Palestinians to claim Dead Sea Scrolls at next UNESCO meeting

The request to include the Qumran Caves and Dead Sea Scrolls as their own may be made at the next UNESCO meeting this July, the Simon Wiesenthal Center predicts.

The next “prize” the Palestinians will likely claim as their own at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) will probably be the archeological site of Qumran and its Dead Sea Scrolls, Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said Wednesday, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Addressing a panel on the denial of Jewish history in international organizations at the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem, Samuels listed the Palestinians’ “success” at falsely claiming ownership of biblical and cultural sites, the Post reported.

UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee has ascribed to “Palestine” Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity in 2012; the agricultural terraces of Battir, site of the ancient Jewish fortress at Betar, in 2014; and Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs in 2017, the Post noted.

In October 2016, the Committee voted in favor of a resolution denying the millennia-old Jewish connection to Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

“This is yet another absurd resolution against the State of Israel, the Jewish people and historical truth,” Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO Carmel Shama-Hacohen stated at the time. “There is no connection of another people to another place in the world that comes close to the strength and depth of our connection to Jerusalem from a religious, historical and national perspective, a connection that has stood the test of 2,000 years.”

The request to include the Qumran Caves and the Dead Sea Scrolls may be made at the next World Heritage Committee meeting this July in Bahrain, Samuels told the conference, the Post reported.

Already in November 2016, Israel Radio reported that the Palestinians were planning the next stage in their attempted denial of Israel’s history and heritage by preparing to lay claim to the Dead Sea Scrolls at UNESCO.

The scrolls, mostly Hebrew writings from the Second Temple period, were discovered in the Qumran Caves in the environs of the Dead Sea. They include many biblical texts and are believed to have been written by members of a Jewish sect known as the Essenes.

All Aboard the UN Titanic

Israeli laughs last at UNESCO antisemitism

What Goes for UNESCO Goes also for the UN

By Alan Baker  November 2, 2017

http://www.jpost.com/opinion/what-goes-for-unesco-goes-also-for-the-un-513215 

The entire UN human-rights assistance machinery has now been formally and officially recruited and financed to streamline the harassment and persecution of Israel.

Citing “the need for fundamental reform in the organization, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO,” the US State Department notified UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova on October 12 of the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the organization, effective December 31, 2018.

This decision stemmed from repeated Israel-bashing by UNESCO, notably since 2011, when the Palestinian Authority sought and won admission to UNESCO as a full member-state, despite the fact that there exists no sovereign Palestinian state. The State Department saw this as “regrettable, premature” and harmful to “our shared goal to a comprehensive, just and lasting peace.”

Indeed, Washington cut off US funding for UNESCO under a law that prohibits the US government from funding any UN agency that admits a non-state as a member. American funding, once accounting for more than one-fifth of UNESCO’s budget, hasn’t been restored since 2011.

As reported in The Washington Post on October 12, Haley said the United States will evaluate all UN agencies “through the same lens.” Logically then, the conclusion could only be that the UN organization itself – decayed, flawed, manipulated and abused even more so than UNESCO – should be the next in line for a mass withdrawal by responsible states.

More than 20 annual Israel- bashing resolutions specifically singling out and condemning Israel are adopted by an automatic majority of Muslim and Arab states, often with the support of other states, including Europeans.

While the UN may be the “only club in town,” no one can doubt that it has veered far from the noble intentions of its founding fathers. The manner in which Israel is treated in the UN and in its various specialized agencies and other UN bodies is the very antithesis of such purposes and principles. Isolating Israel and preventing its full involvement in the UN organs (including the Security Council and International Court of Justice, where Israel has never been elected to serve) is in clear violation of the first principle of the UN Charter declaring the “sovereign equality of all its Members.”

Perhaps the straw that is breaking the camel’s back is an amazing, recent joint UN-Palestinian project for the years 2018-2022, the title of which conceals its true intentions: “UN Development Assistant Framework – State of Palestine.”

The UN has committed to channel no less than $1.3 billion into various UN agency signatories to the framework, in order to assist the Palestinian leadership in advancing its diplomatic warfare against Israel.

The project aims to finance “training, capacity-building and technical advice” with a view to assisting “Palestinian victims” to exploit international accountability mechanisms and to prosecute “Israeli violations of international law.”

In other words, the entire UN human-rights assistance machinery has now been formally and officially recruited and financed to streamline the harassment and persecution of Israel.

Logic would assume that the US, Israel and the major European powers should now take decisive action to halt this deterioration.

