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Sends Letter Asking Member States to Oppose Motion

B’nai B’rith International, with representatives on the ground in Paris, is monitoring efforts to have the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopt yet another anti-Israel resolution that rejects Israel’s sovereignty in Jerusalem and affirms past whitewashing of Jews’ ties to their foremost holy places. UNESCO’s Executive Board, currently in session, is set to consider the motion next week.
 
B’nai B’rith International President Gary P. Saltzman, CEO Daniel S. Mariaschin and Director of U.N. and Intercommunal Affairs David J. Michaels sent a letter urging members of the Executive Board to oppose a new anti-Israel resolution.
 
In their letter they write: “Whether a resolution explicitly recycles the widely denounced content of previous inflammatory resolutions or ‘merely’ invokes those resolutions, member states have an especially profound moral duty to oppose attempts to deny, question or obscure Jews’ ties, historic and contemporary, to their most sacred of sites in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the Holy Land, including Rachel’s Tomb, the Cave of the Patriarchs, the Western Wall and above all the Temple Mount.”
 
They also noted: “Passage of the draft in question would further critically undermine the standing of UNESCO in those areas that are within the organization’s competency, and your government must reject complicity in an outrageously ahistorical affront not only to Israel but to Jews as well as Christians around the world.”
 
A UNESCO resolution engaged, moreover, in the wholesale denial of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem would be absurd and grossly irresponsible. No other country’s capital is questioned internationally, no other country has historically maintained Jerusalem as its capital, no nation has deeper roots in its capital city, and no prior governing power ever protected diversity, culture and basic religious freedom in Jerusalem as Israel has.

To read the full letter click here.