Palestinian Arabs Will Use UNESCO To Steal More Landmarks Of Jews And Christians

At times the United Nations seems to exist for no reason other than to stoke Palestinian fantasies.
Jerold S. Auerbach

Jerold S. Auerbach, professor emeritus of history at Wellesley College, and blogger at Jacob's Voice, writes about how Palestinian membership in UNESCO will facilitate their identity theft of Jewish and Christian landmarks.

Last last year the Palestinian Authority claimed the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as a heritage site, insisting that Jesus was a Palestinian. But last year the PA was not a UNESCO member, and so its request was denied.

All that has changed now.

With Palestinian membership in UNESCO voted for overwhelmingly at the end of October, the Palestinians are prepared to resume their plundering of Jewish history. At the top of their list of "Palestinian" sites deserving of world heritage status are the tombs of the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people in Hebron. Along with Rachel's tomb outside Bethlehem, and Joseph's tomb in Nablus (biblical Shechem), these were among the most revered Jewish holy sites in the world for two millennia before the birth of Muhammad and the rise of Islam. They still are.

Now, in its most fanciful claim, the Palestinian Authority is prepared to request that UNESCO designate the Dead Sea as Palestine's own "heritage site." What the Palestinian historical claims to the Dead Sea might be are undisclosed. The famous Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in the caves near Qumran at the northern edge of the Dead Sea, comprise nearly one thousand biblical texts and other ancient Jewish documents recounting Jewish life in the centuries preceding the destruction of the Second Temple -- millennia before the appearance of Palestinians.

The Palestinian Authority has yet to reveal any historical connection of its people to the Dead Sea for the simple reason that there is none. But its minister of tourism has indicated that its claim would confirm Palestinian ownership of part of the Dead Sea, thereby preventing Israel, which has developed its western shore and environs, from claiming full control.

Israel Matzav writes that actually, the Arabs have already been successful in manipulating UNESCO in order to lay claim to Kever Rachel--Rachel's Tomb as a mosque.

This in spite of the fact that the Arab claim to Rachel's Tomb is based on distortion of fact:

Research by reporter Nadav Shragai shows that while there is a Muslim cemetery surrounding the facility, it was never used as a mosque and always referred to by local Arabs as "Rachel's Tomb", until the Temple Tunnel disturbances of 1996, when they started using the name recognized by UNESCO. Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz of the Western Wall and other holy places called the UNESCO decision an outrageous distortion of history and said Israel should think seriously about future cooperation. [emphasis added]

According to reports at the time, the Arabs 'bullied' UNESCO to make landmarks resolutions.

But the truth is, the Arab manipulation of UNESCO should not be unexpected, since there is a history of Muslim usurping the landmarks of other religions:

Islam’s holiest shrine–the Kaaba, a cube-like building in Mecca–is an older pre-Islamic pagan Arab shrine. According to Islamic tradition the first building was constructed by Adam and rebuilt by Abraham (Ibrahim). The Black Stone, possibly a meteorite fragment, is a significant feature of the Kaaba. The Masjid al-Haram mosque was built around the Kaaba.

The Ibrahimi Mosque was constructed in Hebron, in 637 CE, over the second-most venerated Jewish holy site, the Cave of Machpelah–the Tomb of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The Dome of the Rock was built on the ruins of Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem, by the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik, 687-691 CE. Al-Walid, son of al-Malik, erected the Al-Aqsa Mosque at the southern end of the Temple Mount and also over the Basilica of St. Mary of Justinian, in 712 CE.

By no means is this practice limited to venerated Jewish holy sites. The Grand Mosque of Damascus was put up over the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in 715 CE.

On October 18, 1009, the Muslim Fatimid caliph Abu ‘Ali Mansur Tariqu’l-Hakim destroyed, down to the bedrock, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a Christian church venerated by most Christians as Golgotha, the Hill of Calvary, where tradition says that Jesus was crucified. Gravestones were also destroyed. Muslim forces tried to dig up all the graves and wipe out all traces of their existence. The site is now within the walled, Old City of Jerusalem.

This practice continued through the centuries and was applied not only to Jewish, Christian and Hindu sites but other faiths as well. Late in the 20th century, in Libya, on November 26, 1970, the Catholic Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Tripoli was converted into the Gamal Abdel Nasser Mosque.

Two 1,400 year-old statues of Buddha in the Bamiyan Valley of Afghanistan were blown up in March 2001. This came after a fatwa (a religious edict), ordered by the Taliban directed all Afghan “idols” be destroyed as being anti-Muslim. In the Central Asian republics no Buddhist temples remain.

By exploiting UNESCO to lay claim to the religious landmarks of others, the Arabs are merely playing a variation on an old theme--taking over the landmarks, but now without having to resort to conquest.

And as FresnoZionism.org points out--thanks to UNESCO, there is no telling what religious landmark the Arabs will be able to lay claim to next...

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