First and foremost, they should each dock $1.3b. from their membership fees as a demonstration of their disgust at the UN’s official policy of Israel-bashing. What is good for UNESCO should be all the more relevant to the UN itself.

UN Pumps Millions into anti Israel Agencies

The initiative represents a “collusion between UN agencies and radical anti-peace NGOs for political warfare.”

Numerous organizations targeting Israel will soon be receiving millions of dollars from a UN agency to bolster activities intended to “hold Israel accountable for its obligations under international law,” according to a fresh report published by a Jerusalem-based organization.

The 73-page document, entitled “United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) State of Palestine 2018-2022” details the various Palestinian causes to which funds will be allocated as part of an agreement signed with the Palestinian Authority (PA).

As part of the “Strategic Programming Framework” designed to “support Palestine’s path to independence” and other “pillars of the government’s National Policy Agenda,” the agreement lays out UN plans to dedicate $18 million to “support Palestinian institutions.”

It states that it will help these institutions to “effectively access international accountability mechanisms in order to hold Israel accountable for its violations under international law.”

Moreover, the report outlines that the purpose of the cash will be to augment efforts to “actively monitor, advocate and mobilize on human rights violations” in reference to Israel. (No reference to the human rights violations by the Palestinians or the incessant incitement in flagrant violation of signed agreements)

Indicating that the document’s raison d’être is itself hypocritical and anti-Israel, the watchdog group NGO Monitor, which published its findings on the report, highlighted, “There is no parallel support for ‘monitoring, advocating and mobilizing’ in response to Palestinian violations under the human rights treaties the Palestinian Authority has signed.”

In addition to the organizations that will be eligible to receive the streams of cash, the report sets out budgetary plans for other UN organizations which will provide support for “Palestine’s path to independence.”

Among those appearing on the list to promote that goal is UNESCO, from which Israel recently announced its decision to withdraw, along with the US, following a string of anti-Israel resolutions, including ignoring Jewish ties to Jerusalem and designating Hebron a “Palestinian World Heritage Site.”

According to NGO Monitor’s report, these “massive amounts of money (for these same organizations and UN agencies) for their ongoing anti-Israel political warfare campaigns… will do nothing to revitalize the ‘stalled peace process’ or the creation of a ‘peaceful and just Palestinian society.’”

Such UN initiatives, NGO Monitor added, only exemplify the “longstanding collusion between UN agencies and radical anti-peace NGOs for political warfare…Many of these organizations promote antisemitism, rejectionism, and BDS.”

Israel has long taken issue with international bodies such as the UN and the EU for pumping money into groups it believes have a political motive, often undermining the Israel Defense Forces and presenting a negative image of the country abroad.

Visit of UN Secretary General to Israel

This week UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is conducting his first visit to Israel since his appointment. While in Israel the Secretary General will meet with PM Netanyahu, Defense Minister Liberman and senior figures from the IDF, as well as President Rivlin.

Following are the key elements of Israel's position on the substantive issues:

·      Israel sees this visit as a welcome opportunity for a new beginning in relations with the world body, and welcome the Secretary General as a friend.

·      The UN's and its agencies' obsessive pre-occupation with Israel must end if the world body is to make a constructive contribution to peace and stability in the region. 

The Secretary General must be challenged on the full array of problematic UN activity:

o   The UN  Human Rights Council shameless singling out of Israel

o   The repeated, outrageous UNESCO decisions rewriting the history Jerusalem and Hebron to exclude the Jewish people

o   The annual circus of anti-Israel resolutions in the General Assembly and the permanent committees they create.

o   The discriminatory anti-Israel activities of different U.N. bodies and their "industry" of reports, declarations and decisions.

Further the Security Council must act more resolutely to implement its resolutions forbidding Hezbollah rearmament and entrenchment in southern Lebanon. The Security Council must act to prevent a deterioration of the already dangerous situation.

The UN must act to stop the ongoing Palestinian encouragement of terror against Israeli civilians - online, through the payment of stipends to convicted terrorists and their families, through naming town squares after murderers. These fundamental obstacles to any kind of progress with the Palestinians.

Israel has the experience and the ability to make a meaningful contribution to the UN in many fields:

o   in cyber-security, water technologies, women's' empowerment, disabled rights, combatting desertification, and more. Israel is also a partner in the global effort to combat terror. 

Ties with Ancient Greeks Prove Historical Legitimacy of the Jewish State

by Maria Polizoidou  May 8, 2017

·       If the UN honestly wants peace, then it must accept that the modern Jewish state is the tugboat that will pull the whole Middle East into the 21^st century. Rejecting the historic Jewish legitimacy in Jerusalem, is rejecting the quintessence of peace.

