National identity theft at UNESCO

"One has to hand it to the Palestinian Authority. When it adopts a policy of delegitimizing Israel, it goes all the way. Once again it is attempting to co-opt UNESCO, this time to expropriate the tombs of the very founders of the Jewish People – and to turn their resting place into a Palestinian World Heritage Site.

To achieve that feat, the upcoming UNESCO meeting in Krakow, Poland, will have to deliberately erase history instead of protecting it.

In the ancient city of Hebron, there stands a colossal, 2,000-year-old burial monument – a kind of Taj Mahal of the Middle East. Josephus, the antiquities historian, records that this monument was built by the Jewish king Herod the Great as an adornment atop the 3,800-year-old tombs of Abraham, his wife Sarah, and most of the founding family of the Jewish People. The last person to be buried there was the Jewish forefather Jacob, also known as Israel.

It is this structure, known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs or the Cave of Machpela in Hebron, that the PA is audaciously trying to claim as its own...

In 637 CE, during the early Muslim conquest, Muslims and Jews coexisted in Hebron. But in 1267 CE, the Mamluks, a Muslim military caste from Egypt, captured Hebron and the Tomb of the Patriarchs and rebranded it the Mosque of Ibrahim. They altered the building by adding two minarets to the top and imposed a jihadist policy of banning Jews, Christians and all non-Muslims from entering the building or visiting the underground burial caves.

Suddenly, in an act of national identity theft, this originally Jewish building housing the founders of the Jewish People, had a Muslim look and feel, with no Jews allowed in. This is exactly the outcome UNESCO is working toward today...

Indeed, behind the facade of the protection of endangered sites, UNESCO has become a tool in a nefarious campaign to eradicate the evidence of Jewish indigeneity in the land of Israel and conversely malign the Jews as occupying colonialists. The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has actually become the legitimate arm of the war against Israel, pushing a jihadist agenda while dressed in a sensible European suit and tie...

The US, the main funder of the UN, and the host of its headquarters, should continue to make good on its promises to push back on the UN machine. And, of course, Israel should itself fully defund UNESCO..."