When it came to the ruins of Palmyra destroyed by the Islamic State, UNESCO and Western culture (also Italian) were outraged and mobilized. Now a similar denialist fury has struck the holy city of Jerusalem, but this time not only UNESCO has encouraged vandalism, but most Western democracies abstained from condemning (including my Italian government).
UNESCO has approved a motion which de facto cancels the millennial-long history of Jewish Jerusalem. It denies any relationship between Judaism and the Temple Mount and Western Wall, the most holy place for Jews, which today is no longer called the Hebrew “Kotel”, but instead the Arab “Al Burak”. In Jerusalem, the history of the Jews becomes the myth of settlers destined to be swept away by history.
The Israeli government has severed relations with the agency. “What is the next step of UNESCO, denying the link between Batman and Robin?”, asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Only six countries voted against the motion: the US, Great Britain, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Germany and Estonia. The Arab-Islamic countries now dominate the UNESCO’s executive board: the motion was filed against Israel by the Islamic regime in Sudan, whose President Bashir is wanted in The Hague. For years, UNESCO has collaborated with Isesco, the agency of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, proponent of Muslim supremacism.
Not only has UNESCO received 20 million dollars from Saudi Arabia, but also King Abdullah was awarded by UNESCO with the medal for “the culture of dialogue and peace”. Recently, Qatar has also donated ten million to UNESCO and it is no secret that its culture minister, Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kuwari, is a favorite to become UNESCO’s next secretary general (Qatar played a decisive role in the anti-Israel motion). A few days ago, Al Kuwari was in Rome to sponsor his appointment and collected an honor from the University Tor Vergata.
UNESCO’s war against Israel began in 1974, when the agency voted for the expulsion of Israel under the leadership of Amadhou M’Bow, an admirer of the Soviet Union more than of liberal democracy and who turned UNESCO into a forum for ideological crusades by the Third World and Eastern Europe. The Reagan Administration abandoned UNESCO, saying that “the criterion of turning the other cheek in politics would mean surrender, or worse, treason.”
Then, the best minds of Italian culture signed the appeal “We will not work for UNESCO”: The appeal continued: “Israel has no right to exist, therefore, it does not exist. The spiritual cancellation justifies in advance the physical annihilation.” The appeal was signed by Argan, Jemolo, Silone, Biagi, Dorfles, Foa, Gassman, Primo Levi, Montale, Montanelli, Sciascia, Soldati and Strehler. Even the then Pope, Paul VI, pressured UNESCO, and abroad, the philosopher Raymond Aron, writers such as Dürrenmatt, Ionesco and Graham Greene, artists such as Joan Miro and Leonard Bernstein, embraced the “case for Israel.” Nobel Laureate for Medicine André Lwoff said that “most of the states that make up the majority at the UN are countries for which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a dead letter.”
Forty years later, the situation is the same at the UN, the historical denial has taken root in the Western newspapers, but you feel the lack of similar appeals against this attack at the World Heritage Center. Because if the Jews have no connection to Jerusalem, the Christian story is also a sham according to ISIS members in double-breasted suits who sit at the Paris UNESCO building in the Place de Fontenoy.
Shame on all of them.