Tag Archives: UNESCO

U.S., Israel quit U.N. heritage agency citing bias

U.S., Israel quit U.N. heritage agency citing bias

By John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) – The United States and Israel announced on Thursday they were quitting the U.N.’s cultural agency UNESCO, after Washington accused it of anti-Israeli bias.

The withdrawal of the United States, which is meant to provide a fifth of UNESCO’s funding, is a major blow for the Paris-based organization, founded after World War Two to help protect cultural and natural heritage around the world.

UNESCO is best known for designating World Heritage Sites such as the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria and the Grand Canyon National Park.

“This decision was not taken lightly, and reflects U.S. concerns with mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organization, and continuing anti-Israel bias,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement.

Hours later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would quit too, calling the U.S. decision “brave and moral”.

UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova expressed her disappointment: “At the time when conflicts continue to tear apart societies across the world, it is deeply regrettable for the United States to withdraw from the United Nations agency promoting education for peace and protecting culture under attack,” she said.

“This is a loss to the United Nations family. This is a loss for multilateralism.”

Washington has already withheld its funding for UNESCO since 2011, when the body admitted Palestine as a full member. The United States and Israel were among just 14 of 194 members that voted against admitting the Palestinians. Washington’s arrears on its $80 million annual dues since then are now over $500 million.

Although Washington supports a future independent Palestinian state, it says this should emerge out of peace talks and it considers it unhelpful for international organizations to admit Palestine until negotiations are complete.

In recent years, Israel has repeatedly complained about what it says is the body taking sides in disputes over cultural heritage sites in Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories.

“Today is a new day at the U.N., where there is price to pay for discrimination against Israel,” Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon said.

Netanyahu told world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly last month that UNESCO was promoting “fake history” after it designated Hebron and the two adjoined shrines at its heart – the Jewish Tomb of the Patriarchs and the Muslim Ibrahimi Mosque – as a “Palestinian World Heritage Site in Danger.”

An Arab-backed UNESCO resolution last year condemned Israeli’s policies at religious sites in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Under UNESCO rules, the U.S. withdrawal will become effective as of the end of December 2018. Three diplomats had told Reuters earlier on Thursday of the impending decision.

TRUMP EFFECT

The organization, which employs around 2,000 people worldwide, most of them based in Paris, has struggled for relevance as it becomes increasingly hobbled by regional rivalries and a lack of money.

UNESCO, whose full name is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, is in the process of selecting a new chief, whose priority will be to revive its fortunes.

The U.S. move underscores the scepticism expressed by President Donald Trump about the need for the U.S. to remain engaged in multi-lateral bodies. The president has touted an “America First” policy, which puts U.S. economic and national interests ahead of international commitments.

Since Trump took office, the United States has abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks and withdrawn from the Paris climate deal. Washington is also reviewing its membership of the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council, which it also accuses of being anti-Israel.

“The absence of the United States or any large country with a lot of power is a loss. It’s not just about money, it’s promoting ideals that are vital to countries like the United States, such as education and culture,” a UNESCO-based diplomat said, warning that others could follow.

For differing reasons, Britain, Japan and Brazil are among states that have yet to pay their dues for 2017.

Russia’s former envoy to UNESCO told RIA news agency the agency was better off without the Americans.

“In recent years, they’ve been of no use for this organization,” Eleanora Mitrofanova said. “Since 2011 they have practically not been paying to the budget of this organization… They decided to exit – this is absolutely in line with Trump’s general logic today.”

After four days of secret balloting to pick a new UNESCO chief, Qatar’s Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kawari qualified for the Friday runoff.

France’s Audrey Azoulay and Egypt’s Moushira Khattab were tied in second. One will be eliminated after another vote by 58-member Executive Council on Friday. If the two finalists end level, they draw lots.

The election has exposed deep rivalries between Qatar and Egypt that has its roots in the crisis engulfing Qatar and its Gulf Arab neighbors which have severed diplomatic, trade and travel ties with Doha after accusing it of sponsoring hardline Islamist groups, a charge Qatar denies.

(Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy in Washington, Michelle Nicholls at the United Nations, Sudip Kar-Gupta in Paris and Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow; editing by Peter Graff and Toby Chopra)

UNESCO declares Hebron shrine Palestinian, Israel pulls U.N. funding

An Israeli soldier walks past Ibrahimi Mosque, which Jews call the Jewish Tomb of the Patriarchs, in the West Bank city of Hebron July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

By Ori Lewis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The U.N. cultural organization declared an ancient shrine in the occupied West Bank a Palestinian heritage site on Friday, prompting Israel to further cut its funding to the United Nations.