·       In historical terms, the modern Jewish state has greater historical legitimacy than most modern European states – and far more than at least the five Middle Eastern states artificially created out of the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement: the newborn countries of Greater Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. In Europe, what we now call Germany and France only appeared in the historical space of the Western world in the 3^rd Century AD.

·       Or could it be that secretly the United Nations does not want "peace" but instead the obliteration of Israel and its replacement by another Islamist state?

You can run away from history, but you cannot hide from it. History does not care about your religious beliefs, your political beliefs or your political correctness. History records facts, regardless of how you feel about them.

UNESCO's latest resolution about Jerusalem, which denies the Jews' and Israel's legacy over its historical capital, Jerusalem, is yet another proof of the UN's corrupt decline. It not only offends the historical truth and archeology of the Jewish people. It also offends the Greek people, and all Christians, who for thousands of years have also had ties with the area and the nation of Jews. As it also offends the foundations of Greek Orthodox Christianity, the Greek government -- to its honor -- voted against this hallucinatory UNESCO resolution.

Here are more facts: The King of Sparta, Arius I, who lived between 309-267 B.C., sent a letter to Onias the First, the High Priest of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem:

"The King of Sparta, Arius, sends greetings to the High Priest, Onias. It is written about the relations between the Jews and the Spartans that they are brotherly nations and that they originate from Abraham. Now that we have discovered this, tell us how your prosperity is. We write to you that your possessions and your animals are ours and our own possessions and animals are yours".
The king of Sparta, Arius, not only accepted that the relationship between Spartans and Jews are much older than his reign, but also that there was (as we would call it today) a federation.
King Arius further established the cultural privilege and right between Greeks and Jews to be called brothers.

What the King Arius was really saying here is that two states with different religions -- without common economic interests, without a common border and without even the same geographical area -- can interact in a political and cultural way. It is an important lesson for modern politicians. It also shows that for millennia, the cultural and historical depth of the Jewish people is undeniable, as well as the foundation for friendship among the Middle East nations. The problem of interacting with other people, as we can even see throughout Europe today, is on the Muslim side, not on the other side.


For more on this story read https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10312/un-lies

UNESCO Rewriting History

In an absurd draft resolution put before UNESCO by the Arab states on behalf of the Palestinians, due for a vote on May 1st, an attempt will be made to contest Israeli sovereignty over West Jerusalem ( having already done the same with East Jerusalem) This resolution is, in effect, an attempt to erase over 3,000 years of Jewish history in the Israeli capital. One of the primary reasons UNESCO was founded was to preserve history, not rewrite it. 

PLEASE SHARE and help us contest this ridiculous resolution.

Erasing the West

Shoshana Bryen  October 20, 2016

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9150/unesco-jerusalem-vote

• The UNESCO vote seems clearly a response to the expansionist, jihadist aspirations of members of the OIC who sponsored it: Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan.

• Some analysts consider a vote to abstain to be a victory for Israel, but for Spain, Greece, France, Sweden, Slovenia, and Italy it was blatant appeasement and fear of their own often-violent Muslim minorities: "Please, please, don't blow up our capital cities. We will reject Jewish and Christian history and pretend Jesus chased the money changers from the steps of Montmartre."

• UNESCO's Director General Irina Bokova had already announced her opposition to the resolution, a position for which she received death threats.

• Having demonstrable historical fact, such as Jewish patrimony on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, subject to the whims of the UN, in which, as the late Abba Eban said, Arabs could muster a majority to decide the sun rises in the West, is not a positive proposition.

• The question remains how to convince nations in the West to stand for themselves in the face of Islamists committed to replacing them.

Last week, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted Christian and Jewish heritage off of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem; Tuesday they ratified their perfidy. The vote seems clearly a response to the expansionist, jihadist aspirations of members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) that sponsored it: Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan. The vote, and the behind the scenes machinations, deserve evaluation.

Upfront:

• Group 1: The "in favor" voters are a nasty collection of corrupt, dictatorial, largely Islamist (traditional Islamic theology gives Jews their place on the Temple Mount; these Islamists appear intent on removing all traces of Christian and Jewish presence from the Middle East) or Marxist, and unanimously frightening places. They are, in the immortal words French diplomat Daniel Bernard applied to Israel, "shitty little countries." Even the big ones. But see below for a caveat.

