• UNSECO resolution: A fight over the ownership of Jerusalem - Opinion - Israel News | Haaretz.com
    Where does Israel get the audacity to demand eternal ownership? One can understand the longing that Jerusalem no longer change hands, but to demand ownership is historic rudeness, which the world sees as arrogance, even hubris.

    Carolina Landsmann Oct 14, 2016 1:
    read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.747419

    Jerusalem’s history teaches that the aspiration for the city to be the Jewish nation’s eternal capital reflects a desire to effect a fundamental change in its status – from a city that changed hands many times over thousands of years to one that will remain forever in Jewish hands.
    Benjamin Netanyahu wants the world to understand the declaration “Jerusalem the eternal capital of the Jewish people” not only as a historic or religious-spiritual affiliation, and not only as a geopolitical description, but as a statement of real-estate ownership. Netanyahu wants Jerusalem to be registered in the world’s land registry bureau as property of the Jewish nation.
    In this respect, the UNESCO resolution that casts doubt on the ties between the Western Wall and the Jewish Temple is like a warning note in the registry in favor of the Muslims. By Netanyahu’s standards, this is a failure no less dramatic than having a foreign army conquer Jerusalem.
    The Six-Day War was a landmark event not only in Israel’s history, but in Jewish history. In 1967, after 2,000 years, the heart of Jerusalem – the Old City – returned to Jewish hands. At the same time, since it’s a city that is holy to Christianity and Islam as well, not only to Judaism, as the UNESCO resolution reaffirms yet again how it was also a landmark event in the history of Christianity and Islam. It sounds trivial – but the historic and religious weight of conquering Jerusalem is by no means trivial.
    Israel’s demand of eternal ownership of the city, the expectation that Islam will renounce the city only because it was conquered by military force, as just as the war was, even the expectation that Christianity will agree to the Jews’ eternal ownership of the city are anything but trivial.
    Israel acts like it’s another historic “real estate deal.” It may recognize that taking over property is not enough and that it must obtain international recognition for its ownership of Jerusalem. But on the other hand Israel is ignoring the fact that Jerusalem is not like any other piece of property.

    Where, then does Israel get the audacity to demand eternal ownership? One can understand the longing that Jerusalem no longer change hands, but to demand ownership of it is historic rudeness, which the world sees as arrogance, even hubris.
    In his speech at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Netanyahu claimed that what “prepared the way for the Holocaust” was “the lie.” 
    “The slander preceded the annihilation,” he explained. Today, too, millions of people are hearing awful falsehoods about the Jews, he said.
    Then he focused his warnings on a specific lie – the demand that UNESCO determine that the Temple Mount has no affiliation with the Jewish people.
    The incitement today stems from radical Islam, he said, and wondered about the “strange pairings” that anti-Semitism creates. “Elites pretending to represent human progress join the darkest barbaric zealots, the decapitators, oppressors of women, gay persecutors, destroyers of cultural treasures.” 
    Translation: dear Christians, have you gone mad? Do you really want to entrust Christianity’s treasures in the hands of those treasure-destroying Muslims?
    “Many of our people are already doing so in Israel and the world and I call on you too, representatives of enlightened humanity, mobilize to thwart the lies,” shouted Netanyahu. That is to say, dear Christians, representatives of enlightened humanity, mobilize to the Jews’ side – have you lost your senses to let ISIS’ representatives get close to Jerusalem?
    Perhaps instead of blaming others for the historic-diplomatic blow to the Jewish people, Netanyahu should ask himself if perhaps something in the abusiveness with which Israel rules the holy city and its claim to eternal ownership have contributed to creating the climate in which the contemporary tendency of Islam to negate pre-Islamic history wins the sympathy of our enlightened western friends.
    Perhaps there’s a link connecting Israel’s rejectionist diplomacy, appalling discrimination against the city’s Arab residents, Jerusalem’s construction beneath the Western Wall, Silwan, Muslim quarter, and the warning note inscribed in history’s land registry.