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The Israeli government and Jewish groups have expressed outrage at a resolution adopted by the U.N. cultural agency that put the Western Wall Plaza in quotation marks, described Jewish sites as “so-called” and even claimed that some Jewish graves were bogus. The resolution, sponsored by several Arab countries and adopted by UNESCO’s 58-nation executive board last week, condemned the Israeli government’s stewardship of east Jerusalem, home to the city’s most sensitive holy sites. The April 15 document also decried the renovation of “so-called Jewish ritual baths” and the alleged creation of “Jewish fake graves.” Sites were either referred to by...

[IMRA: The State Information Service (SIS) is the public information organ of the government of the Arab Republic of Egypt. It is not clear where the Egyptians think the Second Temple was built.] http://www.sis.gov.eg/jerusalem/html/jintro.htm   Introduction Jerusalem in history     All along human history, Jerusalem has always been an Arab Palestinian city. There is no clearer evidence than the events and incidents of history that prove this Arab right with documents and scientific facts. Thus, all relevant UN resolutions, especially Resolutions no. 181/1947 and no. 194/1949, which called for preserving Jerusalem and its international status under the UN Mandate Council...

UN resolution wipes away the focal point of ancient Jewish worship, the Temple of God Fraught with “deniers” of every stripe, the latest and most egregious is UNre-E-unSCO (as in re-education, unscientific), whose UN resolution wipes away the focal point of ancient Jewish worship, the Temple of God, that graced Mt. Moriah in Jerusalem for 1000 years. Ludicrous as it seems, a body of 58 board members, evidently unschooled in ancient history, decided to clean the slate of time by rejecting the existence of a building proclaimed a wonder of the ancient world because of its extraordinary opulence. Has UNESCO...

"Thus saith the LORD: I return unto Tzion and will dwell in the midst of Yerushalayim; and Yerushalayim shall be called the city of truth; and the mountain of the LORD of hosts the holy mountain." Zechariah 8:3 (The Israel BibleTM) On Friday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) Executive Board in Paris adopted a resolution erasing Israel's ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. The UNESCO resolution referred to the Temple Mount area solely as the Al-Aqsa Mosque or Al-Haram Al Sharif, ignoring the Jewish claim to the site. The resolution called Israel "the...

There is a concerted effort among “Palestinians” and their supporters to erase all evidence of the historical connection of Jews to Israel. The UN, controlled by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, is a willing partner in these efforts. Besides being motivated by Islamic Jew-hatred, this endeavor is in line with the Islamic supremacist tendency to appropriate the holy places and sacred figures of other religions.“UNESCO Renames Western Wall ‘Al-Buraq Plaza,’” by Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, Breaking Israel News, April 17, 2016 (thanks to Janice): On Friday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Executive Board in Paris adopted a...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu blasted a UNESCO decision divorcing Judaism from the Temple Mount Saturday night, after a motion over the weekend only referred to the site with Arabic terminology. "This is yet another absurd UN decision," Netanyahu stated late Saturday. "UNESCO ignores the unique historic connection of Judaism to the Temple Mount, where the two temples stood for a thousand years and to which every Jew in the world has prayed for thousands of years." "The UN is rewriting a basic part of human history and has again proven that there is no low to which it will not...

Egypt's culture minister blamed a Jewish "conspiracy" for his election loss to head a U.N. agency. Bulgarian diplomat Irina Gueorguieva Bokova, 57, edged Farouk Hosny, 31-27, in a fifth and final vote for general director by UNESCO executive board members at the Paris-based organization on Tuesday night. The previous evening, the candidates were tied with 29 votes each, forcing a new election. "It was clear by the end of the competition that there was a conspiracy against me," Hosny said Wednesday after landing in Egypt, The Associated Press reported. "There are a group of the world's Jews who had a...

The Spanish galleon San José was overloaded with 200 passengers and 700 tons of cargo on a summer night in 1631 when it smashed into a rock off the Pacific coast of Panama, spilling silver coins and bars into the Gulf of Panama. More than 400,000 coins and at least 1,417 bars were lost over a 40-mile trail. Four hundred years later, that shipwreck has become one of the latest to land in a legal quagmire over who should have the rights to historic artifacts trapped under the sea. This one involves the United Nations, the United States Department of...

The United States was re-elected to the executive board of the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s on Wednesday, despite having withheld funds from the organization for four years. Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated his determination to get Congress to relent and restore funding.“I am determined to restore U.S. funding to UNESCO, and hopeful that Congress will act to provide the administration the authority needed to waive the current legislative restrictions that prohibit U.S. contributions to the organization,” Kerry said after the vote in Paris.Wednesday’s election also saw Iran get a seat on the board of UNESCO, whose mission...

Top diplomats are gathering in Paris for a UNESCO conference where they will decide whether to grant Kosovo membership and how much sway the United States will have in the organization. The Obama administration is lobbying to keep the U.S. seat on the scientific and cultural agency's influential executive board, though the United States stopped paying its dues after UNESCO admitted Palestine as a member in 2011. ...