UNESCO designated Hebron and the two adjoined shrines at its heart – the Jewish Tomb of the Patriarchs and the Muslim Ibrahimi Mosque – a “Palestinian World Heritage Site in Danger”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called that “another delusional UNESCO decision” and ordered that $1 million be diverted from Israel’s U.N. funding to establish a museum and other projects covering Jewish heritage in Hebron.

The funding cut is Israel’s fourth in the past year, taking its U.N. contribution from $11 million to just $1.7 million, an Israeli official said. Each cut has come after various U.N. bodies voted to adopt decisions which Israel said discriminated against it.

Palestinian Foreign Minister, Reyad Al-Maliki, said the UNESCO vote, at a meeting in Krakow, Poland, was proof of the “successful diplomatic battle Palestine has launched on all fronts in the face of Israeli and American pressure on (UNESCO) member countries.”

Hebron is the largest Palestinian city in the occupied West Bank with a population of some 200,000. About 1,000 Israeli settlers live in the heart of the city and for years it has been a place of religious friction between Muslims and Jews.

Jews believe that the Cave of the Patriarchs is where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their wives, are buried. Muslims, who, like Christians, also revere Abraham, built the Ibrahimi mosque, also known as the Sanctuary of Abraham, in the 14th century.

The religious significance of the city has made it a focal point for settlers, who are determined to expand the Jewish presence there. Living in the heart of the city, they require intense security, with some 800 Israeli troops protecting them.

Even before Netanyahu’s budget announcement, Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan signaled Israel would seek to further make its mark at the Hebron shrine, tweeting: “UNESCO will continue to adopt delusional decisions but history cannot be erased … we must continue to manifest our right by building immediately in the Cave of the Patriarchs.”

(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Syria air force bombed convoy, U.N. says in Aleppo probe

Members of the civil defense rescue children after what activists said was an air strike by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in al-Shaar neighborhood of Aleppo. REUTERS/Sultan Kitaz

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA(Reuters) – Syrian government aircraft deliberately bombed and strafed a humanitarian convoy, killing 14 aid workers and halting relief operations, U.N. investigators said on Wednesday in a report identifying war crimes committed by both sides in Syria’s war.

Syrian and Russian forces conducted daily air strikes on rebel-held eastern Aleppo between July and its fall on December 22, killing hundreds and destroying hospitals, they said.

Orphanages, schools and homes were “all but obliterated”, panel chairman Paulo Pinheiro told a news conference.

Opposition groups shelled government-controlled western Aleppo, killing and injuring dozens, the report said. They prevented civilians from fleeing besieged eastern Aleppo, using them as human shields – a war crime.

“The scale of what happened in Aleppo is unprecedented in the Syrian conflict. Much of Aleppo, once Syria’s biggest city and its commercial and culture center and a UNESCO World Heritage site, has been reduced to rubble,” Pinheiro said.

He called for ensuring that “those responsible for this ruinous situation one day are brought to justice”.

His team was ready to share its confidential list of suspected war criminals on all sides with a new U.N. body on Syria being set up in Geneva to prepare criminal prosecutions.

“It cannot pass without having this step toward justice, because of the great numbers of victims,” panel member Carla del Ponte said.

“What we have seen here in Syria, I never saw that in Rwanda, or in former Yugoslavia, in the Balkans. It is really a big tragedy,” she added. “Unfortunately we have no tribunal.”

SATELLITE IMAGERY

Cluster munitions were “pervasively used” and air-dropped into densely populated areas, the report said, amounting to the war crime of indiscriminate attacks.

“We have established very clearly in the report that the Syrian air force is responsible for these attacks, we don’t have any evidence linking Russia to those attacks with forbidden chemical weapons,” Pinheiro said.

The investigators also did not attribute any specific war crime investigated to Russian forces but Pinheiro said they would to assign responsibility “if and when we can prove it”.

The U.N. Commission of Inquiry’s report – released as Syrian peace talks continue in Geneva – covers the July-December period and is based on 291 interviews with victims and witnesses, as well as analysis of forensic evidence and satellite imagery.

Syrian helicopters unleashed toxic chlorine bombs “throughout 2016” on Aleppo, a weapon that caused hundreds of civilian casualties there, it said.

