An exhibition "People, Book, Land - The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel", co-organized by UNESCO, the UN body for education, science and culture, and Simon Wiesenthal Centerc, has been cancelled by the organization under pressure from the Arab group.
The exhibit was scheduled to be open next Tuesday in Paris in the UNESCO premises.
The invitations had already been sent out and the exhibition material was already in place. The display was co-sponsored by Israel, Canada and Montenegro.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center told The Algemeiner that the move was an “absolute outrage.” “The Arabs,” he said, “don’t want the world to know that the Jews have a 3,500-year relationship to the Land of Israel.”
He said his organization worked in intimate cooperation with the UN body on the project, which the SW decided to initiate after the Palestinian Authority was unilaterally accepted as a UNESCO member state in 2011.
“UNESCO is not supposed to be a place of censorship,” Hier said, “It is not supposed to deny one nation the right to their history.”
“The Arab world doesn’t know that Isaiah didn’t live in Portugal, Jeremiah didn’t roam France and Ezekiel wasn’t from Germany,” he said.
UNESCO reportedly sent earlier this week a letter to Shimon Samuels, Director of International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Center asserting the Arab League’s claim that going ahead with the show “could create potential obstacles related to the peace process in the Middle East.”
In a letter to Irina Bokova, Secretary General of UNESCO, the President of the Arab group within UNESCO, Abdulla al Neaimi, from the United Arab Emirates, expressed “deep worry and great disapproval” over the program showing the age old connection between Israel and the Jewish people.
“The subject of this exhibition is highly political though the appearance of the title seems to be trivial. Most serious is the defense of this theme which is one of the reasons used by the opponents of peace within Israel,” the Arab League wrote.
“The publicity that will accompany… the exhibit can only cause damage to the peace negotiations presently occurring, and the constant effort of (US) Secretary of State John Kerry, and the neutrality and objectivity of UNESCO.”
“For all these reasons, for the major worry not to damage UNESCO in its… mission of support for peace, the Arab group within UNESCO is asking you to make the decision to cancel this exhibition,” Al Neaimi said.
According to The Allgemeiner, the United States have declined co-sponsorship of the exhibit on similar grounds.
“At this sensitive juncture in the ongoing Middle East peace process, and after thoughtful consideration with review at the highest levels, we have made the decision that the United States will not be able to co-sponsor the current exhibit during its display at UNESCO headquarters,” wrote Kelly O. Siekman, Director at the Office of UNESCO Affairs of the State Department, in an email.
In a reaction to the decision to cancel the exhibit, Hillel Neuger, Executive Director of UN Watch, a group monitoring the UN activities in Geneva, said that ‘’despite the repeated claims of the Obama Administration that UNESCO is God’s gift to the Jews, and to humanity, the opposite is true: it is arguably the most anti-Jewish body in the entire United Nations.’’
‘’If the notorious UN Human Rights Council dedicates a full 50 percent of its resolutions to demonizing the Jewish state, at UNESCO the numbers are 100 percent,’’ Neuer said.
“This cancellation of a long-planned exhibit is an outrageous political manipulation of a cultural event,” said World Jewish Congress (WJC) President Ronald S. Lauder. “It is sad that Arabs deny the 3,500 connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, especially when that connection is part of their own tradition. With this decision, UNESCO has done a disservice to the peace process and implicitly endorsed Arab rejectionism. ”
World Jewish Congress Vice-President Roger Cukierman, who heads CRIF, the umbrella body for Jewish organizations in France, wrote a letter to Irena Bokova strongly protesting the cancellation. “I deduct from that decision that UNESCO is no longer the common house of all nations on matters of education, culture and science, but has come under the influence of clans whose aim it is to propagate hatred towards the other,” Cukierman stated, challenging Bokova to name the real reasons behind the cancelation.