UNESCO resolution ignores Jewish ties to Temple Mount, Western Wall

Marcy Oster

Muslims seen at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem's Old City, on their way to pray on the second day of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, June 30, 2014. (Sliman Khader/Flash90)

Muslims seen at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem’s Old City, on their way to pray on the second day of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, June 30, 2014. (Sliman Khader/Flash90)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed a UNESCO resolution which does not recognize a Jewish connection to the Western Wall and the Temple Mount.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, resolution adopted on Friday by the UNESCO executive board during a meeting in Paris, refers to the Temple Mount as the Al-Aksa Mosque/Al-Haram Al Sharif, and the Western Wall as Al-Buraq Plaza. The wording comes after the organization in October decided not to classify the Western Wall as a solely Muslim site.

The resolution, which condemns Israeli actions in eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, and focuses on the Temple Mount and Western Wall, reportedly accuses Israel of being an “occupying power,” and of “planting Jewish fake graves in other spaces of the Muslim cemeteries” and of “the continued conversion of many Islamic and Byzantine remains into the so-called Jewish ritual baths or into Jewish prayer places.”

The resolution  also criticizes Israeli’s decision to build an egalitarian prayer area in the Western Wall Plaza and raps Israel for “illegal measures against the freedom of worship” at the “Muslim holy site of worship”. It also refers to the cities of Hebron and Bethlehem as solely Muslim site, and criticizes Israeli control over the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb.

“This is yet another absurd UN decision,” Netanyahu said in a statement issued on Saturday night. “UNESCO ignores the unique historic connection of Judaism to the Temple Mount, where two temples stood for a thousand years and to which every Jew in the world has prayed for thousands of years. The UN is rewriting a basic part of human history and has once again proven that there is no low to which it will not stoop.”

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