TEL AVIV — The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on Tuesday passed a highly biased anti-Israel resolution regarding Jerusalem’s Old City and its ancient walls.
Below, in no particular order, are four outrages inside the brief text of the Jordanian-sponsored resolution, affirmed by the UN body’s World Heritage Council:
1 – The resolution refers to the Old City of Jerusalem as “occupied territories” and claims that Israel is the “occupying power” there.
This would make Israel the “occupying power” over the Temple Mount and Western Wall and implies that the Palestinian Authority, which never had a state or legal entity in Jerusalem (or the West Bank, for that matter) are the rightful authorities over the ancient city of Jerusalem.
Jordan illegally occupied and annexed eastern Jerusalem, which includes the Old City, from 1948 until Israel captured the lands in a defensive war in 1967. Known as the Six Day War, the conflict was launched after Arab countries used the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem to stage attacks against the Jewish state. In 1988, Jordan officially renounced its claims to the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem and unilaterally recognized terrorist Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization as “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”
2 – The text refers to “East Jerusalem,” a nonexistent entity.
Here, the UN has entirely fabricated the existence of an entity called East Jerusalem. In reality, Jerusalem is one city; there is no East Jerusalem. The term is largely utilized to claim that Israel is occupying “East Jerusalem,” referring to the eastern sections of the city, which should supposedly become part of a future Palestinian state.
Jews maintained a historic presence in Jerusalem, including in the eastern sections, until they were forced to leave the Old City en masse in 1948 and eastern Jerusalem fell under illegal Jordanian occupation.
3 – UNESCO demanded that Israel cease excavations in its own capital.
The text slammed “the failure of the Israeli occupying authorities to cease the persistent excavations, tunneling, works, projects and other illegal practices in East Jerusalem, particularly in and around the Old City of Jerusalem.”
UNESCO seems to fear excavations in these areas because they routinely uncover archaeological evidence further tying Jews to Jerusalem. For example, discoveries at the City of David, an archeological site just outside the Temple Mount, have unearthed the core of ancient Jerusalem, including Hezekiah’s Tunnel, evidence of the Gihon Spring, Jewish Temple artifacts, Temple purifying pools and more.
The resolution also ignored the Palestinians’ history of destroying Jewish artifacts discovered in Jerusalem digs.
As I previously reported:
In 1997, the Waqf conducted a large dig on the Temple Mount during construction of a massive mosque at an area referred to as Solomon’s Stables. The Wafq at the time disposed of truckloads of dirt containing Jewish artifacts from the First and Second Temple periods.
After the media reported the disposals, Israeli authorities froze the construction permit given to the Waqf and the dirt was transferred to Israeli archaeologists for analysis. The Israeli authorities found scores of Jewish Temple relics in the nearly disposed dirt, including coins with Hebrew writing referencing the Temple, part of a Hasmonean lamp, several other Second Temple lamps, Temple-period pottery with Jewish markings, a marble pillar shaft, and other Temple-period artifacts.
The Waqf was widely accused of attempting to hide evidence of the existence of the Jewish Temples.
And in 2007, this journalist reported from the site of an unusual dig on the Temple Mount in which the Mount’s Waqf Islamic custodians utilized heavy machinery to dig on one of the most sensitive archaeological compounds in the world and were once again caught red-handed destroying Temple-era antiquities.
4 – The Resolution maintains the “Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls on the List of World Heritage in Danger.”
Israel is the only country in the Middle East that guarantees freedom of worship for all religions. UNESCO is farcically labeling the Old City as being in “danger” when Israel is well known to responsibly protect the integrity of the city and its sites.
UNESCO, meanwhile, had nothing to say when the Palestinians repeatedly set fire to Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, causing severe damage to the revered burial place, considered Judaism’s third holiest site. The Palestinians also famously painted the dome of the tomb green and burned down a yeshiva at the location, events also ignored by UNESCO.
The UN body was notably silent when Palestinian gangs in 2015 utilized the Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s declared third holiest site, as a staging base to attack Israeli security forces.
And UNESCO was absent from the debate when Fatah terrorists fleeing an Israeli antiterror operation in 2002 holed up inside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem for 39 days, where they took priests and nuns hostage. According to reports, the jihadists defiled the church and left the traditional birthplace of Jesus in shambles.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
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