The first thing I want to point out is that this story is getting very little general media coverage.
The trend exemplified by such perfidious proclamations, however, is cause for concern. For more on that, see my post on the earlier salvo in this particular battle, from back in February when the Heritage Sites were first announced. And don't miss this graphic commentary at FresnoZionism (via Solomonia).
The "unilateral action" to which UNESCO is referring is Israel's inclusion of these pivotal places in a list of Jewish heritage sites published last winter. And while the lack of broad coverage doesn't make the UNESCO declaration any less repulsive, it may reflect on the seriousness attributed to it by rational people not immediately affected. Really, who cares what UNESCO says?On the question of what the UNESCO board referred to as the "Bilal bin Rabah Mosque/Rachel's Tomb," the board voted 44 to 1 with 12 abstentions to call the site "an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories and that any unilateral action by the Israeli authorities is to be considered a violation of international law."
"The attempt to detach the people of Israel from its heritage is absurd," Netanyahu said in a statement released last Friday. "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?
The trend exemplified by such perfidious proclamations, however, is cause for concern. For more on that, see my post on the earlier salvo in this particular battle, from back in February when the Heritage Sites were first announced. And don't miss this graphic commentary at FresnoZionism (via Solomonia).
