Baltic News Service reports Israel has frozen ties with UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, following the adoption of two resolutions on occupied East Jerusalem in the run-up to an important vote next week. In a letter to UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova, Israeli education minister Naftali Bennett accused the organization of ignoring millennia of Jewish ties to the holy city and of supporting terror in this manner. He added the Israeli National UNESCO Commission had been instructed to cut all ties with the international organization.
NGO Monitor, an organization which monitors the activities of anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian NGOs, issued a statement on related activities in the Security Council the day after UNESCO adopted the controversial resolution:
“NGO Monitor’s research has focused on the disproportionate political impact of Israeli NGOs and the role of funding provided by European governments. From this perspective, we note the debate over and political responses to the presentation by the director of B’Tselem [the pro-Palestinian Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories ] at a UN Security Council special session (convened by Egypt, Malaysia, Venezuela, Angola and Senegal) on Friday October 11. In this highly politicized statement, he implored the UN to take ‘decisive international action’ against Israel, and made no mention of Palestinian terror attacks or incitement. This event highlights the ways in which influential NGOs distort reality for ideological objectives and contribute to international political campaigns against Israel, under the façade of human rights, bypassing Israel’s internal democratic processes.”
UNESCO has been a belligerent in the “archaeology wars” in which pro- and anti-Israeli positions and claims are based on finds showing an ancient Jewish (Hebrew) and Palestinian (Philistine) presence in the Land of Israel. By cutting ties with UNESCO, Israel joins a distinguished list of nations which have resigned from the organization in the past over its politicized activities, including the United States which stayed out from 1984 to 2003 and refused to make any monetary contributions, the United Kingdom from 1985 to 1997 and Singapore from 1985 to 2007. In the United States UNESCO was perceived as a nest of pro-Communist anti-Israeli activism and by cutting its membership, UNESCO lost its major financial contributor. UNESCO currently includes the State of Palestine as a member state. Lithuania voted against including Palestine as a member-state in UNESCO and against the current resolution.
The UNESCO resolution is available in English here.
Please note the United Nations has six official languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. The draft resolution was submitted by Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan, all nominally Arabic-speaking countries who would have drafted the document in their native Arabic. The English translation clearly refers to Jerusalem by that name rather than al-Quds, the Arabic name. It also contains the translation of al-Buraq Plaza in quotes, “Western Wall Plaza.” In Gaza both English and Arabic are provided for Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem. Hebron is likewise provided in its Arabic and English/Hebrew forms.