The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has passed a resolution on Thursday denying the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. The United Kingdom and USA were among those who voted “no”.
Twenty-six of the group’s 52-member nations supported the resolution, including China and Russia.
Six countries voted against the resolution: USA, the United Kingdom, Germany, The Netherlands, Lithuania and Estonia.
Twenty-four countries abstained from the vote and only two countries were absent from the vote.
While the decision is outrageous, Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO has said that the number of countries who voted against the Palestinians or abstained it was higher than they expected.
Commenting on the decision, Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama-Hacohen, said: “The Palestinians have lost all support in Europe, including France, Spain and even Sweden. Along with the shift of position of key countries such as India and Argentina to abstention, the vote constitutes a significant achievement [for Israel] compared to the opening conditions for prior votes. All told, the members of the Executive Board, and certainly a decisive majority of the Western and democratic world, have not supported the proposed Palestinian resolution.”
The decision means that UNESCO will only refer to the Temple Mount complex by Islamic names (Al-Aqsa Mosque and Haram al-Sharif) and no longer use other names in Hebrew and English (Har HaBayit or Temple Mount). It also was also a vote that condemned Israel for certain actions which it denies.
The resolution effectively divorces the history of the Jewish people from their most holy sites. It is not only an insult to the Jewish people, but Christians should equally be outraged.
The Jewish people have been worshipping on the Temple Mount for thousands of years. Long before Islam was founded.
UNESCO’s slogan is “Building peace in the minds of men and women”. Yet, this resolution does nothing but bring division and take us further away from peace.
This is a historic anti-Semitic decision by UNESCO and we strongly oppose it.
Christians United for Israel UK
