warned Israel against allowing Jews to visit the Temple Mount on their holy festival of Pesach (Passover), sinisterly reminding Israel of the death toll of the Second Intifada – although of course the racist MK only mentioned Arab deaths and not the 1,000 Israeli victims:

A day after he returned from a two-month suspension from the Knesset, Israeli Arab MK Jamal Zahalka (Joint List) made a call to the Palestinians to prevent Jews from visiting the Temple Mount complex “in any way possible.”

“In light of the daily increase of (Jewish) ascent to the Aksa Mosque, it is up to us to stop it in any way possible,” he told the Palestinian site Dunya al-Watan on Wednesday, ahead of next week’s Passover holiday in which Jews flock to Jerusalem’s holy sites.

How Palestinians protect Al Aqsa – with stones to throw at the Jewish worshippers at the Kotel

In his remarks, Zahalka, who leads the Balad party in the four-party Joint List alliance, said “the Palestinian people paid the price of 4,000 deaths in the second intifada in the year 2000.”

He lied brazenly with the following outrageous claim:

“Our people have the right to the mosque, and we must protect it with all of our power. The Palestinian nation is the guardian of the mosque,” he said in the interview published Thursday.

Of course the Palestinians (not a nation in any event) are nothing of the sort. If anyone is the official guardian it is Jordan.

Zahalka charged that the continuation of the alleged uptick of Jewish visits to the site would ignite the next collective Palestinian uprising against Israel.

He added that “the increase in Jews who go up will cause the third intifada to break out and continue throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem depending on which Palestinian organizations join in the fighting.”

It is quite obvious that Zahalka is itching to be suspended yet again, and is probably also angling to be the next Palestinian inciter-in-chief, I mean President for Life. The man is beyond a disgrace, and it is an outrage that he is permitted to sit in the (Zionist) Knesset while at the same time undermining his own country’s very existence and raison d’etre.

PM Binyamin Netanyahu’s pathetic response was to ask the Attorney General to investigate if Zahalka’s statement was incitement. What is to consider? Have we no brains to think for ourselves?

Zahalka only plays into the reigning conspiracy theories of “Israeli settler storming invasions” of the Al Aqsa and inflames matters even more. Elder of Ziyon has the story of what would be a hilariously misunderstood event if it weren’t so deadly dangerous. The site QPress ominously warned of “settlers in white uniforms storming Al Aqsa“. Look for yourselves at the absurdity of it all, and then let it sink in how pathetically gullible and willing to be enraged are the Muslims:

White shirts are apparently a “settler uniform” now, according to QPress, which puts up regular videos of Jews “storming Al Aqsa Mosque” and “attempting to perform Talmudic rituals.”

Here was the white uniform scene:

I can hardly bear to watch. I feel my blood pressure rising dangerously as I hear those taunting cries of “Allahu Akhbar” and wonder who is the invader and imperialist colonialist and who is really oppressed.

Our further capitulation in the face of Arab intimidation continued with the arrest – by Israeli police! – of an American tourist who was explaining a Hebrew verse of Psalms to his tour group on the Temple Mount:

If we were to describe the following scene as having taken place anywhere else on the planet, the report would have been followed by several news cycles involving angry Jewish organizations, rabbis, Israeli rightwing politicians and, undoubtedly, Prime Minister Netanyahu, condemning the blatant act of anti-Semitic repression on the part of police, carrying out the anti-Semitic policies of the national government. (See American Jew Arrested for Murmuring Prayers, 2nd Warned to Close Prayer App)

American Jew arrested by the Israeli “prayer police.”

On Sunday morning, a Jewish American tourist wearing a yarmulke stood with a group of fellow Jewish tourists and spoke about the meaning of a biblical verse. A group of black-uniformed police converged on him and accused him of engaging in Jewish prayer, which is against the law in that country. The Jewish man tried to defend himself, arguing that he was merely explaining a biblical verse, “Please, God, save [us], Please God, give [us] success” (Psalms 118:25).

The cops rushed to the man and his group as soon as they heard the words “Please, God” pronounced in Hebrew. The rest of the lecture was in English. The man insisted, in English, that he was merely explaining the verse and not praying. The cops had no patience for lengthy arguments with a Jew and arrested him.

Several other Jewish tourists tried to intervene, explaining that it was a misunderstanding, they wouldn’t have even dreamed of praying there, in a country that punishes Jews who engage in public prayer, it was merely a mention of a verse in the context of a talk. At which point the arresting officer declared:

“On the Temple Mount I decide what’s prayer.”

The Jewish legal aid organization Honenu had it exactly right:

The legal aid society Honenu said in a statement: “The conduct of the State of Israel and Police regarding the suspicion of Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount is, first of all, ridiculous, and in addition it is discriminatory and predatory. It is inconceivable that a law-abiding man would be arrested like the lowest criminal for explaining a verse from Psalms. In any other country such an arrest would have been called anti-Semitic.”

The very fact that Jewish prayer is forbidden on the Temple Mount is outrageous in its overt antisemitism, and is a bigotry and racism that would not be permitted anywhere else in the world against the host country’s own people.

