RISE OF ANTI-SEMITISM WITHIN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
UNESCO passed a resolution ignoring the Jewish connection to Jerusalem's Temple Mount on Thursday 13th Oct. How such a ridiculous resolution to effectively rewrite several thousand years of history of Israel could have been passed is utterly outrageous and inexplicable. ...
When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come on you and you take them to heart wherever the LORD your God disperses you among the nations, and when you and your children return to the LORD your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the LORD your God will gather you and bring you back. He will bring you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors. The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live. The LORD your God will put all these curses on your enemies who hate and persecute you. You will again obey the LORD and follow all his commands I am giving you today. Then the LORD your God will make you most prosperous in all the work of your hands and in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your land. The LORD will again delight in you and make you prosperous, just as he delighted in your ancestors, if you obey the LORD your God and keep his commands and decrees that are written in this Book of the Law and turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. …
This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. DEUTERONOMY 30.
Many articles from 13th Oct. onwards about a UNESCO resolution that denies the Jewish claim to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, and which reclassifies Temple Mount in exclusively Muslim terms have caught my attention. How such a ridiculous resolution to effectively rewrite several thousand years of history of Israel could have been passed is utterly outrageous and inexplicable. Regrettably, it is nothing less than evidence of the enormous anti-Semitic bias prevalent in the world. The following is an excerpt from the Jerusalem Post on Thursday 13th Oct. 2016.
In a 24–6 vote, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Thursday gave preliminary approval to a resolution that denies Jewish ties to its most holy religious sites: the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. …Twenty-six nations abstained from the vote and two were absent. The six countries that voted in support of Israel were the United States, Great Britain, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Germany and Estonia. … In 2015, the Palestinians, who have been recognized by UNESCO as a member state since 2011, began a drive to change the language with which that international body refers to the Temple Mount area, known to Muslims the Al-Haram Al Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary). Initially they tried and failed to have it declared a solely Muslim site. Since then, they have submitted resolutions on Jerusalem at every possible UNESCO meeting, that uses only the Muslims terms for the Temple Mount area and its adjacent Western Wall. UNESCO’s Executive Board passed such a resolution last April and its 21-member World Heritage Committee had been poised to do so again in July in Istanbul. …
Thursday’s vote was taken by UNESCO’s 58-member Program and External Relations Commission in advance of its ratification next Monday or Tuesday by the UNESCO Executive Board, which is made up of the same member states. … Ten countries which voted for the resolution the last time it came before UNESCO for a vote, abstained this time around, Gold (Foreign Ministry director- general) said. What that means, he said, is that more countries voted for Israel or abstained, than voted against Israel. The 10 countries which switched their vote from last time were France, Sweden, Slovenia, Spain, Argentina, India, Sri Lanka, Togo, Guinea and Ghana. Gold signed documents over the summer with Guinean officials formally reestablishing diplomatic ties. He also noted the significance of India and Argentina switching their votes and not voting against Israel, as they have traditionally done. … Gold noted that none of the European countries voted for the resolution. …
Netanyahu suggested that the Bible aside, UNESCO members should visit the Arch of Titus in Rome.
“On it one can see what the Romans brought back to Rome after they destroyed and looted the Second Temple on the Temple Mount 2,000 years ago. There, engraved on the Arch of Titus, is the seven-branched menorah that is the symbol of the Jewish People, and I remind you, is also the symbol of the Jewish state today,” he said. “Soon, UNESCO will say that the Emperor Titus engaged in Zionist propaganda,” Netanyahu said. “To say that Israel has no connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall is like saying that China has no connection to the Great Wall of China or that Egypt has no connection to the pyramids. By this absurd decision, UNESCO has lost what little legitimacy it had left,” Netanyahu added. …
(UNESCO Votes: No Connection between Temple Mount and Judaism)
According to other comments, while the UNESCO resolution acknowledges Jerusalem as significant to three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the section on Temple Mount uses Arabic place-names alone, “Al-Buraq” for the Western Wall and “Al-Haram Al-Sharif” for Temple Mount. Many suggest that its blatant defiance of historical and archaeological record and its clear anti-Israel bias will only encourage further terror attacks on Jews, and the organisation’s activities will be undermined because it is supposed to work for global peace and security. Among many, referring to an anti-Semitic nature of the UN, Frances Rabbitts poignantly points out its anti-Semitic agendas as follows.
In broader context, the resolution represents the next stage in the Arab bid to delegitimise Israel and erase her claim on the Land, from the top down, through a concerted effort within the UN. The text of the resolution repeatedly refers to Israel as 'the occupying Power' and nearly exhausts the thesaurus with its cries for Israel to relinquish her presence and authority in the West Bank: it 'deplores', 'condemns', 'decries', 'disapproves of' and 'deeply regrets' Israel's authority over the contested areas, condemning "continuous Israeli aggressions" and "provocative abuses", with no mention whatsoever of Palestinian terror activity. …
The resolution on 'Occupied Palestine' is more than just a failure to acknowledge the Jewish claim on Temple Mount – it is a deliberate erasure of it, a bald-faced attempt to rewrite history in favour of contemporary Islamic agendas. It is the latest in a string of distorted, anti-Semitic judgments to emerge from the UN, adding to the international effort to demonise Israel's presence in the West Bank and her claim on Jerusalem. …UNESCO's mission is to build peace "in the minds of men and women". As its behaviour stands in such stark contrast to this goal, we must learn that we cannot rely on international institutions of 'peace' and 'justice' to promote the truth worldwide. Only those whose minds are being renewed by The Truth himself - Jesus Messiah, who makes "one new man" out of Jew and Gentile (Eph 2:15), dissolving centuries of enmity - can show the world the pathway to true peace. And we don't have to be international diplomats or UN officials to do that – it starts where we are, with those immediately around us, today.
