Never trust retellings, people. Always go to the source.
Haaretz (and a crowd of other newspapers in its stead) reports:
United Nations UNESCO body has passed a resolution put forth by the Palestinians denying all connection between Jews and Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.
And here is what the actual resolution states:
Affirming the importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls for the three monotheistic religions. . .
The three monotheistic religions obviously include Judaism. So “denying all connection between Jews and Jerusalem” is a clear lie.
And this is precisely why I don’t venture opinions on texts I haven’t seen.
Clarissa's Blog 
Here’s a link to an article by an Israeli blogger at Anne’s Opinions, which she also reposted at Warsclerotic at my request.
The UNESCO resolution, and the earlier resolution which upon which it elaborates and reaffirms, perhaps warrant more than a cherry-picked sentence fragment.
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An in-depth analysis is great. But what I take exception to is the way the news has been reported on the linked website. Most people don’t look at the actual resolution. They just see the article’s title and think they know what happened.
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Fine. But now that you have links to an “in-depth” analysis, will you read it and comment further?
UNESCO has a long history of being opposed to “Israel’s occupation of Palestine” and to favoring everything done by the Palestinians. What has UNESCO said about Saint Abbas and his remarks in the following video, or about the Palestinian Authority’s and Hamas’ continuing and recent praise for Palestinian “heroes” murdering Jews?
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Hi Clarissa, I am the blogger to whom Dan linked. I quoted directly from the UNESCO resolution, which I linked to in my post. It’s wording is biased, full of false narratives and ultimately absurd. That’s fine with me. The more UNESCO detaches itself from reality the less credibility it will retain.
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“explicitly describing the Temple Mount as an exclusively Muslim holy site”
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“UNESCO has a long history of being opposed to “Israel’s occupation of Palestine”
Oh no, what a horrible thing to do!
Fuck off, you idiot Trump supporter.
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““UNESCO has a long history of being opposed to “Israel’s occupation of Palestine””
There are things that stand above partisan political beliefs. Respect for facts has to be such thing. It can’t be “It’s true if it says what I like to hear.”
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Have you actually READ the UNESCO resolution? I have. I will bring you here just one or two points.
It says, at the bottom of pg 2 and top of pg 3:
Why is the Western Wall placed in “scare quotes”? What is fake or false about the Western Wall, aka the Kotel? Since when has it ever been known as Al Buraq Plaza? The site has no relevance at all to Islam, particularly as Jerusalem is not actually mentioned in the Koran even once.
Denying the name of the Western Wall is equivalent to denying Jewish history. Would anyone dream of talking about the Al Aqsa as “the so-called “Al Aqsa Mosque” “?
If you do a search of the document you will find the Western Wall ONLY within scare quotes, and the official name is Al Buraq Plaza. I can safely tell you that if you visit Jerusalem and ask for directions, or search on a map, for Al Buraq Plaza you will end up absolutely nowhere.
It is typical of the UN and its affiliated institutions to deny reality which is staring them in the face.
Further, I searched the entire resolution for the words “Temple Mount”, as it is known to millions of Jews and to hundreds of millions of Christians, and you know what? The words do not appear at all!
Is UNESCO really denying the entire Jewish and Christian history of the Temple Mount? Where did the Jews bring their offerings 2-3,000 years ago? To the Al Aqsa Mosque? To the Haram al Sharif? where did Jesus chase out the money-changers? At the Al Aqsa Mosque? At the Haram al Sharif? Or maybe it was at the Jewish Temple?
If you don’t call this denying Jewish history then I feel very sorry for you because you clearly have a problem in reading comprehension as well as a serious lack of education in the history department.
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Let’s keep ourselves under control and avoid strange ad hominem attacks, shall we?
Interpreting a text is one thing but saying it “explicitly states” when it does nothing of the kind is something entirely different. I’m discussing very specific quotes that are demonstrably false. As for individual interpretations, they can vary and be anything people want them to be.
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I apologize if I offended you. I have no intention of doing that. I feel extremely strongly about this, and the UN and UNESCO have an extremely adversarial attitude to Israel and to any Jewish rights in Jerusalem. If you look at the points I noted I think you will see this.
It’s not a matter of interpretation. Taken together with the UN’s hostility towards Israel plus the built-in anti-Israel – and anti-Western- majority then it becomes blindingly clear that the intention is to deny any Jewish connection to its own holy sites, despite the wooly wording to give themselves cover of “the 3 monotheistic religions”.
It would never occur to me as an Israeli Jew to call Al Aqsa anything but its name. But we should receive the same right and deserve to have our own holy sites called by their proper names.
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When you say “the intention is”, that’s perfectly fine. What is not fine is to say (as the Haaretz article did) that the resolution says what it doesn’t say. Ultimately, the Haaretz’s strategy is counterproductive. Because the moment you are caught in a demonstrable falsehood, nobody trusts the rest of your argument, no matter how good and correct it is. If the article I’m discussing in my post had worded its objections to the resolution the way you just did, that would have been the right way to make the point and avoid a perception of dishonesty.
The easiest way to undermine an argument is to do what this Haaretz article did.
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There’s more. Towards the end of the document it says:
What was that mysterious 185EX/Decision 15? You can find it here: (pdf)
On page 22 you can read:
So… Hebron is now a Palestinian city eh? No connection to Judaism? To the fact that Judaism’s 3 forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are buried there, together with their wives Sarah, Rebecca and Leah?
And the tomb of Rachel suddenly became a mosque? When did Rachel live? When did Islam appear? Who has the rights to the tomb of Judaism’s foremother who, the Bible records, was buried at Efrata, outside of Hebron near Kiryat Arba? (See Genesis).
Since when does the Muslim usurpation of a Jewish site give it overall control and wipe out any Jewish history?
Because make no mistake. Read that resolution again: They want Israel to REMOVE JEWISH SITES from Israel’s national heritage list because the UN considers these Palestinian sites.
What Palestinian history can there be, at a site with no Muslim connection?
Islam only appeared 1,300 or so years after the Temples were destroyed. Are you implying that Islam has superceded Judaism? And thus by extension also Christianity? That would make you the worst kind of antisemitic supercessionist, and somehow I do not think that you are like that.
I think you just need to read UN documents thoroughly and get yourself a thorough basis in historical facts, not myths.
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I’m not sure who you are talking to but it doesn’t seem to be me. I’m not discussing Sarah, Rebecca and Leah or the appearance of Islam. I’m discussing two very specific quotes that are demonstrably false. That’s all I’m doing. You are absolutely entitled to your argument. But it has got to be presented as “this is my reading of the text,” “this is how I understand the resolution.”
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The Clinton campaign (but not Mrs. Clinton personally) responded to the UNESCO debacle as follows:
Oh well.
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I’m glad you are a Hillary supporter now. 😊
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Wouldn’t it be more accurate to state that in your opinion I am a Hillary supporter? Of course I am not, as many of my comments at your blog should have made clear.
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I’m kidding, of course. ☺ As for opinions, I purposefully announce in the blog’s header that these are only my opinions.
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The Director General of UNESCO has signaled her opposition to the resolution.
Your article objected to this statement from an Israeli paper:
Perhaps neither the UNESCO director general nor the author of the article you quoted was aware of the sentence you quoted from the resolution:
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This just goes to show what enormous power media have to impact reality.
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Will the UNESCO resolution help Abbas, et al, to incite even more Palestinian violence against Jews with dirty feet who trespass on Temple Mount?
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As if Abbas ever needed an excuse for that.
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