UNESCO — the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization — stated in a ‎resolution on Tuesday that it condemned Israel for what it called the “aggression and illegal ‎measures taken against the freedom of worship and access of Muslims to Al-Aqsa mosque and ‎Israel’s attempts to break the status quo since 1967.” It also “deeply deplores the recent ‎repression in East Jerusalem, and the failure of Israel, the Occupying Power, to cease the ‎persistent excavations and works in East Jerusalem particularly in and around the Old City.” It ‎also called for “prompt reconstruction of schools, universities, cultural heritage sites, cultural ‎institutions, media centers and places of worship that have been destroyed or damaged by the ‎consecutive Israeli wars on Gaza.” Finally, UNESCO now considers the Cave of the Patriarchs in ‎Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem to be Muslim sites.‎

Initially, the resolution had been drafted to include the Western Wall as an Islamic ‎site also, or rather as an extension of Al-Aqsa mosque, but this was dropped after ‎widespread condemnation. Only six countries voted against the resolution — the United States, ‎Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Estonia.‎

One can hardly exaggerate the extent to which UNESCO has lost its way. The organization and most of its member states have been ravaged by utter derangement. For the ‎U.N. to so unequivocally and unabashedly aid the ongoing Arab effort to delegitimize the Jewish ‎connections to Judaism’s holiest sites in Israel is an act of supreme perfidy. ‎

Although it is far from the first time that UNESCO commits this kind of blatant Israel-bashing, ‎the timing of this particular resolution, its duplicitous and smearing content, at a time when ‎Arabs in Israel are stabbing, shooting and car-ramming Jews for sport and celebrating with ‎candies afterward, is beyond anything that civil discourse can properly convey. The resolution ‎amounts to a match being thrown on an already raging fire, further augmenting the incitement ‎and the lies of the Palestinians regarding the Temple Mount. ‎

However, who is truly surprised by this? UNESCO has worked consistently against Israel for over ‎‎40 years and even the current decision to designate Rachel’s Tomb a Muslim site has a very ‎recent precursor. Five years ago, in 2010, UNESCO categorized Rachel’s Tomb as a “Muslim ‎mosque” and criticized Israel’s decision to include both it and the Cave of the Patriarchs in ‎Hebron on its list of national heritage sites. UNESCO furthermore made it clear that it views ‎both sites as Palestinian. Rachel’s Tomb is the third holiest place in Judaism and a Jewish ‎pilgrimage site. It meant nothing to UNESCO that Rachel’s Tomb had never been a mosque. At ‎the time, only the U.S. voted against this absurd decision.‎

What the above means is that the decision to designate the Western Wall as a Muslim site may have ‎been put on ice for now, but that efforts to have it designated as such will certainly be resumed at a more opportune time. ‎

At universities across the world, students are taught that the U.N. is an instrument of world ‎order, a respectable international body of member states who have it as their ultimate goal to ‎follow the precepts of international law. The U.N. Charter is studied diligently by law students ‎everywhere, as if what it says has any meaning at this point in time. Member states prolong the ‎life of this disgrace of an institution by continuing to support it with their citizens’ tax money ‎and diplomats — the more-than-willing executioners of all these shameful policies — give it ‎credibility by treating it as an honorable institution. ‎

The U.N. is an instrument of world disorder and it lost credibility decades ago when it voted to ‎equate Zionism with racism. That vote was instrumental in legitimizing and stoking the anti-‎Semitic hatred that is now sweeping away sanity and decency everywhere, where the latter ‎should rather be the governing norm. ‎

The denigration and dehumanization of Israel and the Jewish people is ongoing and met with ‎general silence or worse — with tacit or explicit approval. The pernicious, perfidious mainstream ‎media reporting of the current terror onslaught and the demonstrations of “solidarity” with the ‎murders of Jews in Israel in Sweden and Denmark recently, as well as on select U.S. university ‎campuses, are ugly and openly skewed and derisive of Israel at a time when anti-Semitic ‎hatred has finally become socially acceptable, even trendy in certain circles.‎

Israel has no need for the U.N. It is the U.N. that needs Israel. If there were no Jewish people, ‎no Israel, the U.N. would have to invent it. Israel needs to turn its back on the U.N. and simply ‎walk away. There can be no “dialogue” with an organization that so openly allies itself with ‎our enemies. ‎

The U.N. is abusive. Just like an abused spouse who is unable to ‎fight back because the abuser is so much bigger, stronger, or simply vicious and uninterested in ‎fostering anything positive in the relationship, Israel needs to face that facts and leave the U.N.‎

Judith Bergman is a writer and political analyst living in Israel.

This article was originally published by Israel Hayom. 

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