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Photo: AP
UNESCO headquarters. The obsession is harming Israel, but it’s harming the Muslims much more
Photo: AP
Ben-Dror Yemini

Adding more fuel to the fire of hatred

Op-ed: Resolutions like the one adopted by UNESCO on Tuesday may have no practical validity, but it’s hard to ignore their cumulative damage. Diplomatic jihad is scoring achievements, and to hell with the facts.

There is no cause for celebration, as there was and remains an unenlightened majority in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), as well as in all other UN institutions. Tuesday’s vote, on Israel’s Independence Day of all days, is part of a war of attrition waged by the Muslim world against Israel. A diplomatic jihad. These may be false resolutions with no real meaning, but with one resolution after another—the attrition is working.

 

 

The problem isn’t the Muslim world, which is in a state of darkness. Between fighting against Israel and fighting for itself, it favors the battle against Israel. There is not a single point of agreement in the Muslim world, apart from the hostility toward Israel. There is no need, therefore, for resolutions against jihad, which is massacring mostly Muslims, and there is no need to settle the conflict between the Shiites and the Sunnis, and there is no need to deal with the illiteracy and improve the status of women. Nothing is important, just Israel and Israel.

 

This obsession is harming Israel, but it is harming the Muslims themselves much more, because there is a direct link between the hostility toward Israel and the troubles of the Muslim world. The more hostile it is, the bigger its troubles.

 

Israel’s UNESCO envoy, Carmel Shama Hacohen, at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The pressure worked, but we should not rest on our laurels just because the adopted resolution was not as bad as expected
Israel’s UNESCO envoy, Carmel Shama Hacohen, at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The pressure worked, but we should not rest on our laurels just because the adopted resolution was not as bad as expected

 

This time it seemed like Germany—even before its foreign minister’s cheap provocation—was about to reach a compromise with the initiators of the anti-Israel motion. This a compromise didn’t have anything positive in it; it was a compromise of surrender. Britain made it clear that it would not support the proposal, but Britain is about to leave the European Union anyway. Shortly before the vote, Italy made it clear that it would not support it either. That was a diplomatic accomplishment, which was achieved thanks to the joint efforts of Israel’s Ambassador to UNESCO Carmel Shama Hacohen and Israel’s Ambassador to Italy Ofer Sachs with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intervention. The pressure worked.

 

Holland, Lithuania and Greece followed in Italy’s footsteps and announced that they were reneging on the deal. Germany’s compromise-surrender collapsed. The European countries, including Germany, which abstain on such votes too often, voted against the resolution this time. All apart from one country, Sweden—the country which has been taken hostage by the “forces of progress” that are allied with the darkest forces in the world, the country whose foreign minister said after the terror attack in the offices of French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris that it happened because of the oppression of Palestinians. The Swedish madness has not ended. It keeps going faster and faster.

 

The fundamental problem of the international institutions was and remains that they are all dominated by an unenlightened, automatic majority of undemocratic states. When we say “the international community,” we are actually saying “the unenlightened majority of the international community.” It’s sad, because points of friction and conflict needs a serious international body—and that doesn’t exist. This body has deserted itself to a majority which led, for example, to the election of Saudi Arabia to the women’s rights commission of the UN’s Human Rights Council, or which made the World Health Organization find the time—in the height of the civil war in Syria—to condemn Israel about something that had to do with the Golan Heights. Is there anyone among the residents of bleeding Syria who wouldn’t want to live under Israeli rule in the Golan Heights? But to hell with the facts, as long as there is a majority for adopting more resolutions against Israel.

 

Although resolutions like the one adopted on Tuesday have no practical validity, it’s hard to ignore their cumulative effect, including on the international public opinion. When newspapers in Europe report these resolutions, they fail to mention that these are foolish resolutions initiated by an unenlightened majority. And if they do include something in this spirit, it appears at the end of the report. This is how false consciousness is created in the free world. This is how Israel is turned into a condemned country. This is how different surveys produce the result that Israel is the country threatening world peace.

 

At the end of the day, the diplomatic jihad is scoring achievements. We should not, therefore, rest on our laurels just because the resolution adopted on Tuesday was not as bad as the one we expected. There is cumulative damage here, and on Tuesday UNESCO added more fuel to the fire of hatred.

 


פרסום ראשון: 05.05.17, 23:20
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