At least 5,000 pro-government forces had encircled eastern Aleppo in a “surrender or starve” tactic. Thousands of civilians had to leave the city under an evacuation agreement between the warring parties that amounted to the war crime of forced displacements, it said.

“This represents – and we have said this in the past – a worrying pattern that has occurred in other areas of the country including Deraa and Moadamiya,” Pinheiro said.

The investigators accused the Syrian government of a “meticulously planned and ruthlessly carried out” air strike on a U.N. and Syrian Red Crescent convoy at Orum al-Kubra, in rural western Aleppo on Sept. 19 that killed 14 aid workers.

At the time, the Syrian army and Russia denied responsibility for the attack. A previous U.N. inquiry had been unable to determine who conducted the strike.

“By using air-delivered munitions with the knowledge that humanitarian workers were operating in the location, Syrian forces committed the war crimes of deliberately attacking humanitarian relief personnel, denial of humanitarian aid, and attacking civilians,” the report said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alison Williams and Dominic Evans)

Islamic State destroys famous monument in Syria’s Palmyra: antiquities chief

file photo of Roman theatre destroyed by Islamic State

By Kinda Makieh and Tom Perry

DAMASCUS/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Islamic State militants have destroyed one of the most famous monuments in the ancient city of Palmyra, the Tetrapylon, and the facade of its Roman Theatre, Syrian antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim told Reuters on Friday.

The Syrian government lost control of Palmyra to Islamic State in December, the second time the jihadist group had overrun the UNESCO world heritage site in the six-year-long Syrian conflict.

UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova said in a statement that the destruction constituted “a new war crime and an immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity”.

The Tetrapylon, marking a slight bend along Palmyra’s grand colonnade, comprises a square stone platform with matching structures of four columns positioned at each of its corners.

Satellite imagery sent by Abdulkarim to Reuters showed it largely destroyed, with only four of 16 columns still standing and the stone platform apparently covered in rubble.

The imagery also showed extensive damage at the Roman Theatre, with several towering stone structures destroyed on the stage. Just last May, a famous Russian orchestra performed at the theater after Palmyra was first won back from Islamic State.

Abdulkarim said if Islamic State remained in control of Palmyra “it means more destruction”. He said the destruction took place sometime between Dec. 26 and Jan. 10, according to the satellite imagery of the site.

Islamic State had previously captured Palmyra in 2015. It held the city for 10 months until Syrian government forces backed by allied militia and Russian air power managed to drive them out last March.

During its previous spell in control of Palmyra, Islamic State destroyed other monuments there, including its 1,800-year-old monumental arch. Palmyra, known in Arabic as Tadmur, stood at the crossroads of the ancient world.

Islamic State put 12 people to death in Palmyra earlier this week, some of them execution-style in the Roman Theatre.

Russia marked the capture of Palmyra from Islamic State by sending the Mariinsky Theatre to perform a surprise concert, highlighting the Kremlin’s role in winning back the city.

The concert, held just over a month after Russian air strikes helped push Islamic State militants out of Palmyra, saw Valery Gergiev, a close associate of President Vladimir Putin, conduct the Mariinsky orchestra.

Islamic State swept into Palmyra again in December when the Syrian army and its allies were focused on dealing a final blow to rebels in the city of Aleppo. Eastern Aleppo fell to the government later that month.

(Reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Tom Perry in Beirut; Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris; Editing by Larry King)

Israel says ancient papyrus supports its claim to Jerusalem

Archaeologist working in Jerusalem, Israel

By Jeffrey Heller and Rinat Harash

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli archaeologists have made public a fragment of an ancient text which they say is the earliest Hebrew reference to Jerusalem outside the Bible – a discovery the government swiftly enlisted as evidence of the Jewish connection to the holy city.

The 11 cm by 2.5 cm (4.3 by one inch) piece of papyrus, dated by the Israel Antiquities Authority to the 7th century B.C., was presented at a news conference in Jerusalem shortly after Paris-based UNESCO adopted a resolution that Israel said denied Judaism’s link to the ancient city.

Two lines of ancient Hebrew script on the fragile and faded artifact suggest it was part of a document detailing the payment of taxes or transfer of goods to storehouses in Jerusalem.

“From the king’s maidservant, from Na’arat, jars of wine, to Jerusalem,” it reads.

The Antiquities Authority said its investigators had recovered the document, described as “the earliest extra-biblical source to mention Jerusalem in Hebrew writing”, after it was plundered from a cave by antiquities robbers.

