Oct. 21, 2016

UNESCO Vote Hurts Palestinian Cause – Jonathan S. Tobin (Commentary)

Palestinians are celebrating the latest vote by UNESCO to treat Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and Western Wall as solely Muslim holy sites, a key element of their ongoing diplomatic campaign to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state. But the pyrrhic nature of this victory is becoming more obvious with each passing day. More and more nations are refusing to go along with the usual Third World demonization of Israel.

That any international group, even an agency of a UN that has become immersed in a culture of anti-Semitism and hate for Israel, would deny that the site of the biblical temple of ancient Israel has anything to do with Judaism and the Jews is shocking.

That’s especially true when the evidence of the existence of the Second Temple is staring right at the world in the form of the Western Wall and the network of ruins that run along the Temple Mount plateau, where mosques were planted to assert Islamic pre-eminence during the period of Muslim conquest.

What the Palestinians have done by changing the topic to denying Jewish ties to Jerusalem is, in effect, a dropping of the veil from their purported desire only to return to the situation of June 4, 1967, when an embattled Israel prepared to be attacked despite not being in possession of the West Bank, Gaza, or the parts of Jerusalem held by the Jordanians.

When PA incitement views the Jewish presence anywhere in the country – even at the most sacred sites in Judaism – as an illegal incursion, the true Palestinian goal of eliminating Israel moves out of the shadows and into plain sight.

The more the Palestinians deny Jewish history, the more they undermine faith in the possibility of a two-state solution among Israelis and the rest of the world. The more they reveal the anti-Semitic nature of their refusal to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders may be drawn, the more they doom their cause to continued futility.