There are those who envision a future without Israel in it. No one knows what the future holds, yet there are some who, in their enthusiasm for a future without a Jewish state, are reinventing the past.
Last week, UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, passed a resolution that effectively negates millennia of Jewish history at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
The holiest site in Judaism and the physical centre of the Jewish world, is the place where the first and second temples stood. The remnants of the Second Temple, the Western Wall, is the place on earth toward which Jews have prayed for 2,000 years when they have not been able to pray at the Wall itself.
The land is contested because, in the eighth century, Al-Aqsa Mosque was constructed on the site of the temples’ ruins. To be generous, the Jews may have been there first, but it is nevertheless a holy site for Muslims as well. Tell that to UNESCO. According to the wildly ahistorical resolution last week, Jewish claims of ancient connection to the place are bogus.
The resolution, which repeatedly refers to Israel as the “Occupying Power,” includes a litany of offenses allegedly perpetrated by Israel and Israelis, including “storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif by the Israeli right-wing extremists and uniformed forces,” and accuses Israel of “planting Jewish fake graves.”
In addition to pages of condemnations of Israel, the resolution repeats familiar accusations that deny any Jewish connection to Judaism’s holiest site.
The resolution was submitted by Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan, countries that each have their own unique challenges that nevertheless do not detract from their obsession with imagined Jewish slights against Islam.
But the resolution was supported by numerous ostensible allies of Israel, including France, Spain and Sweden, as well as Russia. The United States, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom voted against. (Canada is not on UNESCO’s executive board.)
This sort of nonsense spewed up from agencies of the UN, to say nothing of the General Assembly, further undermines the legitimacy of what could be the world’s most valuable international forum and makes a mockery of the vision of the UN’s founders. None of this matters, of course, to the inmates who are running the asylum.