Saturday, July 29, 2017

The price of UNESCO's historical vandalism - by Alex Ryvchin

...Symbolism matters. The statements of international bodies like UNESCO matter. When ‎UNESCO is used to tactically scrub out Jewish history in ‎the Middle East to undermine ‎Israel's legitimacy, this is not only an act of historical vandalism, it provides an approving nod ‎to the Palestinians that frequently ends in bloodshed.

Alex Ryvchin..
Israel Hayom..
28 July '17..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=19551

Veteran U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross observed that "the thing that plagues the Palestinian ‎national movement more than anything else has been a historic preoccupation with ‎symbols, ‎not substance. Instead of building a state, the Palestinians would like to get a flag at ‎the U.N. ‎The day after they get a flag at the U.N., nothing changes."‎

Recent Palestinian maneuvers in UNESCO, known for its listing of World Heritage Sites, have followed this very pattern ‎of ‎dogged pursuit of symbolic victories that fail to improve the life of a single Palestinian ‎or ‎build the institutions essential for statehood. ‎

In October 2016, the executive board of UNESCO passed a resolution that disregarded ‎the ‎connection between Judaism and the Temple Mount ‎and sought to deny the Jewish link to ‎the Western Wall.

The move drew swift condemnation from UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova, ‎who was ‎at pains to distance herself from the resolution, asserting that "to deny, conceal or ‎erase any of ‎the Jewish, Christian or Muslim traditions undermines the integrity of the site ‎and runs ‎counter to the reasons that justified its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage ‎list." ‎

But Bokova was powerless. Privately initiated by the Palestinians, the resolution passed ‎with ‎the support of predominantly nondemocratic states which are among the usual ‎automatic ‎majority that support every resolution favored by the Palestinian Authority, whose ‎government is now in ‎the 12th year of its elected four-year term.‎

In keeping with the strategy of pro-Palestinian activism in international forums, the ‎Palestinians ‎viewed the Jerusalem resolution not as the limit of what they sought to achieve, ‎but merely an ‎incremental gain in a broader project. ‎


Earlier this month, Palestinian demands were played out in UNESCO once more. This time ‎the second holiest site in Judaism, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, was re‎characterized ‎as a Palestinian site. ‎

The Jewish history of both Jerusalem and Hebron are uncontroversial and supported ‎by ‎overwhelming archaeological and historical evidence, quite apart from religious texts.‎

Jerusalem became the capital of the Israelite kingdom more than 3,000 years ago under King ‎David. ‎

Following its conquest by the Prophet Muhammad‎'s successor, Caliph Omar, in 638 C.E., ‎Jerusalem ‎became Islam's third holiest city after Mecca and Medina. The Quran had been ‎completed some ‎years earlier, and Jerusalem is not mentioned by name in it. ‎ ‎

Hebron's history is no less Jewish and no less bittersweet. In the traditions of the ‎three ‎monotheistic faiths, the Jewish matriarch Sarah died in Hebron and her husband ‎Abraham ‎purchased a plot of land there to use as his family's burial site. Centuries later, ‎David ‎was anointed in the city. ‎

In 1929, in an act borne of earlier Palestinian denial of the Jewish character of the ‎Western ‎Wall, an Arab mob attacked Jewish civilians in Jerusalem in what a British ‎commission found ‎to have "mischievous if not murderous intent." ‎

Much like the Palestinian push at UNESCO, the outrage began with Jerusalem and ‎quickly ‎spread to Hebron. There, according to an official British report, a large Arab crowd ‎launched ‎a "savage attack" on the Jewish Quarter, "of which no condemnation can be too ‎severe." By ‎the end of the attack, more than 60 Jews had been killed, including many women ‎and‎ children, property had been destroyed or looted, and the remaining Jews of the city fled ‎in ‎fear for their lives.‎

In both cases, the brutal cleansing of Jews from the cities could not erase their history ‎or ‎break their connection with the land. In both cases, the Jews would return. ‎

The politicization of UNESCO at the hands of the Palestinians is a transparent attempt ‎to ‎rewrite ancient history from the standpoint of contemporary politics, with wholly ‎negative ‎consequences. UNESCO itself knows this but its democratic processes cannot ‎withstand the designs of the majority of its nondemocratic members. As Irina Bokova further ‎noted, ‎‎"When [political] divisions carry over into UNESCO, they prevent us from carrying out ‎our‎ mission." Indeed, this is the story of Palestinian activism in the West, which has come ‎to ‎occupy a corrosive and outsized position on the agendas of trade unions, churches, social-‎‎democratic parties and campus unions. ‎

While Dennis Ross's assessment of the Palestinian obsession with symbolic victories rings ‎true, he underestimates the human toll of indulging the Palestinian manipulation of ‎international forums. UNESCO's resolutions on Hebron and Jerusalem fed Palestinian ‎paranoia about an imminent threat to Islamic places of worship and buttressed their claims to ‎exclusive ownership of religious sites that predate the Islamic faith. This in turn enables the ‎Palestinian leadership to exploit the prejudices of its people and whip them into a frenzy ‎based on false claims of Jewish desecrations. ‎

The slaughter of the Salomon family as they sat down to Shabbat dinner, the attack on a ‎pizzeria in Petach Tikva, the assault on a security official at the Israeli Embassy in Amman, and ‎the violent protest outside an Istanbul synagogue, were all attributed to the escalation in ‎Jerusalem. ‎

Symbolism matters. The statements of international bodies like UNESCO matter. When ‎UNESCO is used to tactically scrub out Jewish history in ‎the Middle East to undermine ‎Israel's legitimacy, this is not only an act of historical vandalism, it provides an approving nod ‎to the Palestinians that frequently ends in bloodshed.

Alex Ryvchin is the public affairs director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. His new ‎book is "The Anti-Israel Agenda: Inside the Political War on the Jewish State" (Gefen Publishing ‎House).

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