UNESCO About to Name Jericho as a ‘Palestinian Heritage Site’

The Palestinians have for decades been laying claim to “Palestine” as their ancient homeland, “from the river to the sea” This has meant ignoring the evidence, in 35,000 archeological sites throughout Israel and the West Bank, of the Jewish presence in the land since 2000 B.C. All those Jewish synagogues that have been unearthed, all those Jewish artifacts — menorahs, oil lamps, tools, coins, pottery, weapons, and so much more, including the Hebrew-language Dead Sea Scrolls, that were discovered by a Bedouin in a cave at Qumran in 1947 — testify to the presence of the Jews in the Land of Israel. There is, of course, no evidence of a Muslim Arab presence until the 7th century — that is, more than 2500 years after the Jews were first recorded as living in the land.

But UNESCO is now about to declare the city of Jericho a “heritage site” of the “state of Palestine,” effacing its thousands of years of history as a Jewish city. More on this impending travesty can be found here: “Is UNESCO Going to Erase Jewish History From Another Israeli City?,” by Justin Amler, Algemeiner, September 8, 2023:

When the United States rejoined the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in July of this year, there was some cautious optimism that perhaps the US presence would temper the organization’s anti-Israel sentiments and agenda, which has been on display for years.

Unfortunately, those hopes appear to have been premature, as demonstrated by UNESCO’s agenda at its upcoming World Heritage Committee session, which will be held in Saudi Arabia later this month.

During the session, various locations around the world will be officially listed by UNESCO as world heritage sites. One of those sites, which was submitted at the behest of the Palestinians, is ancient Jericho. The Palestinians want its location listed as the “state of Palestine” — thus ignoring or negating the thousands of years of Jewish history at the site, and creating a Palestinian state where none exists.

The revisionist approach to Jewish history in Palestinian discourse and diplomacy is not new.

Jews have witnessed similar assertions for decades — yet they very clearly gained impetus when UNESCO became the first UN body to recognize “Palestine” as a full member state in 2011. Since then, UNESCO has passed resolutions defining the Temple Mount in Jerusalem — Judaism’s holiest site — as solely a Muslim holy site. It’s also declared that the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron — believed by both Jews and Muslims to be the burial place of the Jewish patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — is a Palestinian heritage site.

UNESCO has recognized “Palestine” as a full member state, but for the UN, it remains a state “only with observer status.”

UNESCO has rewritten history in the Land of Israel before. It has declared the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism — which it refers to only by its Arabic name, Al-Haram Al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) — as an exclusively Muslim holy site. This has meant ignoring both the archeological evidence of the First and Second Temples that have been found on and near the Temple Mount, including the thousands of Jewish artifacts found in the hundreds of tons of earth that the Palestinians excavated from the surface of the Temple Mount, some 600 square yards, and then threw into a dump. Those hundreds of tons of earth contained thousands of Jewish artifacts from the time of the First and Second Temples, and horrified Israeli archeologists, when they got wind of what the Palestinians had done, rushed to collect the mounds of earth they had thrown away, and to sift carefully through the rescued rubble, finding all sorts of Jewish artifacts — oil lamps, knives, pottery, utensils, coins, menorahs — still intact, and many more artifacts that had been smashed to smithereens during the excavation carried out by the Palestinians. None of this physical evidence of the Jewish presence on the Mount, including that testifying to the existence of the First and Second Temples, has made an impression on UNESCO, that simply ignored that evidence in its insensate desire to declare the “Haram al-Sharif” an exclusively Muslim holy site.

UNESCO had to ignore not just the Jewish artifacts discovered, but also the descriptions of the First and Second Temples by Jewish, Greek, Roman, and even Muslim historians.

UNESCO has rewritten history, too, in favor of the Palestinians, in declaring that the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where Abraham, Isaac,and Jacob are buried, to be an exclusively Muslim site.

Hebron is the second holiest site in Judaism, because of the Cave of the Patriarchs. For Muslims, it is much less significant; it is believed by some, not all, Muslims, to have been the place where Muhammad stopped on his Night Journey (miraj) from Mecca to Jerusalem. But UNESCO ignored the deep Jewish attachment altogether (it might, after all, have declared the Cave of the Patriarchs holy to both Jews and Muslims), choosing, as it did with the Temple Mount, to declare it an exclusively Muslim site, and ignoring the thousands of years of Jewish attachment to the Cave and to Hebron, one of the four holy cities — along with Jerusalem, Safad, and Tiberias — of Judaism.

It was these malicious and absurd attacks on Jewish history that led both Israel and the United States to withdraw from UNESCO in 2017.

But why did the Bidenties rejoin UNESCO in June, and what’s more, promise to pay the organization $600 million in back dues? UNESCO hasn’t changed its designation of the Temple Mount, or of the Cave of the Patriarchs, as exclusively Muslim sites. Why did the Bidenites again submit to this farce and offer to provide UNESCO with $600 million? This should be made a campaign issue.