{"id":81661,"date":"2016-10-24T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=81661"},"modified":"2016-10-20T19:44:24","modified_gmt":"2016-10-20T18:44:24","slug":"lets-talk-about-what-unesco-resolution-does-say-instead-of-what-it-doesnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/10\/lets-talk-about-what-unesco-resolution-does-say-instead-of-what-it-doesnt\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s Talk about What UNESCO Resolution Does Say Instead of What It Doesn\u2019t"},"content":{"rendered":"

The absence of an affirmation of Judaism\u2019s connection to the Temple Mount\/Haram al-Sharif is being exploited\u00a0to distract from Israeli violations of the status quo, and restrictions on Muslim-Palestinian access to the holy site.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Palestinian<\/a>

Palestinian Muslim worshipers perform traditional Friday prayers in a street outside Jerusalem\u2019s Old City, as Israeli police block their way to Al Aqsa mosque, October 17, 2014. (Activestills.org)<\/p><\/div>\n

14 Oct 2016 – <\/em>Anti-Semitism, for Netanyahu and much of the Israeli and Jewish press, is clickbait. Mention it and you can all but guarantee almost automatic outrage. Just like advertisers can avoid talking about why a car is expensive by using sexual imagery or even the word \u201csex\u201d to sell it, the Israeli government can dodge difficult questions about its policy by \u201canti-Semitizing\u201d those who raise these questions.<\/p>\n

UNESCO passed a resolution<\/a> regarding holy Muslim sites in Jerusalem on Thursday [13 Oct]. After \u201caffirming the importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls for the three monotheistic religions,\u201d the resolution calls for the restoration of the previous status quo around \u201cAl-Aq\u1e63a Mosque\/Al-\u1e24aram Al-Sharif and its surroundings.\u201d<\/p>\n

The resolution notes that Israel is violating Muslims\u2019 freedom of worship by hindering and preventing their access to the Aqsa Mosque; \u201cdeplores the continuous storming\u201d of the mosque compound by Israeli right-wing extremists and uniformed forces; decries arrests and injuries of Muslim worshippers in the mosque; and \u201c[r]egrets the damage caused by the Israeli forces, especially since 23 August 2015, to the historic gates and windows of the al-Qibli Mosque inside Al-Aq\u1e63a Mosque\/Al-\u1e24aram Al-Sharif, and reaffirms, in this regard, the obligation of Israel to respect the integrity, authenticity and cultural heritage of Al-Aq\u1e63a Mosque\/Al-\u1e24aram Al-Sharif, as reflected in the historic status quo, as a Muslim holy site of worship and as an integral part of a world cultural heritage site.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a parallel universe, the Israeli prime minister could have promised to do more to uphold Muslims\u2019 freedom of worship and to reassure the Muslim world that Israel is not trying to damage the mosque. Those are real and important issues. Instead, Netanyahu\u2019s reaction was: \u201cto say that Israel has no connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall is like saying that China has no connection to the Great Wall of China and that Egypt has no connection to the pyramids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nowhere in the UNESCO resolution is there any statement invalidating or denying Jews\u2019 connection to Temple Mount: the Jewish connection isn\u2019t discussed in any way, either positively or negatively. It is not mentioned because the resolution is about Israeli damage to a Muslim holy site \u2013 Al-Aqsa Mosque.\u00a0 Beyond that there is no general assessment or rejection of any religion\u2019s connection to the site, apart from an affirmation of \u201cthe importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls for the three monotheistic religions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Could the resolution have preempted some of the negative reactions with a symbolic mention of the term \u201cTemple Mount?\u201d or by acknowledging that it is also a Jewish holy site? Perhaps, but that\u2019s far from the point.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu produced the spin, but Israeli journalists of all stripes were eager to spread it. Broadly quoting an Israeli diplomatic source, Haaretz<\/em> summarized the resolution<\/a> as \u201canti-Israel\u201d and says\u00a0it \u201cdisregards Judaism\u2019s historic connection to the Temple Mount and casts doubt on the link between Judaism and the Western Wall.\u201d Not a word about the restrictions Israel places on Muslims\u2019 access to the site and their right to worship, which the resolution discusses in such detail. The Haaretz<\/em> report also assumed the resolution made reference to the Western Wall, while in practice it only discusses the \u201cWestern Wall Plaza,\u201d built in 1967 by cleansing the residents<\/a> of what had been the Mughrabi Quarter<\/a> for almost eight centuries. (The official Israeli name for the Plaza is placed in quotation marks in the resolution, which correctly defines Israel as an occupying power obliged to safeguard the cultural heritage of the areas it occupied. No country\u00a0has ever recognized Israel\u2019s annexation of East Jerusalem, an area that includes the Old City, Western Wall and Haram al-Sharif\/Temple Mount.)<\/p>\n

The spin even affected Zehava Galon, head of the left-wing Meretz party. Reproducing the Haaretz<\/em> photo on her Facebook page, Galon wrote<\/a> that UNESCO \u201ccannot erase years of Jewish history.\u201d Israeli President Rivlin responded<\/a> by asserting that \u201cno forum or body in the world can say there isn\u2019t a connection between the Jewish People, the Land of Israel and Jerusalem,\u201d reacting yet again to a declaration that was never made. And so on and so forth.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, the entire discussion focused on something UNESCO has no power to do \u2013 it does not have any power to nullify the Jewish connection to Jerusalem or any holy sites, even if it wanted to. The real-world power to shape the status quo in Jerusalem rests solely in the hands of Israel, not UNESCO. It is what Israel does with that power which we should be focusing on.<\/p>\n

Is there a moral to this story? Perhaps the lesson is that just like consumers of online clickbait, we have a choice. We really don\u2019t have to click on a link that says SEX in capital letters. And we really don\u2019t have to help propagate Netanyahu\u2019s spins, which as usual are designed to draw attention away from the real, physical harm that the Occupation is causing.<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

Tom Pessah is a sociologist and activist.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 972mag.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UNESCO passed a resolution regarding holy Muslim sites in Jerusalem on Thursday [13 Oct]. After \u201caffirming the importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls for the three monotheistic religions,\u201d the resolution calls for the restoration of the previous status quo around \u201cAl-Aq\u1e63a Mosque\/Al-\u1e24aram Al-Sharif and its surroundings.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}