Israel is recalling its ambassador to UNESCO to Jerusalem for consultations in the wake of the body’s second resolution that denies Jewish ties to Jerusalem holy sites.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the move on Oct. 26.
“The theater of the absurd continues, and so I decided to recall our ambassador to UNESCO back to Israel for consultations,” Netanyahu said at an event at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya.
The recall will allow the government to reconsider its ties to the U.N. cultural agency.
“This is a necessary step,” the envoy, Carmel Shama-Hacohen, told the Times of Israel. “The motive is the need to rethink and reevaluate our relations with UNESCO given the persistent persecution of Israel and the Jewish people.”
On Oct. 26 the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO adopted a resolution in Paris that ignores Jewish ties to the Temple Mount. The vote by secret ballot came two weeks after a similar resolution passed by the executive board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization also denying a Jewish connection to the Western Wall and other Jewish holy sites.
The Oct. 26 resolution passed with less than a majority of the committee’s 21 members — 10 states voted in favor and two were opposed, with eight abstaining and one absent. Nine Arab countries and Vietnam are believed to have voted for the resolution, which was submitted by Lebanon and Tunisia on behalf of Jordan and the Palestinians, who do not serve on the committee.
The resolution refers to the Temple Mount only by its Muslim names, Haram al-Sharif and Al-Aqsa mosque, but does refer to the Western Wall in a Jewish context, unlike the resolution passed earlier this month.
Shama-Hacohen had worked to make sure the second resolution was voted on and not just adopted by consensus, as desired by the proposal’s authors, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.
Jordan and the Palestinian Authority reportedly had threatened to make the language more contentious and strengthen the Muslim claim to the Temple Mount in the resolution if it was not approved by a consensus vote, but Tanzania and Croatia requested the secret ballot.
“This is yet another absurd resolution against the State of Israel, the Jewish people and historical truth,” Shama-Hacohen said in a statement following the vote.
During his statement, Shama-Hacohen threw a copy of the resolution into a trash can marked “history.”
The evening before the vote, Shama-Hacohen and the heads of two pro-Israel organizations — Shahar Azani, executive director of the New York-based StandWithUs organization, and Yifa Segal, director of the Israel-based International Legal Forum — submitted a petition to Irina Bokova, UNESCO’s director-general in Paris, with more than 76,000 signatures calling on UNESCO to recognize the deep historic, cultural and religious connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel.
In addition, a group of U.S. senators and Congress members earlier in the week sent a letter initiated by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., to the World Heritage Committee urging it to reject the resolution.
The 21 voting countries were Finland, Poland, Portugal, Croatia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Tunisia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Peru, Cuba, Jamaica, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Angola and Tanzania. — jta