For Israel’s government, the papyrus is a rebuttal to UNESCO, the UN scientific and cultural organization, which is regarded by many Israelis as hostile. Arab members of UNESCO and their supporters frequently condemn Israel.

“Hey UNESCO, an ancient papyrus dating to the 1st Temple 2700 yrs ago has been found. It bears the oldest known mention of Jerusalem in Hebrew,” Ofir Gendelman, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wrote on Twitter.

Emmanuel Nahshon, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, called Wednesday’s vote in Paris by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee “a piece of rubbish”.

The resolution, according to a text provided by Palestinian officials, refers to a Jerusalem compound – revered by Jews as Temple Mount and by Muslims as Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) – only as a “Muslim holy site of worship”.

Two weeks ago, Israel lashed out at UNESCO for renewing a similar resolution that condemned it for restrictions on Muslim access to the site, in a part of Jerusalem captured by Israeli forces in a 1967 war.

Israel considers all of Jerusalem as its capital, a position that is not recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent state they seek in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“The discovery of the papyrus on which the name of our capital Jerusalem is written is further tangible evidence that Jerusalem was and will remain the eternal capital of the Jewish people,” said Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev, in comments included in an Antiquties Authority announcement of the find.

Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, accused Israel of waging an campaign of “archaeological claims and distortion of facts” to try to cement its claim to the holy city.

(Editing by Andrew Roche)

U.N. adopts resolution denying Jewish ties to Temple Mount and Western Wall

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures as he opens the weekly cabinet meeting at his Jerusalem office on September 11, 2016.

By Kami Klein

The United Nations cultural and heritage body, UNESCO, has voted on a resolution sponsored by several Arab countries that marginalizes Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, the place where Abraham offered Isaac and the location of the Holy of Holies in the Jewish temple and to the Western Wall, a remnant of the biblical temple compound.  UNESCO  condemned it’s belief in Israel’s escalating aggression regarding the holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The resolution was backed by 24 countries, with six opposing it and 26 abstaining. The US, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Lithuania and Estonia voted against the resolution; Russia and China were among those backing it.

In a Facebook post Prime Minister Netanyahu reacted with anger:

The theater of the absurd continues at UNESCO. Today UNESCO adopted a bizarre decision that denies the Jewish people’s connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

They haven’t read the Bible. I suggest that UNESCO members visit the Arch of Titus in Rome where it is possible to see what the Romans brought to Rome after they destroyed and looted the Temple Mount 2,000 years ago.

One can see engraved on the Arch of Titus the seven-branched menorah that is the symbol of the Jewish people and the symbol of the Jewish state today.

Soon UNESCO will say that the Emperor Titus was dealing with Zionist propaganda.

To say that Israel has no connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall is like saying that China has no connection to the Great Wall of China, and Egypt has no connection to the pyramids. With this absurd decision UNESCO erases the little legitimacy left to it.

I believe that the historical truth is more powerful, and will prevail. And today we are dealing in truth.

 

Please read this article by The Guardian  for more information on this historic vote, which will affect the Jewish people as well as Christians all over the world.

Alleged site of Christ’s baptism named World Heritage Site

The purported baptism site of Jesus Christ has been named a World Heritage Site.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) originally announced the decision last summer, saying it would add the Bethany Beyond the Jordan site on the east bank of the Jordan River — also known as Al-Maghtas — to its list of significant locations. The Vatican’s Fides News Agency reported it became official earlier this week.

Matthew 3 tells the story of John the Baptist baptizing Jesus in the Jordan River, which forms part of the modern-day boundary between Israel and Jordan. However, there had been some dispute over whether the baptism actually occurred on the river’s west bank or east bank.

UNESCO says Bethany Beyond the Jordan is “believed to be” the place of Jesus’ baptism, and also includes churches, chapels and a monastery dating to the Roman and Byzantine empires.

In an advisory report to UNESCO, the International Council on Monuments and Sites wrote “historical structures associated with the baptism of Jesus” sit on the west bank, but most churches stage pilgrimages to Bethany Beyond the Jordan “as the likely baptism site as a result of the wilderness character, described as the setting of the baptism, which seems lacking on the opposite banks.”

The council wrote “the large majority of Christians” consider Bethany Beyond the Jordan as the baptism site, and while it couldn’t verify that the location was the actual place where Jesus was baptized, the site still held “immense religious importance” to believers.

UNESCO has named 1,031 World Heritage Sites, either for cultural or natural significance. Other locations include the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu and the Grand Canyon National Park.