view from central park: tehilla goldberg

UNESCO’s weirdness backfires

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The UNESCO talk hasn’t died down, which is not such a surprise. As the Boston Globe put it: “One needn’t be a scholar or a historian to know that the cultural, religious and emotional bonds that link the Jews to Jerusalem are unparalleled. For millennia, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount have been central to Jewish self-awareness…”

In the first act of his reign, King David moved his kingdom to the capital: Jerusalem. This was almost 3,000 years ago. King David’s son, Solomon, built the first Temple in Jerusalem. I learned this in Middle School.

It is preposterous even to address UNESCO’s distorted claim of implicitly denying the link of the Jews and Jerusalem, and within Jerusalem of the Jews and the Temple Mount. Would you spend time convincing someone the world is not flat, but round?

For this reason, aside from exposing UNESCO exactly for what it is (surprise! surprise!), its recent actions have merely spurred people to create mocking memes. There have been so many.

Here’s one I came across by a Christian pastor on Facebook:

“Jesus was a Palestinian. Pontius Pilate was a Jew. John the Baptist was an imam. The Temple was Al Aqsa. All the early Christians were Muslim. The PLO is a think tank.”

UNESCO’s historic distortion, precisely because it is so grotesque and absurd, thwarted its original aim of creating misleading information about Israel and the Jewish people. Instead, UNESCO only served to cause unnecessary mockery of Islam.

It also served to highlight Israel’s policy of enforcing respect for all faiths at all holy places of worship, within Israel. This, in sharp contrast to the pre-1967 policy of Jordan, which controlled the Old City and desecrated Jewish sites on a regular basis.

And since 1967, the destruction of Joseph’s Tomb, under the control of the Palestinian Authority, comes to mind.

Whatever UNESCO had in mind, it backfired. To distort history isn’t a wise strategy, after all. It’s simply laughable.

Like the United Nations itself, UNESCO has been hijacked by despots and human rights abusers. Let them go the way of the League of Nations.

That said, I don’t believe in making an idol out of the Temple Mount. What is central to Judaism is humanity and ritual, not location of practice. I pray for the rebuilding of this holiest of sites within Judaism, and I cherish the Kotel.

I feel that it is wrong that Jews do not have equal prayer rights there. I have an appreciation for those who have taken this cause on as protectors and guardians of history, but don’t like it when it rolls over into an obsession; I don’t see it as a priority in Judaism.

That is irrelevant, though, compared to UNESCO’s drastic inaccuracy in basic world history, recorded in plain print in any Bible you pick up.

At some point during the years when UNESCO embraced PLO membership, yet refused Israel membership, the story (legend?) goes that Israel’s late Prime Minister Golda Meir was speaking at Princeton University. Someone in the audience asked why she thought UNESCO excluded Israel?

Her reply: Ask UNESCO.

Pressing forward, the audience member insisted on her point of view on the matter.

Golda Meir’s sarcastic reply was: “Let’s see, UNESCO stands for United National Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. I suppose the conclusion one must draw is that obviously UNESCO feels the PLO has contributed more to education, science and culture than we do.”

As much as Golda Meir’s audience roared with laughter; and as funny as this biting anecdote remains today (nothing like Golda Meir to sum up a situation), the manipulation of basic historical facts by UNESCO is not a laughing matter.

Copyright Intermountain Jewish News