“This irrelevant organization promotes FAKE HISTORY”,
wrote Israel’s Foreign ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon two days ago concerning UNESCO, after the latter voted on a resolution to include Al-Khalil (Hebron) and the Al-Ibrahimi mosque (Tomb of Patriarchs) as Palestinian World Heritage sites.
The blast from Israeli officials didn’t stop there. Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman called the organization “anti-Semitic”, the supposed liberal President Reuven Rivlin said that “UNESCO seems intent on sprouting anti-Jewish lies”, and even Labor’s Merav Michaeli called the resolution “insane”.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, faithful to his ways of persuasion, took to twitter and made a video, where he says:
“Yet another delusional decision by UNESCO. This time they’ve decided that the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron is a Palestinian site, meaning not a Jewish one and listed it an endangered site. Not a Jewish site? Who is buried there? Avraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rivka, Leah, our patriarchs and matriarchs.”
Today, Netanyahu resorted to the bible, reading from Genesis 23, which describes Abraham’s purchasing of the Cave of the Patriarchs. Netanyahu did so ostensibly in order to rebuff claims that the site is ‘not Jewish’.
But pause there.
There’s nothing in the UNESCO resolution that suggests that the site does not have Jewish connection. In fact, UNESCO explicitly affirms the historic importance of the place as “a site of pilgrimage for the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam”. As Orly Noy notes in her article of today titled ‘There’s nothing anti-Semitic about UNESCO’s Hebron vote’:
“I wonder how many of these politicians bothered reading the resolution before they ran to Twitter to trash it.”
Indeed, UNESCO was not disputing religious connections to the place. What seems to have infuriated the Israelis is that it is considered a PALESTINIAN heritage site.
But UNESCO recognized Palestine back in 2011, as have about three-fourths of the United Nations member states. Al-Khalil (Hebron) and the Al-Ibrahimi mosque (Tomb of Patriarchs) are in Palestine. What’s the big deal?
As we see from Netanyahu’s words, the idea of the place being a ‘Palestinian site’ is anathema to it being a ‘Jewish site’. But this is just disingenuous. Orly Noy provides a sobering comparison:
“Esther and Mordechai’s Tomb in Hamadan, Iran is recognized by the Iranian authorities as a Jewish site, yet no one would dream of calling it an Israeli site. Just as the Church of the Multiplication in northern Israel is a Christian site, yet is located in Israel and therefore an Israeli site.”
In other words, there is no contradiction between a site being Palestinian and Jewish at the same time. But for Netanyahu there is.
So what does Netanyahu do after he distorts the wording of the resolution? He takes to reading from the bible. This is the same trick that David Ben-Gurion used when the British Peel commission asked him in 1936 about whether he had a deed or contract of sale that gave him the right to take the place of the native Arabs who have lived here for generations: Ben-Gurion picked up a Bible and declared, “This is our deed!”
And there’s more. Because what is Netanyahu reading? The story about Abraham, who bought the cave for the burial of his wife, Sarah. But Abraham wasn’t ‘Jewish’, really – that term evolved much later. If Abraham is a ‘forefather’ in a spiritual sense, he is the forefather of the three Abrahamic religions, all of which the UNESCO resolution affirms. So, ironically, Netanyahu’s religious preaching, seeking to prove the ‘Jewish connection’ (which UNESCO doesn’t dispute), ends up defeating his attempted point and strengthening UNESCO’s: Yes, the place is important for Jews, but not only for Jews.
The myopic, Jewish-centric ideas that Netanyahu presents betray the exclusivist intents of the Israeli government. It cannot seem to differentiate between state and religion with respect to Israel, and when it comes to Palestine will not accept Palestinian statehood or sovereignty. So it is the Israeli official narrative that is the exclusivist one, not the UNESCO narrative.
The many outraged Israeli politicians are creating fake news, manipulating history in fake ways, and blaming it on UNESCO.
The greed of Zionists seems insatiable, and their urge to lie seems uncontrollable.
In the city of Pervomaysk (“May 1st”), a 50 year time capsule from 1967 was dug up recently, for the centenniel of the November 1917 Revolution. In the capsule there was an Address to the future generation of 2017, where they believed there would be would peace. Instead of the 1967 Israeli-Arab conflict and Agression against Palestine, the Address said with certainty that the future generation would not have to worry about conflicts like the “Aggressors of Israel”.
https://www.politforums.net/foreign/1499404831.html
This whole issue is laughable, and actually reveals more about the way Israelis think than anything else.
The UNESCO resolution only:
1. Named it as an endangered heritage site.
2. Decided under which nation it should be regarded.
Israelis seem outraged by number 2.
They seem to be implying that considering it Palestinian means that Jews have no connection to it. This is quite the bizarre interpretation. This projection reveals so much about how Israelis conflate nationality with ethnicity and religion. A site can easily be Jewish and Palestinian. There is nothing contradictory there, Palestinian is an inclusive identity that literally anybody could be a part of, you don’t have to be a special religion or ethnicity.
Second of all, under any peace deal or arrangement, Israelis should be able to visit with no problem. Same as Palestinians should be able to visit their holy places inside “Israel proper” as well.
Third of all, Al-Khalil is a Palestinian city. It is inhabited almost exclusively by Palestinians. Those not, are a relatively minuscule amount of illegal settlers. Not even in the most broad interpretation of international law can anyone claim that it is a part of Israel. Is Israel the custodian of every Jewish site in the world? Does it get to exert control/sovereignty over Jewish sites in other countries?
Is this what Israel wants? Control over it? Then, if this is the case, will it hand over control of Muslim and Christian sites inside Israel to the Palestinians? If no, why not?
When you ask about it this way, it becomes clear how obtuse and greedy Zionist objections are. It is not merely about the sites, it is about acknowledging Palestinians and their existence.
Again, the UNESCO resolution said literally nothing about its importance to anyone. This rhetoric was simply created to draw attention away from the expansionism and entitlement Israelis feel towards everything between the river and the sea.
How dare those Palestinians exist, and a site in Palestinian territory, inhabited by Palestinians, is in fact, considered Palestinian.
“A site can easily be Jewish and Palestinian,” Diaspora says. Well, it was tried under Oslo: at Joseph’s Tomb and the synagogue in Jericho. Both went up in flames.
Are the Alcazar and the Alhambra in Spain considered Spanish world Heritage or Arab?
What a rubbish this Nethanyahu is telling. Good of you Ofir to denounce this stupidity.