De-Heritaging Israel

"[There should arise] a new day at the United Nations, where there is a price to pay for discrimination against Israel."
"UNESCO has become a battlefield for Israel bashing and has disregarded its true role and purpose."
Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon

"[The decision was made by the United States to remove its support for UNESCO is linked to] the unfortunate politicization of the mandate of UNESCO, where anti-Israel bias has been a major factor and something the United States has been struggling to address."
U.S. charge d'affaires and U.S. representative to UNESCO, Chris Hegadorn

UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France. Photo: UNESCO

"Universality is critical to UNESCO's mission to strengthen international peace and security in the face of hatred and violence, to defend human rights and dignity."
"This is all the more true today, when the rise of violent extremism and terrorism calls for new long-term responses for peace and security, to counter racism and antisemitism, to fight ignorance and discrimination."
"UNESCO will continue to work for the universality of this Organization, for the values we share, for the objectives we hold in common, to strengthen a more effective multilateral order and a more peaceful, more just world."
UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova

The director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Lebanon, Ann Dismorr, poses with a map devoid of any trace of the State of Israel, instead presenting it as a map of "Palestine," May 2013. (Image source: Palestinian Media Watch)

While Irina Bokova expresses her profound dismay in an exercise of righteous sanctimony, she and the arm of the UN she headed were complicit in rewarding the Palestinian Authority which incites to violence against Israel and Jews by confiscating Jewish heritage and awarding it to Palestinians. The sacred heritage sites of Jews throughout ancient history have suddenly been usurped by claims made by Palestinians that those sites are unique to Arab Palestinians not Jews and Israel and those claims were honoured by UNESCO, dishonouring UNESCO.

So much for the defence of human rights and dignity; awarded to those whose presence and actions though morally indefensible, have the benefit of support in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Unaligned Bloc of nations placing their clout where it defames and delegitimizes Israel, depriving it of its heritage. So much for universality and respect, and values shared, for commonly held objectives, all of which appear to focus on lashing Israel with contempt for its very survival.

And if this is the way that UNESCO sees itself clear to supporting and defending a more peaceful, just world, it inhabits an entirely other reality than that most clear to logic and the study of history. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization whose purpose is meant to protect cultural sites and traditions through its World Heritage program has succeeded in aiding and abetting malevolent forces seeking to drive Israel out of existence; not only through physical attacks but by denying its historical heritage and ownership of its own sacred Judaic sites.

The legitimacy of the historical occurrence of the Holocaust is bandied about, and now the very reliability of that ancient document of Judaic monotheistic belief and history, the Old Testament which in its scribal testimony describes Judaic heritage, its prophets and its principle figures of authority, along with its geographic sites of sacred memory. In short, UNESCO has lent itself to the effort to destroy Jewish heritage links to Israel itself, transferring the historical impact to Arab Palestinians in one fell and false swoop of iniquity.

Welcoming "Palestine", a state which does not yet exist, as a member of UNESCO with all member rights and privileges in 2011 was but the prelude to the carnage to Israeli heritage yet to come. UNESCO itself as an arm of the United Nations has inherited the same anti-Semitic bias that runs rife through the international institution pledged to the advancement of peace and world stability, some of whose most influentially powerful members are base human-rights abusers accusing others of what they themselves practise.

On July 7, UNESCO voted for a resolution defining the Old City of Hebron and the Cave of the Patriarchs as Palestinian heritage sites. Before that, in 2016, two resolutions making the same type of counterfactual assertions concerning the Old City of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall were adopted. And the year before that, in 2015, UNESCO again upended history to rename two ancient biblical sites, Rachel's Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs, Islamic holy sites -- even though Islam did not even exist at that time."
"The Palestinian Authority (PA), which aspires to replace Israel with itself, is behind the resolutions on Jerusalem and Hebron and plays a key role in the transformation of UNESCO. The PA has constantly advocated and supported terrorism and has never stopped wanting to destroy Israel. Allowing the PA to have entered UNESCO is now having serious consequences."
"That the Muslim world supports the transformation of UNESCO and the resolutions proposed by the Palestinian Authority is predictable. Many Muslim countries directly or indirectly finance terrorism and approve the PA's genocidal goals. A large part of the Muslim world mentally lives in a parallel reality, in which a seventh century "Muslim history" of the world replaces the factual history of the world. The Muslim world considers itself in a conflict with the Western world, and sees Israel as a Western enclave to be excised or at least suppressed."
"That Third World countries also support the transformation of UNESCO and these resolutions is also predictable. Many Third World countries are imbued with an anti-Western resentment that leads them to conclude that that they are in a conflict with the West and must therefore support decisions taken by the countries of the Muslim world."
Dr. Guy Millière, professor of French literature, University of Paris