"The theater of the absurd continues at the UN. Today UNESCO adopted its second decision this year denying the Jewish people’s connection to the Temple Mount, our holiest site for over three thousand years. What’s next? A UNESCO decision denying the connection between peanut butter and jelly? Batman and Robin? Rock and roll?"
"Is it any wonder the UN has become a moral farce when UNESCO, the UN body tasked with preserving history, denies and distorts history? Israel will continue to fight the lies, hatred and double standards at the UN. Israel will prevail because truth will prevail."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

The Western Wall in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) appears not to mind that it risks irrelevancy on the world stage, lending itself to an improbable and ridiculous, let alone insultingly ignorant resolution brought forward by the Palestinians in their continuing slander and delegitimization of Israel's right to existence in its heritage geography. The resolution shared with Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar and Sudan, all without exception bastions of human rights violations, have embarked on a journey to violate history.

And they have ample support in the United Nations whose major function appears to have swivelled on a dime from promoting peace world-wide, to signing on to any and all resolutions brought forward by Arab and Muslim countries to slam Israel in the court of public opinion. The two major blocks, the Non-aligned Nations and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, are together quite capable of co-opting the United Nations and its various forums to reflect their jaundiced view of history and human rights and national legitimacy.

Thursday at the United Nations, UNESCO members passed a contentious anti-Israel resolution denying Jewish connections to the Temple Mount and Western Wall in Jerusalem. Israel's historic heritage link to Jerusalem, the ancient city of David and Solomon, whose presence and exploits are well reflected in the ancient scripts, supported by the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus and countless others. Where archaeological digs have unearthed numberless artefacts attesting to the Jewish presence in lands Israel once ruled and once again does so, including Jerusalem and the ruins of the two Temples of Solomon, upon which a much later religion, Islam, built its own tertiary shrines.

The resolution depriving Israel and Judaism of its history and its most sacred Judaic symbol was voted in favour by 24 UNESCO member states upholding the re-writing of history. Of UNESCO members who abstained from the vote in a cowardly withdrawal, there were 26, leaving a mere six countries to vote against the absurdity of a petty, spiteful resolution demeaning the UNESCO committee, willing to defame Israel, as is the singular wont at the United Nations.

The draft resolution, which acknowledges that the city of Jerusalem is holy to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity also claims the Temple Mount holy site is sacred only to Muslims, deliberately overlooking its major significance to Jews. And nor does the resolution dignify the Judaic history of the site by mentioning its Hebrew or English names of Har HaBayit/Temple Mount. Rather, the emphasis is solely on the site's Muslim names (Al-Aqsa Mosque and Haram al-Sharif).

Six UNESCO members — the US, UK, Germany, Holland, Lithuania and Estonia — voted against the resolution, while France, Spain, Sweden, Russia and Slovenia were among the non-Arab nations who supported the resolution. Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States objected, to their great and everlasting credit. They, at the very least, can look at one another without cringing in shame.

Israel's foreign ministry has produced a publication featuring archaeological findings providing ample evidence of Jewish connections to Jerusalem generally and specifically to the Temple Mount complex. Israel's ambassador to the world cultural organization wrote a letter emphasizing to the UNESCO committee that the archaeological findings "leave no doubt…of the deepest and longest Jewish presence in Jerusalem since ancient times". The initiative challenging Judaism's link to Jerusalem "is an attempt to rewrite history in a dangerous, unfair and one-sided manner."

Gil Cohen/AFP
"Jewish worshippers draped in prayer shawls performing the annual Priestly Blessing during Sukkot at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, Israel, Sept. 30, 2015."

Brazil's Foreign Ministry appears to have suffered ill conscience and in a statement released last week explained that leaving out the Jewish connections to the site in the text of the resolution was an "error":
“However, the fact that the decision does not make express reference to the historical ties of the Jewish people to Jerusalem, particularly to the Western Wall, the holiest shrine of Judaism, is an error, which makes the text partial and unbalanced".

"Brazil reiterates its full recognition of these bonds and its position in favor of the free access of believers of the three religions, Christianism, Islamism and Judaism, to the holy sites of the Old City of Jerusalem, as well as its support for the existing agreements between Israel and Jordan on the administration of the city." The government of Brazil vowed to "review its vote if the deficiencies pointed out in the decision are not corrected in future assessment of the subject by UNESCO."

France, which had also voted in favor of the resolution, has backtracked on its vote, as well, as the result of a "misunderstanding".  In a letter he had addressed to the French Jewish community, French President Francois Hollande stated France's support of the resolution occurred as a result of a "misunderstanding." Pledging that France would not support such assaultively, insultingly historically corrupt initiatives in the future.