Editor's Column: Keep Politics Out of UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) claims a lofty mission: promoting cultural appreciation and intellectual collaboration to foster international peace and cooperation. However, the organization has become a tool for ingraining divisions rather than diminishing conflict. On October 13, UNESCO approved a resolution condemning Israel for alleged infringements on Jerusalem’s holiest site, known as the Temple Mount or Haram Al-Sharif. The sponsors of the resolution–Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, and Sudan–all have political motives to challenge Israel.
The resolution is a thinly veiled, politically motivated attempt to delegitimize the Jewish cultural and historical connection to Jerusalem. By approving this politically charged resolution, UNESCO is blatantly violating its mission as an intellectual and peacebuilding institution.
Contrary to UNESCO’s established cultural and intellectual mission, the resolution ignores the history of the Jewish People. The Temple Mount is the former location of the Temple of Jerusalem, the holiest site in the Jewish faith. The Temple, built by the Israelites in the tenth century B.C., was the center of Jewish religious life. The Roman Empire destroyed the Temple in 70 A.D. and expelled the Jewish People from Israel, forcing them from their homeland and scattering them across the Mediterranean world.
More than 500 years later, Muslims conquered Jerusalem, named it the third-holiest city in Islam, and constructed the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque on the site of the demolished Jewish Temple.
The UNESCO resolution does not recognize that the Temple Mount has any connection to the Jewish People. Instead, it refers to the Temple Mount solely as “Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif,” the Muslim name for the site.
By regarding the Temple Mount as solely a Muslim site, UNESCO is flagrantly violating its purpose as a cultural and intellectual institution. Moreover, by bowing to the politics of conflict and denying Jewish history, UNESCO is fanning the flames of hatred rather than promoting peace.
To restore its legitimacy, UNESCO should recognize the Jewish cultural and historical connection to the Temple Mount, and it should stop abusing its role by aggravating political tensions.