Israeli envoy slams UNESCO as ‘Titanic of international organizations’

UNESCO is “the Titanic of international organizations,” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization said, accusing it of deliberately falsifying history to persecute the Jewish people.

In a scathing speech Friday to UNESCO’s 39th General Conference in Paris, Carmel Shama-Hacohen also slammed the United Arab Emirates for having given a gift to all member states but Israel, urging delegates to give it back in protest.

“UNESCO is the Titanic of international organizations, which was hijacked and led by the Arab Group into crashing the iceberg of politicization, and which has been sinking ever since,” Shama-Hacohen said.

Citing UNESCO’s anti-Israel bias, the US administration last month announced its withdrawal from the organization. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed the Foreign Ministry to follow suit, though it has yet to formally declare its intention to leave the agency.

Israel’s Channel 10 last week reported that Israeli diplomats recommended that Israel not quit UNESCO. The Foreign Ministry denied the report, saying it will carry out the prime minister’s instructions in full.

Shama-Hacohen on Friday afternoon, during a lengthy speech that was boycotted by Arab diplomats, warned delegates that the US is “by no means the last country” planning to quit UNESCO, though he stopped short of formally announcing Israel’s withdrawal. After listing Jerusalem’s many grievances with the agency, he said he hopes to be “the last Israeli ambassador in UNESCO who needs to face and fight this politicized obsession against his people.”

He added: “Sadly, UNESCO has been hijacked and abused as a tool for the persecution of Israel and the Jewish people, while concocting fake facts and fake history, meant to erase our history in Jerusalem and rewrite global history.”

Shama-Hacohen dedicated a significant part of his speech to the UAE’s October 30 snub of Israel, though he did not name the Gulf state by name.

At the opening of the General Conference in Paris, the Emirati delegation had placed a box containing a silver medal on the desk of each foreign delegation in honor of the UAE having sponsored the renovation of the conference hall. No box, however, was placed on Shama-Hacohen’s desk.

“Even the inauguration of this very hall was contaminated with the poison of politicization, as the donor state handed out to all member missions a greeting letter and a medal memorabilia: all member missions, aside from one — Israel,” the Israeli envoy said Friday. “How petty, how primitive, how pathetic.”

The incident made clear once again “that petro-dollars can buy much, but there’s no price tag on wisdom, manners and etiquette. Your wealth might be in money, but in dignity you are poorer than poor,” he added.

Last week’s incident came on the heels of UAE’s refusal last week to allow Israeli athletes to display the Israeli flag and play the national anthem at a judo tournament in Abu Dhabi. An Emirati judoka also refused to shake hands after losing to his Israeli competitor, although the country’s top judo official later apologized to his Israeli counterpart for the snub.

“These wrongs are done in full daylight, and all keep quiet: silent accomplices to discrimination in sports: one of the foundations of education and culture, and silent accomplices to the attempts to isolate and ostracize Israel in the inauguration of this hall,” Shama-Hacohen said Friday.

“As for the silver medal, which was handed to you as a gift, I’d return it if I were you, so as not to partake in a despicable act which has no place in a free and enlightened world.”

Many foreign diplomats stationed at UNESCO gave him their medals — which bore a portrait of Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the deputy ruler of Dubai and the country’s finance minister of the UAE — in protest of the UAE’s move, the Israeli envoy said.

“My initial instinct was to put it to good use as a doorstop,” he said. “However, after giving it some more thought, I decided to donate them to the Syrian refugees who are wandering the cold streets of Paris. These refugees include infants and children, who escaped the atrocities of the Syrian regime and the chemical attacks of that member of the Arab Group against its own women, children and innocent civilians.”

He added: “If you only invested in them 1% of the efforts you put in here against Israel, their lives would have been better.”