The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has expressed satisfaction at the deletion of a clause in an Arab-sponsored resolution that sought to assert the false claim that “the Buraq Plaza [i.e., Kotel Hama’aravi, the Western Wall, the remainder of the retainer wall that once surrounded the Jewish temples in antiquity] is an integral part of al-Aqsa Mosque/al-Haram al-Sharif.”
As any relevant photograph will show, the Western Wall is not adjacent to the Al Aqsa Mosque. It is no part of the Mosque.
Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) has a long record of denying Jewish history and connection to Jerusalem and Israel, of which this resolution is part of its campaign.
At the same time, the ZOA strongly criticized the naked falsehood of the resolution declaring Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus and and the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron are an “integral part of Palestine.” The Tomb of the Patriarchs was revered by Jews long before Islam arose, while Joseph’s Tomb, as a a matter of indisputable historic fact, has never been the so-called Bilah Ibn Rabah mosque. The claim that it is is a Palestinian propaganda lie that only emerged in the mid-1990s and has no history to support it. Bilah Ibn Rabah, a companion of Muhammad, never visited the land of Israel. No mosque named after him, or anyone else, was ever there.
The ZOA naked anti-Israel bias of the Arab resolution –– proposed by Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates –– which said nothing about the sequence of assaults on Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, but which lavishly condemned Israel for “targeting civilians” and “aggressions” –– that is, acting to protect Jewish visitors under unprovoked attack and subduing Arab attackers of these visitors who had barricaded themselves in the Al Aqsa Mosque.
The UNESCO resolution “decries the continuous Israeli targeting of civilians including religious figures, sheikhs, and priests, further decries the large number of arrests and injuries among Muslim worshipers and Jordanian Wakf guards in al-Aksa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif by the Israeli forces and and also urges Israel, the occupying power, to end these aggressions and abuses which inflame the tension on the ground and in between faiths” (Tovah Lazaroff, ‘UNESCO condemns Israeli ‘aggression’ at al-Aksa, but pulls controversial text on Western Wall,’ Jerusalem Post, October 21, 2015).
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “It was inevitable that an Arab-sponsored resolution was passed –– Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) which has incited and glorified the Muslim violence against Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, enjoys an automatic majority in any UN vote.
“This is because there are 57 Muslim states, belonging to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which in turn decisively influences the vote of the so-called Non-Aligned bloc, the largest voting bloc in the UN, a subject on which the ZOA has written before.
“As the late Israeli statesman and diplomat Abba Eban once quipped, ‘If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.’
“‘International opinion,’ then, consists of whatever a coalition of illiberal states and dictatorships say it is.
“In this case, ‘international opinion’ has ignored the supremacist intolerance for Jews merely visiting their own Temple Mount (they are not allowed to pray there) and the irrefutable evidence of premeditated Arab attacks on Jewish visitors, while condemning entirely legal –– indeed, necessary –– Israeli measures to protect the lives of Israeli citizens under attack.
“The UNESCO resolution lies –– there has been no Israeli targeting of civilians including religious figures, sheikhs, and priests, continuous or otherwise on Temple Mount. On the contrary, it is innocent Israeli civilians whom have been attacked by the people Israeli police have arrested. Nor is Israel the ‘occupying power’ –– the Jewish state cannot occupy its own capital and Judaism’s most sacred site.
“To shamefully decry ‘the large number of arrests and injuries among Muslim worshippers’ is to ignore that these ‘worshippers’ were assaulting innocent civilians, that there were not at prayer at Al Aqsa at the time, and to falsely imply that their arrests were repressive, not legitimate.
“The resolution also disgracefully and unacceptably refers to these sites solely by their Arabic names, and omits the internationally recognized Jewish names for these place.
“This UNESCO resolution contravenes UNESCO own constitution, which declares as the organization’s aim to contribute to peace and security by promoting collaboration and coexistence. The resolution should never have been voted upon.
“We praise the Obama Administration and the other countries –– Germany, United Kingdom, Estonia, Netherlands and the Czech Republic –– which voted against this contemptible resolution.”