(http://www.prophecytoday.uk/comment/israel-middle-east/item/521-unesco-rewrites-history.html)
Rabbitts concludes that the only key for true world peace lies in the Messiah Jesus Christ and His Word, the Bible, and so, indeed, our entire future depends upon our decision exactly as the Book of Deuteronomy promises (quoted in the beginning). Not only Jews but also all nations should ‘now choose life’, blessings from the Lord and not death and curses.
The following article written by a Turkish Muslim Adnan Oktar, entitled ‘Understanding Zionism: What It Is and What It Isn't’, which admonishes the Muslim world to stop viewing Zionism as a source of evil is worth taking a look at. Despite the utter inconsistency of teachings between the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) and the Qur’an, which the author Oktar believes and quotes from, his comment reflects his sound conscience and yearning for peace in the Middle East. His righteous opinion is precious when a tide of Anti-Semitism has been on the rise.
Zionism, named after Mount Zion in Israel, stands out among the hundreds of the world’s nationalist movements. It is all too often attributed to evil conspiracies and placed at the center of all malevolence; this inexplicable attitude is never seen in regard to other nationalist movements.
Its actual aim, however, is to bring together the Jewish people who have long been scattered around the world, under the same state. The Jewish Diaspora wanted to establish their own state in their hereditary lands. In our day, the antagonism towards them, in other words anti-Semitism, has been re-branded as anti-Zionism. Anti-Semitism targets all Jews because of their nationality. Though the land upon which Israel is established is ringed by 22 Arab states, all of whom are tied to their ethnic origins, the Jewish people’s gathering together and establishment of their own state has always been a subject of dispute.
Yet Israel is considered as a port in a storm for millions of Jewish people. The State of Israel’s position as a safe home for Jews would be better appreciated considering nearly one million Jewish people, leaving all of their assets behind, were forced to emigrate from Arab countries in the aftermath of the 1948 war.
Israel, unlike many Arab countries, consists of people with various faiths and diverse ethnic backgrounds. One-fifth of its population is Arab, while the entire population is composed of over 70 ethnic origins and cultures with 35 different languages and dialects. It is worth mentioning that Arabic is also an official language alongside Hebrew in this country.
Despite some generally-accepted misperceptions in the Middle East, Zionism is not an undertaking devised for world domination. After all the suffering and persecution they went through over the centuries, the Jewish nation’s only goal is to live safely in the lands where their forefathers lived. The Jewish people have been a part of this land for 3,500 years, and were expelled from their homes long ago by the oppressive hand of the Roman Empire. The emergence of the State of Israel serves as the realization of this small nation's dreams of a homeland where they can ultimately live in safety and govern themselves.
It is highly surprising, but also true, that many Muslims are even incognizant of the actual meaning of Zionism. Instead, they prefer to define Zionism as “an evil system which aims to destroy the world order” and erroneously believe that Zionism is the source of all evil in the world. Moreover, many Muslims are under the illusion that anti-Israelism is a part of devotion to God.
Muslims should know that advocating for the rights of the Palestinian people does not necessarily mean adopting an anti-Semitic ideology. Israel’s right to exist, as with any other country in the world, is beyond dispute. Moreover, the recognition of Israel's right to exist would surely stop the bloodshed that has been ongoing for centuries. Jewish or not, murdering innocent people or promoting the expulsion of people from their ancestral homeland just because they are Jews is not in line with the ethics of the Qur’an.
Just as we find in international law, Islam also has a principle of “individual criminal responsibility”. An entire community can never be found guilty as a whole. Every society has its good and evil people. Incriminating or punishing them all without differentiating between the innocent and the guilty is entirely unacceptable. God explicitly grants the Jewish people the right to live in the Holy Land: Remember when Moses said to his people, "My people! Remember God’s blessing to you when He appointed prophets among you and appointed kings for you, and gave you what He had not given to anyone else in all the worlds. My people! Enter the Holy Land which God has ordained for you. Do not turn back in your tracks and so become transformed into losers." (Qur'an, 5:20-21)
God also informs us in the Qur'an – and this is also promised in the Torah (Deuteronomy 30) – that the scattered Jewish people shall gather during the End Times: ...We said to the tribe of Israel after that, "Inhabit the land and, when the promise of the hereafter comes, We will produce you as a motley crowd." (Qur'an, 17:104) It is highly significant to see a promise made by God 3,000 years ago coming true and witnessing what was foretold by the Prophet Abraham and the Prophet Moses, God revealed that “The Jews will be in those lands” thousands of years ago, and we can see that miracle coming to fruition now.
If the Arab-Muslim world recognizes Israel's right to exist as an independent and sovereign state, this century-long bloodshed will surely cease. The greatest benefit here would certainly come to the Palestinian people, who have been greatly distressed due to war and security precautions.
It is of critical importance to note once again that there is currently a profound misconception in the Islamic world with regards to Zionism and this biased point of view has turned into a misplaced fear of Jewish people over time. Many Muslims are ignorant of the fact that by objecting to the Jews’ right to exist, they are in fact rebelling against the verses of the Qur'an. Explaining Zionism in an accurate way and ending this cycle of hatred against a people who, like Muslims, are also believers in the One True God, is incumbent upon true Muslims.
(http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/30290/Default.aspx, 18th Oct. ‘16)