First Lady Michelle Obama arrives at the Hamad Airport in Doha, Qatar, Nov. 2, 2015. U.S. first lady Michelle Obama arrived in Qatar on Monday as part of a two-country Mideast tour, with plans to visit a crucial air base in America's war against the Islamic State group and give a speech on the importance of girl's education. Obama touched down in Doha, the Qatari capital, on Monday night, the state-run Qatar News Agency reported, without elaborating. While in Doha, she'll visit the al-Udeid air base with comedian and late-night talk show host Conan O'Brien. The base hosts the forward...

Thousands of Jews flooded Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem on Friday morning, the day before her Yahrtzeit (the anniversary of her death), in a clear and poignant reaction to the Palestinian resolution passed by UNESCO on Wednesday, declaring it a Muslim religious site. The actual anniversary is on the Sabbath, the 11th day of the Hebrew month Cheshvan. It is customary for worshippers to visit the site at this time, though Arab violence makes this dangerous and in extreme cases, notably during the 2000 intifada, Israeli security closes the site to Jews. The multitude arriving today were not permitted to enter...

Rachel's Tomb, Cave of the Patriarchs now listed as Muslim sites, Israel condemned over Temple Mount 'aggression.' UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) passed a resolution Wednesday listing the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem as Muslim sites. The resolution - which passed with 26 in favor, six voted against, and 25 abstentions - condemned Israel for archaeological excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem and particularly near the Temple Mount. An initial draft of the resolution had also called for the Kotel (Western Wall) to be listed as an Islamic site...

False rumors about Israel's designs on a site held sacred by both Jews and Muslims helped trigger the bloody wave of attacks plaguing Jerusalem, but a tangible plan by six Arab nations to purge the Jewish State's claim to its holiest location will be voted on Wednesday by the United Nations' cultural arm. A UN draft decision circulated by Algeria, Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates reviewed by FoxNews.com “affirms that the Buraq Plaza is an integral part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque” – a statement that would specifically fold the Jewish Western Wall into Islamic domain on...

The Paris, France-based UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is making “an attempt to distort history” in favor of Palestinians by voting to declare Judaism’s holiest site, the Western Wall, a Muslim holy site. The JTA notes that the proposal seeks to confirm an earlier UNESCO decision that the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb–which are two West Bank sites holy to both Jews and Muslims–are part of a Palestinian state. On Friday, a Palestinian mob set fire to the Joseph’s Tomb, a Jewish holy site located in the Fatah-controlled West Bank. Fatah still takes direction from the...

Proposal, likely to pass due to Muslim majority, would have Kotel renamed Buraq Plaza and made part of Al-Aqsa Mosque. In an attempt to gain international legitimacy for its rewriting of history, the Palestinian Authority (PA) will submit a resolution to UNESCO (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) next week claiming the Kotel (Western Wall) as its own. The proposal calls to have the Kotel in Jerusalem - which is an outer wall of the Temple Mount that is the holiest site in Judaism - recognized as part of Al-Aqsa Mosque located on the Mount, reports Yedioth Aharonoth on Friday.

Damascus, Aleteia (aleteia.org/ar) – The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant posted a collection of pictures yesterday that portrays the destruction of a portion of a temple in Palmyra, which is a Greco-Roman archeological site that it had captured in March.The jihadist group posted five pictures on the internet showing its fighters placing explosives within the Temple of Ba’al and on the surrounding walls. The other pictures depict powerful explosions and a pile of debris where the temple had once stood. The temple was once the most important building in Palmyra. UNOSAT satellite analysis confirms Temple of #Bel...

'The desert city of Chinguetti, sinking ever-deeper under the sands of the Sahara, is the last place in the world you would expect to find a library. Yet this crumbling outpost in the west-African country of Mauritania is home to around 6,000 rare books and manuscripts, including some of the oldest Koranic texts in existence which date back to the 9th Century. It was once the prosperous and bustling trade centre of several 'trans-Sahara' trade routes. Traders from all over Europe, north-Africa and the Levant would stop in Chinguetti before moving on to sub-Saharan Africa. There, they would rub shoulders...

The ancient city of Ephesus and the Diyarbakir Fortress and its surrounding Hevsel Gardens have become the latest historical sites in Turkey to be inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in July. Turkey’s next nomination is the Stone Age cult site of Gobeklitepe, located in Sanliurfa province not far from the turbulent Syrian border. The site’s discovery began with a coincidence reminiscent of a movie plot. In 1983, local farmer Mahmut Kilic found a carved stone while plowing his field in the village of Orencik. He took it to the Sanliurfa Museum, where it was to wait a decade...

On Nov. 8, 2011, President Obama met with then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Cannes after what had been a particularly rough week for US-Israeli relations. Modal Trigger The week prior, the UN agency UNESCO admitted Palestine as a member state. Congress responded by cutting off UNESCO’s funding, a move the Obama administration direly opposed. Michael Oren, who served as Israel’s US ambassador from 2009 to 2013, said the president, having opposed Palestine’s admission to the agency, “thought he had done enough . . . and did not need to punish them further.” President Obama responded to Congress’ act by admonishing Israel for...