• Group 2: The US, UK, the Netherlands, Estonia Germany and Lithuania had nothing to be ashamed of in the first round; they voted "against." But see below for a caveat.

• Group 3: Some analysts consider a vote to abstain to be a victory for Israel, but for Spain, Greece, France, Sweden, Slovenia and Italy it was blatant appeasement of Group 1 and fear of their own often-violent Muslim minorities: "Please, please, don't blow up our capital cities. We will reject Jewish and Christian history and pretend Jesus chased the money changers from the steps of Montmartre."

If the West had stood for its own history, it would have mattered. Democratic Japan and South Korea should have voted "against" as well. There might be a narrow exception for India, which had never before failed to vote in favor of an Arab-led anti-Israel resolution.

• Group 4: Israel's friends in Africa were a disappointment -- Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Togo and Uganda abstained. Can we dump on them? Yes, we can. Isn't it too much to expect African countries to stand on principle when Western European countries duck? No, it is not. True, Israel will not make them pay for their "in favor" vote, but countries that benefit from their relations with Israel in a profound and concrete way(check especially Uganda and Ghana) can and should stand with Israel in the face of Arab countries -- heirs to colonial Muslim slave-traders and still practice slavery today -- who drained African coffers for oil money and exported radical Islamic jihad to the continent. In this hemisphere, Haiti, where IsrAID is for the second time promptly on the ground to help Haitians recover from a natural disaster, is particularly disappointing.

UNESCO Ignores Jewish Connection to Temple Mount

The Muslim dominated UNESCO is now taking steps to remove any connection of the Jewish people to the Temple Mount. And this is only the start. Little by little all sites around the world relevant to other religions are being targeted by the Muslim communities.

The draft calls for the re-instatement of the "historic status quo" pre 1967, yet how many are aware that during the Jordanian occupation from 1948 -67, Arabs WERE NOT allowed to pray on the Temple Mount.

The draft now before UNESCO includes the following problematic language:

• The draft ten times refers to Al-Haram Al-Sharif, exclusively using the Islamic term for Temple Mount, without any mention that it is the holiest site in Judaism. This is part of a larger campaign at the UN, and particularly in UNESCO, to Islamize sites historically belonging to other faiths.

• This year’s proposed draft is even more extreme than the resolution adopted in 2015. The new version three times uses the Islamic term Buraq Plaza while placing the parallel name “Western Wall Plaza” in scare quotes, implying skepticism or disbelief concerning what is the most hallowed site for Jewish worshippers over two millennia, due to the ancient wall’s connection to the Holy Jewish Temple destroyed in 70 CE. Last year’s resolution also sought to diminish the Jewish connection by putting the name Western Wall in parentheses after the Islamic term, yet the new use of quotation marks intensifies the denialism that was famously promoted by Yasser Arafat’s negotiator at Camp David, and which continues in Palestinian Authority statements.

• Israel, which is referred to throughout as “the Occupying Power” in Jerusalem, is called to restore “the historic Status Quo,” with the new word “historic”—a change from last year’s text—implying a reversal of any changes since 1967.

• Jerusalem’s light rail, which is used daily by thousands of Arab residents among others, is accused of having a “damaging effect” on the “visual integrity” and “authentic character” of the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem—even though the track passes through an existing highway and only facilitates transportation for visitors of all faiths.

Petition UNESC - take just two minutes

Everyone can spend just two minutes to sign this petition calling on the UN and its offices torecognise the deep connection of the land of Israel to the Jews. Have you go 2 minutes to spare?

Join the International Legal Forum (ILF) and StandWithUs in calling upon the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to recognize the deep historic, cultural and religious connection between the Jewish people and holy sites in the land of Israel.

The recent UNESCO resolution passed on April 15, 2016, follows a line of insulting resolutions that completely ignore and disregard the Temple Mount as also being an ancestral holy site for the Jewish people/religion for over 3,000 years.

UNESCO was created with the clear mandate to build networks among nations and intercultural understanding by protecting heritage and supporting cultural diversity. In accordance with these values, we call upon UNESCO to recognize immediately the deep historic and religious connection between the Temple Mount and Judaism.

According to the Jewish religion, the Temple Mount is the holiest site in the world to the Jewish people. Throughout history, Jews all over the world have prayed facing the Temple Mount. According to Jewish tradition, the world was created from the Foundation Stone located on the Temple Mount, and the two Jewish Temples stood on the Temple Mount at two different times in history (an internationally and historical known and accepted axiom, backed by numerous archaeological findings).