UNESCO Adopts Another Resolution Ignoring Jewish Link to Temple Mount

"An important panel at the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO) on Wednesday morning approved a controversial resolution that ignores Jewish and Christian ties to the Temple Mount. The decision came a week after a similar resolution was approved by the body and elicited angry responses from Israel, several world leaders and even the body's own director-general.

Convening at its annual meeting in Paris, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee adopted Draft Resolution 40COM 7A.13, entitled "Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls," by a large majority, with 10 countries voting in favor, eight abstaining and two opposing the text...

This year's member countries of the committee made things particularly difficult for Israeli diplomats battling the resolution. Germany, Colombia and Japan, all sympathetic nations to Israel, are no longer involved, and in their place are Tunisia, Kuwait, Lebanon and Indonesia, bringing to nine the total number of Muslim countries. Those nine and Vietnam were all assumed to have voted for the resolution. Poland, Finland, Croatia, Portugal, the four European countries, had indicated they would abstain...

The resolution, which accuses Israel of various violations, echoed last week's decision in referring to the Temple Mount compound solely by its Muslim names, 'Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif,' and defined it only as 'a Muslim holy site of worship.' As the site of the two Biblical temples, the mount is the holiest place in Judaism. But unlike last week's resolution, the draft did not mention the importance of Jerusalem's Old City for 'the three monotheistic religions.'

'This is yet another absurd resolution against the State of Israel, the Jewish people and historical truth,' Israel's ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama-Hacohen, said after the vote.

The fate of the resolution would be no different from United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism, he predicted, noting that that resolution was overturned 16 years after its adoption in 1975. Recalling that Israel's ambassador to the UN at the time, Chaim Herzog, tore apart a copy of that resolution, he said that UNESCO's resolution on Jerusalem belonged in the garbage bin of history..."