ALESCO, the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization, is essentially the Arab version of UNESCO. It partners with other NGOs and organizations worldwide to promote and coordinate cultural and educational activities in the Arab world.
On Saturday, its Executive Committee met and issued a statement about Jews opening up a synagogue in "occupied" Jerusalem.
Ma'an Arabic reports:
The Executive Council of the Arab League for Education, Culture and Science (ALECSO) condemned the Israeli occupation forces, accompanied by a large number of settlers and members of the Knesset, for opening a synagogue in Baten Al Hawa neighborhood in Silwan, south of Al Aqsa Mosque, along with the misdeeds of the occupation, its settlers, their falsehoods and false claims.The Council said in a statement that the occupation, through its incongruous stories, its settlement tools, its fairy tales and its biblical stories, wants to change the status quo in Jerusalem. The recent targeting of Al-Aqsa Mosque is proof of the occupation's attempt to impose new facts on the ground and undermine the deep culture of Jerusalem. Where the occupation seeks through its repeated attacks and daily violation of all international laws and charters to steal the consciousness of the city through siege, killing and lies.ALECSO is saying that is official position is that Jews have no history in Jerusalem and that anyone who claims there is Jewish history in Jerusalem is a liar.
The Arab Organization called on the international community, human rights organizations, the United Nations and UNESCO to stop the occupation violations and to commit the occupation to the resolutions and confessions of the Arabs of Jerusalem and its components and to stop the series of domination, distortion and fabrication practiced by the occupation to change the city.
This supposedly educational and cultural organization is saying that thousands of articles of archaeological artifacts as well as contemporaneous non-Jewish accounts of Jerusalem - and basic, settled history - are all fiction.
The only reason that ALECSO officially adopts a decidedly anti-science, anti-historical and antisemitic position is politics and hate.
Yet ALECSO is respected by other organizations. For example, it just reached an agreement with the prestigious Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Of course UNESCO is a partner, as is the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and many others.
Antisemitic statements by the Right are instantly and correctly condemned by the world. Yet antisemitic statements by official Arab organizations are simply ignored and those NGOs continue to be free to spout their hate as a matter of course, with the oh-so-moral Europeans not uttering a peep of protest - and eager to work together with organizations that issue press releases showing how much they hate Jews.