Israel's PM Netanyahu slams UNESCO resolution ignoring Jewish ties to the Temple Mount
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                  Israel's PM Netanyahu slams UNESCO resolution ignoring Jewish ties to the Temple Mount

                  Israel's PM Netanyahu slams UNESCO resolution ignoring Jewish ties to the Temple Mount

                  18.04.2016, International Organizations

                  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed a resolution adopted by UNESO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, in which Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall area in Jerusalem’s Old City are totally ignored.

                  “UNESCO ignores the unique Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, the site of two temples for 1,000 years, and the place to which Jews prayed for thousands of years,” he said in a statement.

                  “ The UN is rewriting a basic part of human history and proving that there is no low to which it will not reach.”

                  UNESCO’s Executive Board in Paris on Friday adopted a borad resolution which condemns Israeli actions in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip but focus in large part on Israeli actions with regard to the Temple Mount and Western Wall Plaza.

                  Judaism, Christianity and Islam all consider the Temple Mount to be a holy site, but the UNESCO Resolution referred to the area solely as al-Aksa Mosque/al-Haram al Sharif, except for two references to the Western Wall Plaza that were put in parenthesis. The text also referred to the plaza area by the Western Wall as al-Buraq Plaza.

                  In October, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization backed away from reclassifying the Western Wall as solely a Muslim holy site, but is now using language that almost solely refers to it as such.

                  The site currently is under the full authority, but not full control, of the Islamic Wakf. Only Muslims are allowed to pray at the Aksa complex, but Jews and members of other faiths are allowed to visit.

                  Israel controls the access to the site, and has persistently rejected all claims that the status quo at the site has been changed.

                  UNESCO called on Israel not to restrict Muslim worshipers from accessing the Aksa Mosque site and condemned the violence that occurred there in the fall, but focused solely on Israeli actions in those incidents and not the violence of the Muslim rioters.

                  The 58-member UNESCO board approved the resolution with 33 votes in favor, six against and 17 abstentions. Ghana and Turkmenistan were absent all together.

                  Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States opposed the resolution outright, while France, Spain, Sweden, Russia and Slovenia were among those who supported it.

                  A second resolution that more globally condemned Israeli actions, passed with 45 votes in favor, one vote against – the United States – and 11 abstentions.

                  Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid also sharply criticised the resolution. He penned a letter to the UNESCO director- general Irina Bokova in which he called the resolution a “disgraceful attempt to rewrite history and rewrite reality as part of a sustained political campaign against the State of Israel and the Jewish people.

                  “This resolution was an utterly irresponsible intervention in one of the most complex places in the Middle East. UNESCO prides itself on promoting tolerance, interfaith and inter-cultural dialogue, yet it passes resolutions which erase the Jewish people from the historical narrative,” Lapid said.

                  He warned that the UNESCO resolution feeds the type of incitement that fueled the violence that began around the time of the Jewish New Year.

                  “The decision by UNESCO feeds this incitement and so contributes to the wave of terrorism. It will lead directly to more attacks against innocent Israeli civilians and you cannot avoid responsibility for that,” Lapid said.

                  EJP