Friday, October 29, 2010

Netanyahu condemns UNESCO decision

 Suddenly, every news website in Israel is reporting PM Netanyahu's press release, criticizing a UNESCO decision allegedly claiming that Rachel's Tomb and the Tomb of the Patriarchs are mosques that have no part in Jewish heritage (The initial citing of the decision appeared in Israel Hayom. Netanyahu's press release is a headline in Haaretz and ynet, if to link just two.) According to the press release "[t]he attempt to detach the people of Israel from its heritage is absurd. If the places where the fathers and mothers of the Jewish nation are buried, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Leah and Rachel some 4,000 years ago are not part of the Jewish heritage then what is?"  
Of course, a reading of the UNESCO decision itself reveals that it only reaffirms the fact that the two sites "are an integral part of the occupied Palestinian Territories" (here is the full decision). There's nothing there about Muslim or Jewish heritage (not with regards to those two sites, anyway). Just a statement that they are both located in one region and not in another - a simple statement that the Tomb of the Patriarch and Rachel's Tomb are in the West Bank, not in Israel.
But, hey, when everyone involved in this conflict has every interest of making it more religious than it is - who cares about the facts if there's a chance to gain some inflammatory PR instead?

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