"People, Book, Land - The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People
and the Land of Israel", co-organized by UNESCO and our Centre, will be
launched on Monday 20 January and displayed at UNESCO headquarters in
Paris from Tuesday 21 until Thursday 30 January from 9am to 5:30pm (closed weekends)
Don't bother calling the number to attend.
From The Algemeiner:
UNESCO, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, has pulled a Jewish exhibit two years in the making, entitled “People, Book, Land – The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel,” after a zero hour protest from the Arab League, The Algemeiner has learned.So, UNESCO immediately bowed to the wishes of its Muslim masters. Sure enough, mention of the exhibit was scrubbed from the UNESCO site - it was there two days ago according to Google's cache.
The exhibit, which was created by Los Angeles-based Jewish human rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) together with UNESCO, was scheduled to open on January 20th, 2014, at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters. The invitations had already gone out, and the fully prepared exhibition material was already in place. The display was co-sponsored by Israel, Canada and Montenegro.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean of the SWC, told The Algemeiner that the move was an “absolute outrage.” “The Arabs,” he said, “don’t want the world to know that the Jews have a 3,500-year relationship to the Land of Israel.”
Hier said that his organization, which is accredited by UNESCO as an NGO, worked in intimate co-operation with the international body on the project, which his center initiated after the Palestinian Authority was unilaterally accepted as a UNESCO member state in 2011.
“We made a clear attempt to work with them and the system, they can’t say they were blindsided, they commented on every sentence (in the exhibit’s materials) and still, in the end, the Arabs protested and they kicked us out,” he said.
“It is not supposed to be a place of censorship,” Hier said, “It is not supposed to deny one nation the right to their history.”
UNESCO informed the SWC of the change on January 14th in a letter to the Center’s Shimon Samuels, asserting the Arab League’s claim that going ahead with the show “could create potential obstacles related to the peace process in the Middle East.”
In a letter to Irina Bokova, president of UNESCO, President of the Arab group within UNESCO, Abdulla al Neaimi, from the United Arab Emirates, expressed “deep worry and great disapproval” over the program showing the age old connection between Israel and the Jewish people.
“The subject of this exhibition is highly political though the appearance of the title seems to be trivial. Most serious is the defense of this theme which is one of the reasons used by the opponents of peace within Israel,” the Arab League wrote. “The publicity that will accompany… the exhibit can only cause damage to the peace negotiations presently occurring, and the constant effort of Secretary of State John Kerry, and the neutrality and objectivity of UNESCO.”
“For all these reasons, for the major worry not to damage UNESCO in its… mission of support for peace, the Arab group within UNESCO is asking you to make the decision to cancel this exhibition,” Al Neaimi concluded.
But it gets much worse:
Interestingly, 10 days prior to the suspension of the exhibit, the United States declined co-sponsorship on remarkably similar grounds.
“At this sensitive juncture in the ongoing Middle East peace process, and after thoughtful consideration with review at the highest levels, we have made the decision that the United States will not be able to co-sponsor the current exhibit during its display at UNESCO headquarters,” wrote Kelly O. Siekman, Director at the Office of UNESCO Affairs of the State Department, in an email seen by The Algemeiner.
SWC’s Hier told The Algemeiner that he was disappointed in the U.S. position on the issue, and said that he was sure the exhibition would not have been suspended has the U.S. aligned itself as a formal co-sponsor. “This is not the end of this story,” he said.
Let this sink in for a moment: The official United States position is that publicly acknowledging that Jews have deep historic ties to Israel is a threat to the "peace process."
Maybe the White House will ban publicly mentioning the Bible next, because of all those irritating references to "Children of Israel" and "the Kingdom of David" and "Judah" and "Jerusalem." We can't upset the Arabs at this sensitive time, can we? Better hide the Bible that new appointees swear on.
This is beyond disgusting. If the truth must be hidden then you end up with lies, and peace cannot be built on lies. If the US cannot publicly acknowledge that Jews have a deep relationship with their land, then there is no reason for Israel to trust the US. Talking about the "special relationship" rings hollow when basic truths become censored.
Meanwhile, the UN today launched the "Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" - an event that absolutely no one says is a threat to the peace process.
General Assembly President John Ashe told today’s meeting that he hoped the Year leads to “robust” support for the people of Palestine. “I am sure I speak for many when I say that I hope the Year helps foster an atmosphere of dialogue and mutual understanding between the two sides of this decades-long conflict,” he said.Dialogue? Mutual understanding? UNESCO's decision doesn't seem quite consistent with those lofty words, does it?
Oh, that's right. When the UN says "dialogue" they mean "monologue" and when they say "mutual understanding" they mean "one way propaganda." You just have to understand the lingo off the hypocrites and moral midgets that work for the United Nations.
It is scary that the US has been moving in that exact same direction over the past five years.