UN official spurns Netanyahu’s Jerusalem history lesson offer

A senior United Nations official Saturday brushed aside an invitation from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a lecture on Jewish history, amid a row over a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site.

Netanyahu offered Friday to host the lecture in response to a recent resolution of the UN’s cultural body condemning Israeli “aggressions” against Muslims at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, while failing to mention the site’s Jewish name of “Temple Mount.” As the site of the biblical temples, the Temple Mount is the holiest place in Judaism.

The UNESCO resolution refers to Israel as the “occupying power” at every mention and uses the Arabic Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram al-Sharif without even once calling it the Temple Mount, as it is known to Jews. The text does refer to the Western Wall Plaza but places it in quotation marks, after using the Arabic Al-Buraq Plaza.

The UNESCO executive board resolution, submitted by several Arab countries, was described by Netanyahu as “denying any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, our holiest site.”

He said the lecture, to be delivered by a scholar in the coming weeks, would educate UN staff and diplomats about the site’s history.

The UN’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, bristled at the suggestion that UN staff in Jerusalem were insufficiently educated.

“If someone wants to issue invitations they should be for Paris and addressed to the ambassadors of the member-states of UNESCO there,” he said in a statement.

“UN staff in Jerusalem know the history of the region, its people and religions all too well.”

On Friday, Netanyahu reiterated his “shock” that UNESCO would adopt “a decision denying any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, our holiest site.”

“That is why today I am announcing a seminar on Jewish history for all UN personnel in Israel,” he said in a statement. “I will personally host the lecture at the Prime Minister’s Office,” said Netanyahu, the son of renowned late historian Benzion Netanyahu, noting that it would be delivered by a “leading scholar of Jewish history.”

Diplomats would also be invited, “including of countries which voted for this outrageous decision,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu last month slammed the “absurd” resolution for ignoring Judaism’s connection to the Temple Mount, “where the two temples stood for a thousand years and to which every Jew in the world has prayed for thousands of years.”

After Israel’s reaction, UNESCO chief Irina Bokova issued a statement stressing that “Jerusalem is a Holy Land of the three monotheistic religions, a place of dialogue for all Jewish, Christian and Muslim people.”

The compound in East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed in a move not recognized internationally, has long been a focal point of tensions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It has seen frequent clashes over fears that Israel is planning to change the rules it instituted after 1967 that allow Muslims to pray there but Jews only to visit.

Netanyahu has repeatedly denied any plans to change the status quo.

The UNESCO resolution, authorized by the executive board’s Programme and External Relations Commission, was submitted by Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, and Sudan.

The resolution was approved by 33 states, including France, Russia, Spain and Sweden. Seventeen countries abstained while six voted against including the United States, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.