Description

Photo:
Worshipers at al-Aqsa Compound: file photo published by Maan News

Israeli police accompany Jewish visitors past the Dome of the Rock during a visit to the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, April 25, 2016. Credit: Ahmad Gharabli, AFP. Published by Haaretz
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BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) -- The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted on Tuesday a resolution sharply criticizing Israeli policies in Jerusalem, almost a week after the UN agency voted for a draft resolution on the topic, drawing Israeli ire.

According to the Associated Press, the UNESCO executive board adopted the resolution by consensus in a morning session in its headquarters in the French capital Paris.

The passage of the resolution came amid Israeli uproar, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the UN agency had “denied the over 3,000 year old connection between the Jewish people and its holiest site in Jerusalem.”

Israel suspended its cooperation with UNESCO following the passage of the draft resolution. Israel had previously suspended its funding to UNESCO in 2011, when the UN agency voted to admit Palestine as a full member.

The resolution criticized Israeli policies around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, the the Ibrahimi Mosque in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, and the Bilal Ibn Rabah Mosque -- also known as Rachel’s Tomb -- in Bethlehem.

It mainly focused on Israeli policies around Al-Aqsa, which UNESCO and rights groups have claimed increase tensions between Palestinian worshipers and Jewish visitors, while sparking fears in Palestinians that Israel could further deny their right to access Al-Aqsa.

Netanyahu did not release a comment responding to any of the criticisms presented by the UNESCO resolution.

When the draft resolution was put for a vote on Thursday, 24 countries voted in favor, six against, 26 abstained, and two were absent for the vote.

There was speculation on Monday and Tuesday that Mexico would trigger a clause to recast its vote on the resolution, after its initial vote in favor of the draft resolution reportedly caused discontent amid its Jewish population.

However, Mexico did not ultimately call for a revote, choosing instead to issue a statement expressing that it wished to abstain. However, its statement will not effectively reverse its prior vote.

While the resolution did not outright reject Jewish ties to the Al-Aqsa Mosque -- known to Jews as Temple Mount -- it was highly critical of Israeli policies in and around the site and Israeli attempts at changing the status quo, which prohibits Jewish worship at the site, and referred to the site only by its Islamic name “Al-Aqsa/Haram al-Sharif,” and did not mention the name “Temple Mount.”

However, the resolution did make clear that UNESCO recognizes the importance of the Old City of Jerusalem for the “three monotheistic religions” -- Islam, Judaism, and Christianity -- and highlighted the significance of the holy sites in Hebron and Bethlehem for all three religions.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) hailed on Thursday the passage of the draft resolution, saying that it reflected the “continued commitment of the majority of member states to confront impunity and uphold the principles upon which UNESCO was founded.”
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Liberal Jews Should Condemn Denial of Jewish Ties to Temple Mount

If we denounce Jews who deny Palestinian identity, we must do the same when Palestinians deny ours.

by Peter Beinart for Haaretz

When you deny a people’s identity, you deny that they have rights. That’s why it’s so dangerous that powerful American Zionists — from billionaire Republican donor Sheldon Adelson to former presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum — have claimed that the Palestinian people do not exist. If Palestinians don’t exist — if they’re just generic Arabs — then they have no right to their own country in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In fact, they may not even have the right to live there. After all, if they’re merely Arabs, and not Palestinians, they have no more right to live in historic Palestine than in Saudi Arabia.

When right-wing Zionists deny Palestinian identity, progressives like myself erupt in outrage. We should be just as outraged when Palestinians do the same to Jews.

Palestinians have the right to oppose a Jewish state. They have the right to argue for some kind of binational one state solution in which everyone lives equally under the law. I consider such a view dangerously unrealistic, but it does not, in and of itself, deny Jewish identity. It does not deny the Jewish connection to the land of Israel. You can, after all, recognize the Jewish connection to the land of Israel without believing that it must express itself in Jewish statehood. That was the position of the great cultural Zionist Ahad Ha’am. He argued passionately for the importance of a Jewish presence in the land of Israel. But unlike his antagonist, Theodor Herzl, he wasn’t sure that Jewish presence should take state form.

Unfortunately, Palestinian leaders have not merely questioned the legitimacy of a Jewish state. They’ve repeatedly questioned the Jewish connection to the land of Israel itself. In his book, "The Missing Peace," Dennis Ross reports that Yasser Arafat repeatedly denied that a Jewish Temple ever existed in Jerusalem. In 2010, Al-Mutawakil Taha, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy minister of information, published a report on the PA’s website claiming that the Western Wall “has never been a part of what is called the Jewish Temple. However, it was Islamic tolerance which allowed the Jews to stand before it and cry over its loss."

The second sentence follows chillingly from the first. Because Jews have no authentic connection to the Kotel — to which our ancestors prayed for millennia — we have no right to pray there. Only Muslims do. Whatever opportunities we’re afforded there are subject to their whim.

Sadly, Palestinian leaders continue this denial of Jewish identity to this day. In April, Palestinians successful pushed UNESCO to pass a resolution about Jerusalem that referred 18 times to Israeli infringements around the “Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif” but never once referred to the Jewish connection there. The document never mentioned the Jewish term for the area: Temple Mount. And when it mentioned the “Western Wall,” it put the phrase in quotations.

When you deny a people’s identity, you deny that they have rights. That’s why it’s so dangerous that powerful American Zionists — from billionaire Republican donor Sheldon Adelson to former presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum — have claimed that the Palestinian people do not exist. If Palestinians don’t exist — if they’re just generic Arabs — then they have no right to their own country in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In fact, they may not even have the right to live there. After all, if they’re merely Arabs, and not Palestinians, they have no more right to live in historic Palestine than in Saudi Arabia.

When right-wing Zionists deny Palestinian identity, progressives like myself erupt in outrage. We should be just as outraged when Palestinians do the same to Jews.

Palestinians have the right to oppose a Jewish state. They have the right to argue for some kind of binational one state solution in which everyone lives equally under the law. I consider such a view dangerously unrealistic, but it does not, in and of itself, deny Jewish identity. It does not deny the Jewish connection to the land of Israel. You can, after all, recognize the Jewish connection to the land of Israel without believing that it must express itself in Jewish statehood. That was the position of the great cultural Zionist Ahad Ha’am. He argued passionately for the importance of a Jewish presence in the land of Israel. But unlike his antagonist, Theodor Herzl, he wasn’t sure that Jewish presence should take state form.

Unfortunately, Palestinian leaders have not merely questioned the legitimacy of a Jewish state. They’ve repeatedly questioned the Jewish connection to the land of Israel itself. In his book, "The Missing Peace," Dennis Ross reports that Yasser Arafat repeatedly denied that a Jewish Temple ever existed in Jerusalem. In 2010, Al-Mutawakil Taha, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy minister of information, published a report on the PA’s website claiming that the Western Wall “has never been a part of what is called the Jewish Temple. However, it was Islamic tolerance which allowed the Jews to stand before it and cry over its loss."

The second sentence follows chillingly from the first. Because Jews have no authentic connection to the Kotel — to which our ancestors prayed for millennia — we have no right to pray there. Only Muslims do. Whatever opportunities we’re afforded there are subject to their whim.

Sadly, Palestinian leaders continue this denial of Jewish identity to this day. In April, Palestinians successful pushed UNESCO to pass a resolution about Jerusalem that referred 18 times to Israeli infringements around the “Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif” but never once referred to the Jewish connection there. The document never mentioned the Jewish term for the area: Temple Mount. And when it mentioned the “Western Wall,” it put the phrase in quotations.