by David M. Weinberg
what's truly infuriating and disappointing about the UNESCO vote is the deafening silence of significant Christian figures
Last Friday, Israeli
Channel 10 News anchorwoman Ayala Hasson asked the Executive Board
chairman of UNESCO whether that international organization would adopt a
resolution that said Christians had no ties to the Vatican or that
Muslims had no ties to Mecca.
"Such a resolution
would never happen," replied Michael Worbs of the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Of
course not. Such things only happen to the Jews. Such preposterous
resolutions can be expectorated by the global community only with regard
to Israel.
Only when it comes to
denying the Jewish people's claim to its ancestral homeland; especially
its historic ties in Jerusalem; and most especially its foundational
links to the site of the Holy Temples -- can crackpot clubs like UNESCO
assert that the earth is flat and Jews have no place on it.
The usual suspects
voted in April and again last week for the dingbat resolution that
ignores Jewish ties to the Temple Mount. Unfortunately, supposedly
semi-friendly countries like Russia joined them; and ostensible friends
of the Jewish state such as France, Italy, Kenya and Japan abstained.
This is wicked and
witless. As Professor Martin Kramer has pointed out, "Jews were
worshipping in their Temple in Jerusalem when Moscow was a pine forest,
and Jews had prayed for the Temple's restoration for a thousand years
before a Slav laid the first brick of the Kremlin."
But what's truly infuriating and disappointing about the UNESCO vote is the deafening silence of significant Christian figures.
Consider: Palestinians
have been pushing the linguistic reframing of the Temple Mount in order
to deny the Judaic heritage of the site and to completely Islamicize
Jerusalem. Willy-nilly, this nullifies Christian history, too. So you
would think that both the Catholic pope and mainline Protestant leaders
would rise up in protest against Arab-Islamic negation of
Judeo-Christian history and legitimacy.
You would think that
Christian leaders would demur when UNESCO calls Matthew a liar. It was
he who testified that the Christian messiah threw money changers out of
the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.
And yet, I haven't
heard a peep from the pope. Not a word of criticism for UNESCO's
disavowal of biblical history. Not even a mild grunt of disapproval.
It's not like Israel
didn't seek the Vatican's help in defeating the defamatory Arab-Islamic
initiative. A few days before the vote, Jerusalem's new ambassador to
the Holy See, Oren David, contacted the Vatican's undersecretary for
relations with states, Antoine Camilleri, and asked him to use his
influence to get member states to reject the draft. Such a text would
harm Christian interests as well as Jewish ones, the Israeli diplomat
reportedly told his interlocutor.
Apparently, the Vatican is still praying on the matter.
Vatican-friendly
observers explain that Rome's stillness on this issue stems from its
concern for Christians across the Middle East -- who are under daily
attack from Muslim radicals. How the pope's strange silence helps
Christians anywhere escapes me.
Less church-friendly
observers wonder whether age-old Christian supersessionism is at work
here; meaning that the church doesn't too much mind the Muslim campaign
to de-Judaize Jerusalem. Rome hasn't recognized Israel's sovereignty in
Jerusalem, and theologically never will.
Either way, the calm of
the church in the face of UNESCO's chutzpah is galling. I would expect
the Holy See to be seething, and coming to the defense of its "elder
brother" when that brother's very identity is under ungodly assault.
In truth, I really
shouldn't be so surprised. After all, what's new here? The hypocrisy of
the nations is a constant in Israel's foreign relations, as are
melodramatic warnings of Israel's "deepening isolation." And yet, Israel
chugs along just fine, thank you.
Remember that Jews have
not been liked for several thousand years, and the Jewish people's
collective effort to rebuild a national state in its ancestral homeland
liked even less. The world has been opposed to core Israeli diplomatic
and security policies from day one of this country's existence.
The U.S. State
Department reproached Israel for capturing the Galilee and the Negev in
1948. The U.N. condemned Israel for invading Sinai in 1956; and for
Israel's 1967 "aggression"; and for Jerusalem's reunification; and for
the annexation of the Golan Heights; and for Prime Minister Menachem
Begin's bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor, and of Beirut, etc., etc.
The U.S., by the way, was party to all these condemnations.
The U.N. annually
condemns Israel for (reportedly) building a nuclear weapons capacity,
and lambastes Israel for a load of other fabricated evils from stealing
Palestinian water to destroying Palestinian archaeology. The U.N. has
slap-happily censured Israel for defending itself against Hamas and
Hezbollah -- in the First and Second Lebanon wars, and for operations
against Hamas in Gaza in 2009, 2012 and 2014.
Overall, the U.N.
Security Council has adopted more than 150 anti-Israel resolutions since
1967. (The U.S. vetoed about 50 others.)
Remember "Black
Wednesday"? On December 17, 2014 newspaper headlines howled that the
world was closing in on Israel. On one single day, the European
Parliament proclaimed its support for recognizing Palestinian statehood;
the High Contracting Parties of the Fourth Geneva Convention gathered
in Switzerland to condemn Israel; and the EU Court removed Hamas from
the European list of terrorist organizations.
About the same time,
the parliaments of Luxembourg, Portugal, France and Sweden recognized
Palestinian statehood, too. The International Criminal Court declared
the security fence illegal. U.S. President Barack Obama applied the term
illegal to settlements. (Now, Obama seems poised to apply this
appellation to Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria altogether. He
already has called it "unjust").
And still, the sky hasn't collapsed on Israel.
The cumulative weight
of all these unfriendly actions is surely somewhat corrosive to Israel's
global standing. But as Israel's first prime minister, David
Ben-Gurion, once said: What counts is not what the "goyim" say, but what
the Jews do!
And thus what counts is
aliyah, the high Israeli birthrate, more building starts in Jerusalem,
the strength of Israel's military, the tone and tenor of the country's
educational, cultural and legal institutions, the Jewish and democratic
fabric of society, and the depth of loyalty to Jewish and Zionist
principles. That's what really counts.
Everything else,
including Israel's standing in the international community, will fall
into place if Israelis are united and confident in their creed.
Thus Israel will get past the recent wave of condemnations. It has been there before.
So the world recognizes
make-believe Palestinian statehood and slams settlements? So it negates
Jewish history in Jerusalem? So what! No series of condemnations will
get Israel's detractors very far, despite the unpleasantness.
It's ironic that UNESCO
took its scalpel to Jerusalem just when Jews celebrate Sukkot; when
evangelical pilgrims from 80 countries of the world ascend to the holy
city to participate in the festivities, as prophesied in the Bible. The
ruffians of UNESCO don't know who and what they're up against. Israel
and its loyal friends don't scare easily.
"Om ani choma,"
proclaims yesterday's Hoshanah prayer -- the people of Israel are a
fortress wall, standing guard over Jerusalem.
David M. Weinberg (www.davidmweinberg.com) is director of public affairs at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=17465
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