If we do not stand up for our rights, who will? Certainly not the UN, as once again UNESCO lived down to all our expectations.

This miserable episode of denial of Jewish rights in Jerusalem and at our holiest site finished ingloriously but unsurprisingly with UNESCO’s deletion of any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount at all:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu harshly criticized a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) resolution from last week in which Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall area in Jerusalem’s Old City are wholly ignored.

The resolution refers to Israel as the “occupying power” at every mention and uses the Arabic al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram al-Sharif without ever calling it the Temple Mount, as it is known to Jews. The text does refer to the Western Wall Plaza but places it in quotation marks, after using the Arabic Al-Buraq Plaza.

Birkat Cohanim – the Priestly Blessing – at the Kotel (because of course there is no Jewish connection to the Kotel at all says UNESCO)

“This is yet another absurd UN decision,” Netanyahu said Saturday. “UNESCO ignores the unique historic connection of Judaism to the Temple Mount, where the two temples stood for a thousand years and to which every Jew in the world has prayed for thousands of years. The UN is rewriting a basic part of human history and has again proven that there is no low to which it will not stoop.”

The resolution accuses Israel of “planting Jewish fake graves in other spaces of the Muslim cemeteries” and of “the continued conversion of many Islamic and Byzantine remains into the so-called Jewish ritual baths or into Jewish prayer places.”

This is such a sick inversion of reality that my jaw literally dropped. One wonders how those who voted in favour kept a straight face while voting. I hate to keep using the word “outraged” over and over but I can’t find a stronger word to describe what I feel.

Desecrated Jewish graves on the Mt. of Olives

As we all know and as has been thoroughly documented, Muslims regularly desecrate, vandalise and violate Jewish graves on the Mount of Olives – ancient Jewish graves dating back sometimes thousands of years, even before the invention of Islam (which is most likely what bothers them the most), Jews are not allowed full prayer rights on the Temple, and Muslims regularly desecrate and destroy priceless Jewish relics on the Temple Mount in an ongoing destruction.

How UNESCO managed to condemn Israel for the Muslims’ crimes is something for psychologists and psychiatrists, rather than diplomats and politicians, to figure out.

Who were the countries who voted in favour of this disgusting resolution?

The resolution was approved by 33 states, including France, Russia, Spain and Sweden. Seventeen countries abstained while six voted against including the United States, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

How could France, of all countries, vote in favour after suffering such huge losses at the hands of Muslim terrorists? Or are they simply staying in character and preferring to surrender to the evil in order that the “crocodile eats them last” to mix a metaphor?

But what can we expect from the Muslims and from biased international organizations when we ourselves, or at least our pathetic weak-willed leaders, do not strongly stand up for our rights and enforce our sovereignty over own holiest sites?

If we hoped that by giving in to their antisemitic demands we could appease the Muslims, reality has hit us in the face and shown us the opposite: the more we give in, the more violence we receive.

It is beyond high time that we revoked the entire ridiculous edifice of denial of Jewish rights, whether for prayer or religious ceremonies or even building of synagogues, on the Temple Mount, and put the Muslims on the defensive. In any event they riot, commit violence and murder. We might as well derive some benefit in the process.

I’m pretty sure that the Muslim world is watch closely for our reaction to these disgraceful maneuvers, whether at the Knesset, at the UN, or on the Temple Mount itself. It is no use for Binyamin Netanyahu to hold a cabinet meeting on the Golan Heights and declare that the area “is ours forever” when he himself is not allowed to pray on his own holiest site in our own capital city.

If we don’t assert our rights in our capital, we will lose our rights everywhere in our country.

Categories: Jerusalem, Muslims, Palestinian incitement, UNESCO
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

UNESCO renames Western Wall “Al-Buraq Plaza”

April 18, 2016

UNESCO renames Western Wall “Al-Buraq Plaza” Jihad Watch, , April 17, 2016

There is a concerted effort among “Palestinians” and their supporters to erase all evidence of the historical connection of Jews to Israel. The UN, controlled by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, is a willing partner in these efforts. Besides being motivated by Islamic Jew-hatred, this endeavor is in line with the Islamic supremacist tendency to appropriate the holy places and sacred figures of other religions.

benjamin-netanyahu-western-wall-kotel-prayer-jerusalem

“UNESCO Renames Western Wall ‘Al-Buraq Plaza,’” by Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, Breaking Israel News, April 17, 2016 (thanks to Janice):

On Friday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Executive Board in Paris adopted a resolution erasing Israel’s ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

The UNESCO resolution referred to the Temple Mount area solely as the Al-Aqsa Mosque or Al-Haram Al Sharif, ignoring the Jewish claim to the site.

The resolution called Israel “the occupying power” and the Western Wall as Al-Buraq Plaza. It demanded that Israel not restrict Muslim access to the Temple Mount, condemning Israel for “illegal measures against the freedom of worship” at the “Muslim holy site of worship”. It demanded a return to the “status quo”. The status quo since Israel conquered the Temple Mount in 1967 forbids non-Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount and has remained unchanged.

