By Yair Rosenberg
Thursday, October 13, 2016
The United Nations is infamous for subjecting Israel to a
“barrage of obsessive, unbalanced, and relentless criticism,” in the words of
Susan Rice, President Obama’s U.N. ambassador for five years. As Democratic
vice presidential nominee Senator Tim Kaine once put it, the Jewish state is
the “perennial punching bag” at the U.N., which “hold[s] Israel to a standard
that’s different than other nations.”
Usually, this animus is cloaked in the garb of
anti-Zionism. This morning, however, the United Nations Educational,
Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) dispensed with all pretense and
passed a blatantly anti-Semitic resolution erasing Jewish ties to Jerusalem’s
Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site.
The Palestinian-drafted resolution, which passed 24-6
with 26 abstentions, claims that the site of the two Jewish Temples is sacred
solely to Muslims. It refers to the area only by its Islamic names: Haram
al-Sharif and Al-Aqsa Mosque (the shrine situated on the site). This is
essentially the equivalent of passing a resolution airbrushing Muslim ties to
Mecca, a move which would rightly be deemed Islamophobic. (Incidentally, in
1925, the Islamic Waqf overseeing the Temple Mount published a pamphlet stating
that “the identity of the site with Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute.”
Obviously, the Waqf did not anticipate the ingenuity of the United Nations.)
Unsurprisingly, the United States, Britain, Germany,
Estonia, Lithuania, and the Netherlands voted against the resolution.
Shamefully, the other three European countries on the UNESCO executive
board—France, Sweden, and Spain—could only bring themselves to abstain in the
face of textbook anti-Jewish bigotry. (They had each previously voted for a previous incarnation of the same
resolution, before realizing how bad it made their countries look.)
Adding to the bitter irony of UNESCO’s anti-Jewish turn
is the fact that yesterday was Yom Kippur. Predictably, the liturgy of
Judaism’s holiest day makes repeated reference to Judaism’s holiest site. One
of the most frequently cited verses in the day’s lengthy prayers is Isaiah
56:7, in which the prophet imagines an interfaith utopia on Jerusalem’s Temple
Mount:
וַהֲבִיאוֹתִים
אֶל־הַר קָדְשִׁי וְשִׂמַּחְתִּים בְּבֵית תְּפִלָּתִי עוֹלֹתֵיהֶם
וְזִבְחֵיהֶם לְרָצוֹן עַל־מִזְבְּחִי כִּי בֵיתִי בֵּית־תְּפִלָּה
יִקָּרֵא לְכָל־הָעַמִּים׃
I will bring them to my sacred
mount and let them rejoice in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and
sacrifices shall be welcome on my altar, for my house shall be called a house
of prayer for all peoples.
The UNESCO resolution is perfectly in keeping with
Isaiah’s ecumenical sentiment, as long as one adds in “except the Jews.”
To be fair, perhaps the resolution’s supporters—which
included such noted experts on Judaism as Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and
Qatar—were not familiar with this particular verse of Isaiah, nor the myriad of
other references to the Temple Mount in Judaism, nor the extensive
archaeological and other evidence for the Jewish Temples that stood there. But
one would think they’d be familiar with the famous prophecy of Isaiah carved
into the wall outside the United Nations in New York.
The full prophecy reads:
And the many peoples shall go and
say: “Come, Let us go up to the Mount of the Lord, to the house of the God of
Jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways, and that we may walk in his paths.”
For instruction shall come forth from Zion, the word of the Lord from
Jerusalem.
Thus he will judge among the
nations and arbitrate for the many peoples. And they shall beat their swords
into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not take up
sword against nation; they shall never again know war.
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