Blaming “Israel aggression” for the violence at the site, it had no mention of the role of Muslim rioters.

It also condemned the Israel’s plans to establish an egalitarian, non-Orthodox prayer section by Robinson’s Arch.

It accused Israel of “planting Jewish fake graves in other spaces of the Muslim cemeteries” located on Waqf property east and south of the Temple Mount, and of “the continued conversion of many Islamic and Byzantine remains into the so-called Jewish ritual baths or into Jewish prayer places.”.

It referred to Hebron and Bethlehem as solely “Palestinian sites”.

Authorized by the executive board’s Programme and External Relations Commission, the resolution was submitted by Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, and Sudan. The 58-member board approved the resolution with 33 votes in favor, six against and 17 abstentions. Two countries, Ghana and Turkmenistan were absent all together. Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the US voted against the resolution. France, Spain, Slovenia, Sweden, Russia and Slovenia were among those countries that supported the resolution.

Israeli ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama, released a statement saying, “Even if UNESCO passes dozens of resolutions, and decides to continue passing thousands more, Jerusalem will always remain as part of the capital of Israel and the Jewish people.” Shama added, “As you continue on this path of incitement, lies and terror you will be sending UNESCO down a path towards irrelevance.”

“This is yet another absurd UN decision,” Netanyahu said Saturday. “UNESCO ignores the unique historic connection of Judaism to the Temple Mount, where the two temples stood for a thousand years and to which every Jew in the world has prayed for thousands of years. The UN is rewriting a basic part of human history and has again proven that there is no low to which it will not stoop.”

Categories: Islam and Jews, Israel, Jewish history, OIC, Palestinians, Temple Mount, UNESCO, Western Wall
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

Obama Administration Moves to Restore Funding for Anti-Israel U.N. Organization

December 14, 2015

Obama Administration Moves to Restore Funding for Anti-Israel U.N. Organization, Washington Free Beacon,  December 14, 2015

The Obama administration is waging a quiet effort on Capitol Hill to restore U.S. taxpayer funding for a United Nations organization that has long been accused of having an anti-Israel bias, according to State Department funding requests obtained by theWashington Free Beacon.

The State Department earlier this month petitioned Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), a member of the Senate’s appropriations committee, to consider restoring funding to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, otherwise known as UNESCO.

Taxpayer funding to the organization was cut in 2011 after UNESCO accepted Palestine as a member state, a move that violated U.S. law barring the funding of any U.N. group that skirts the peace process by prematurely admitting Palestine as a full member nation.

The cutoff in U.S. contributions, which totaled around $80 million annually, brought UNESCO to the brink of financial collapse and sparked further consideration of actions deemed by critics to be anti-Israel in nature.

In its petition to Leahy, the State Department asks for a funding waiver in the 2016 appropriations bill that would allow the U.S. government to restart yearly payments of $76 million to UNESCO. The administration also is seeking authority to give the organization up to $160 million to help erase outstanding debts.

Julia Frifield, assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the State Department, claims in the letter that Secretary of State John Kerry got the okay to restart funding from Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israel.

“U.S. leadership in UNESCO is critical in combating anti-Israel bias, as was seen at the most recent Executive Board meeting in October where the United States was able to walk back the most odious elements of a resolution related to Temple Mount and secure more ‘no’ votes than is usual on such resolutions,” Frifield wrote, referring to recent efforts by UNESCO to reclassify Jerusalem’s Western Wall as a Muslim holy site.

Denying U.S. funds “is weakening our role at UNESCO” and has “hampered our ability to safeguard both U.S. and Israeli interests,” the letter states.

The effort to start funding the organization has sparked opposition among some lawmakers who say this could be seen as an effort to reward bad behavior.

“The proposed language would undermine over two decades of U.S. policy against funding U.N. organizations that admit the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) or other non-state actors as members,” Sens. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) wrote in a recent letter to the Senate and House leaders.

“The proposed language also creates a deeply troubling precedent,” according to the lawmakers. “U.N. organizations, which seek to follow UNESCO’s example and grant membership to non-state actors, may be encouraged to do so believing that the United States would eventually create another exception for them and restore withheld U.S. funding.”

Rep. Ileana Ros Lehtinen (R., Fla.) also took the House floor last week to denounce the administration’s effort to restart funding for UNESCO.

Kerry, she claimed, pressured the Israeli government into backing down from its support for the funding cutoff.

“Secretary Kerry has been pressuring the Israeli government to relent in its opposition to U.S. funding for UNESCO,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “It’s a shame Secretary Kerry isn’t using the full weight of his office” to hold the Palestinian government “accountable for their incitement violence and continued efforts to delegitimize and isolate the Jewish state at the U.N., while pursuing unilateral state recognition.”

Ros-Lehtinen insisted that U.S. law mandates that the administration continue withholding funding for UNESCO.

Categories: Israel, Obama and Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, U.S. Congress, UNESCO
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »