Cultural Jihad on Jerusalem at UNESCO

When UNESCO passed a Decision on Jerusalem in October last year, it did more than repeat the now too-usual anti-Semitic diatribe. It attacked the whole basis of Judeo-Christian civilization. The resolution tried to maintain that only Arabic/Muslim names were valid for Jerusalem. It simply wrote out any mention of any previous civilizations that attached their names to the Holy City.

The UNESCO Decision calls for a further report on this at UNESCO’s Executive Board meeting in Paris 17 April to 5 May. It is marked as agenda item 30 on “Occupied Palestine”.  

Both Europeans and Israelis should be made well aware at this affront to their history and culture. Especially omitted from last year’s resolution were any names evoking the ancient Israelite and continuous Jewish heritage of the City. These should be well-known to all educators, scientists and all cultures familiar with the People of the Book.

The resolution at the World Heritage Committee and UNESCO blamed “Israel, the Occupying Power” and its “so-called Antiquities Department”, while making no mention of more than forty truck loads of artifact-laden earth the Muslim Waqf has removed and disposed of without archaeological permission, examination or concern.

It prefers to mention fabulous Muslim events that have no factual basis. It omits all mention of Hebrew artifacts containing names of kings and their ministers showing continuous cultural achievements over three thousand years.

                                                           Gold bell of the High Priest's robe

Who came up with all this? The draft was submitted by Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, and Sudan, at the behest of the PA’s policy of cultural nihilism. This turns UNESCO’s role on its head. Such obscurantism is just what UNESCO was set up to oppose.  

Irina Bokova, the Director General of UNESCO in a speech transmitted to the European Parliament on 30 March said:

“Jerusalem puts us in front of a radical choice. … To deny, conceal or erase any of the Jewish, Christian or Muslim traditions undermines the integrity of the site, and runs counter to the reasons that justified its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage list.”

She added: “The protection and better understanding of the Heritage of Jerusalem is part of a broader vision for peace. It is part of a wider vision to fight against all forms of denial of Jewish history, de-legitimization of Israel, and anti-Semitism.  This work is essential, as European know too well the ravages of war and anti-Semitism.” 

                                                               Seal Bulla of King Hezekiah

   

So why did so few European States, who owe their very civilization to the Book, vote against the Resolution? Why did so many simply abstain? That gave tacit support for undermining the foundations of Western civilization. Only five States voted against the Resolution. How could eight States including France, Italy and Spain just abstain on such a serious matter?

European foreign policy on UNESCO is coordinated by the EU’s European External Action Service, EEAS. What do they have to say? A group of concerned citizens requested all the working documents of EEAS leading up to this cultural catastrophe. They took the name Jerusalem Educational, Scientific and Cultural Office, JESCO.

The JESCO Freedom of Information request pointed out that Israel is the legitimate occupying power by law and history. (The attempt to use the term “Occupying Power” derogatorily is as invalid as saying that a person who legal bought a house is an occupier.)

 “The site was temporarily conquered by Arab, then Turkish and the British in WW1, but this does not give these groups present-day legality to property or other rights,” the request said.  “The League of Nations and the UN recognized this area as Jewish Homeland.” Under international law military conquest does not alter property rights.

What was the response of EEAS? All documents were refused.  The Memorandum of Understanding between the European Union and UNESCO is however a public document. As might be expected  many of the 27 articles in the three-page Memorandum stress the importance of respect for openness, human dignity, freedom, democracy, the rule of law and in particular freedom of expression and the media. It also mentions intercultural dialogue, raising awareness about the importance of education. How is it that not only UNESCO but European Union Member States have failed so miserably in their duties?

When formulating public policy, European States as democracies, should have open documents arrived at publicly. There is no excuse for secrecy that ends up in anti-Semitism and undermining Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.

The JESCO appeal against this refusal to supply basic information is still awaiting a reply from EEAS. In the meantime, Europeans and Israelis should be aware of the forthcoming meeting of the UNESCO Executive Board and contact their UNESCO representatives. They should make sure the appalling lapses at UNESCO are reversed.  Expunging factual history and replacing facts with fables is not UNESCO’s mission. Nor is turning UNESCO into an instrument of cultural jihadism.

EU Religious Leaders react to 'naive' West facing Jihadi threats

4, December, 2016

A century ago, 15 percent of the Middle East were professing Christians. Today only 4 percent remain. Following bloody murder, violence and mass persecutions, millions have left the region. Most of the changes have taken place in recent years. The Jews went first. Nearly a million were expelled from Arab and Muslim counties after WW2.
Barnabas Fund for persecuted Christians says 80 percent of Christians in Iraq have fled the country. Why? It says:

“During the 1970s, western politicians tended to view Islam as a gentle, peaceful, primarily eastern religion, a naïve view that ignored the periodic massacres of Christians that had been happening in the Middle East over the previous 150 years. This view still informs the policies of the Obama administration who even now flatly deny that there is any link between Islamic ideology and violence against non-Muslims. Consequently when it talks about being committed to seeing a “whole, unified, pluralistic, nonsectarian Syria”, it unwittingly embraces jihadist groups who routinely target Christians.”

How did a relatively peaceful region become such a cauldron of violence? The Barnabas Fund report says:

“During the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War, the US supplied vast amounts of arms to radical Islamist groups fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, notably the Taliban. It was the Pakistan Taliban who later carried out attacks on Christians such as the 2013 bombing of the All Saints Church in Peshawar that killed over 80 and injured more than a hundred others.
After the 9/11 attacks George W. Bush assumed that military intervention – initially in Afghanistan and then Iraq – would bring about western-style democracy that would in turn neutralise radical Islam.
In fact, almost the exact opposite was true.”

Today Christians and Jews worldwide are faced with another pernicious attack — that of changing or destroying Jewish and Christian history. Muslim clerics are destroying archaeological facts by the truck load. Four hundred trucks of them! Tons of archaeological earth was removed from under what in the West is commonly called “The Temple Mount” in Jerusalem and thrown on the city’s dumps. After patient sifting of this rubbish, Israeli archeologists found bullae or seals, coins and arrowheads of the Roman Tenth Legion dating back to the Israelite kings and their Secretaries of State, mentioned in the Bible and the Roman siege of Israel’s capital.
Ancient churches on the “Temple Mount” built by the Byzantine Romans and later by the Crusaders were destroyed. Muslims re-used the Dome of the Rock or columns for their own purposes. The Dome of the Rock retains an onion-shaped dome typical of its earlier Byzantine architecture. It has the octagonal structure of Byzantine churches and contains features and texts some scholars take to be pre-Islamic.

It was reconstructed half a century into the Muslim era by Abd al-Malik on a Christian church site, the Church of the Holy Wisdom. Texts are mainly non-koranic and contain many propagandist references to Jesus on the inside. They encourage Christians (then by far the majority in Jerusalem) to turn to Islam and physically face south towards Mecca.
History cannot be buried with propaganda. Truth is unearthed, even in our times. On the mounts of Jerusalem a bulla of King Hezekiah of Judah was found. It dates the legality of Jewish occupiers to around 2700 years ago.
Jerusalem is the capital of Judeo-Christian and European civilization, its education, science and culture.
United Nations agencies now collude in the Muslim propaganda that undermines Western culture. Both the USA and Israel have refused to fund UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) any more. Why? Because It has thrown out objective rule books about education, science and culture. Faced with Muslim disinformation attacks, UNESCO and the World Heritage Committee have passed resolutions denying Hebrew or Christian names for sites in Jerusalem.
It reiterates that Israel is an occupier. That is true in the sense Israel is the legal occupier as I am of my own house. But the resolutions imply that there is something nasty, illegal or unjust about it. That is rubbish. Israel is recognized as a Jewish Homeland.
An Arab who claims that his house was given him by Saladin in the twelfth century has no rights. Saladin was a foreign military invader. This Kurdish leader was born in Tikrit, (in modern day Iraq, the home of Saddam Hussein). He founded the Ayyubid dynasty in the twelfth century and was proclaimed sultan of Egypt and Syria. He conquered Syria and fought the Crusaders.
Saladin, like the Romans before him, had no legal rights. Nor has the pope. Nor has anyone in Poland who says the land of a former synagogue is his because the Nazis gave it him! The highest courts of Europe re-affirm this principle of legitimate ownership.
It makes absolutely no sense to deny the fact that the Jewish and Israelite capital was at Jerusalem from the time of Israelite King David. He bought it. He paid for it in gold and silver. No one disputed in the coming centuries that David was the legal occupier and owner. It remained legally occupied by Jews until centuries after Jesus Christ walked and worked in the Temple.
After Jerusalem was conquered and burnt by pagan Rome, the Byzantine Roman Empire built churches and ruled the land. The Persians also tried to conquer it. Muslims have no patent to change the names and heritage of places.
If the names of the places in Jerusalem should be defined by military conquest, they should all be in English. British forces were the last major power to conquer the land in 1917 during the First World War. The global powers meeting at San Remo after WW1 decided by law what to do. They recognized that the land of Israel was the Jewish Homeland. It did not belong to Turks, Arabs, Muslims or the Roman Empire. That international decision has recognition by scientific, cultural authorities. It is a historical fact. It has the force of international law. Those who disagree with it must also disagree with the Iranian State, the State of Syria, the kingdoms of Iraq and Saudi Arabia which were founded by the same authorities at the same time.
Jerusalem and Israel were not made by the League of Nations. The League and later the United Nations recognized the legitimacy of Jewish ownership. The same principle of international law is used after any military conqueror has left a country. Departing armies have no rights on the property of the owners who lived there before the conquest. That is what happened in Nazi-occupied Poland. It is what European courts affirm today about property rights in Cyprus, where the Turkish army intervened and Greek-speaking owners abandoned their houses.
The UNESCO resolutions thus attack the foundation of European law. They attack the Educational principles of Western society that says “might is not right”. They attack the Scientific principles that say archaeology and historical documents give proof of ownership, not the fables about dreams of peacock-winged mules who supposedly flew to an area then without either mosque or Temple.
The UNESCO resolutions attack the founding Culture of Western civilization.
Robert Schuman in creating the European Community helped define real democracy that has brought a diverse, warring Europe its longest peace. The European Commission holds a regular dialogue with high-level religious leaders. So I put these questions to them. Here are their answers.
http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/video/player.cfm?ref=I12994
Besides Vice-President Frans Timmermans, those attending included:
H. E. Archbishop Polycarpus Augin AYDIN, Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch in the Netherlands – Arie FOLGER, Chief Rabbi of Vienna – Bishop Heinrich BEDFORD-STROHM, Chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church of Germany (EKD) – Imam Yahya PALLAVICINI, Vice-President of the “Comunità religiosa Islamica” in Italy – Jan FIGEL, Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion and Belief outside the European Union – H. E. Albert GUIGUI, Chief Rabbi of Brussels and Permanent Representative to the EU Conference of European Rabbis – Antje JACKELEN, Archbishop of the Protestant Church in Sweden – Elder Patrick KEARON, First Counsellor in the Europe Area – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – Imam Benjamin IDRIZ, Islamische Gemeinde Penzberg – Bishop Robert INNES, Anglican Bishop in Europe

The Parthian peace process and the birth of Jesus

Is there any event equivalent in history to Europe’s extraordinary peace record? Europe is living in the longest peace in its known history. That peace was based on supranational principles and initiated by Robert Schuman after a lifetime’s work.
An amazing peace process took place two thousand years ago between two fighting superpowers. They divided the planet as much as the Soviet Union and the USA did in recent times. And it covered the exact area that is the source of today’s conflict in the Near and Middle East — Syria, Iraq and Iran.
In the middle of the earth at the point of contact of these two superpowers lay Israel. It was conquered first by one power, the Roman Empire and then by the other, the Parthian Empire. Who won? Rome was humiliated. Its armies were decimated. It renounced any further attacks on the superpower of the East.
Then a peace treaty was forged. At this time and because of this peace, trade was boosted from the Far East to Gaul in the West. An era of prosperity allowed the Temple at Jerusalem to be rebuilt.

During this Augustan-Parthian peace, Jesus Christ was born at Bethlehem. Why have most Europeans not learned the facts behind this key event in Christian civilization? What did most people learn about the Parthian Empire at school or even university?
Yet every year many people send each other cards with Parthians on them. Who are they? The Magi! Why does the real identity of the Magi remain obscure to most people?


Early in the Middle Ages great confusion, not to say false propaganda, arose about the supposed three Magi who visited the infant Jesus in Bethlehem. First, it is important to go to the record itself in the New Testament (NT) and get the facts.
* There were not three Magi. The number is not specified. It is only stated that they brought three types of gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh.
* The Magi came from the East. No names are mentioned.
* The event took place more than a year after the birth of Jesus as he is called a ‘toddler’ in Greek. That means he was about a year and a half old.
* No other children are mentioned which means that James, the brother of Jesus, was probably not yet born.
* The visit took place in Bethlehem. When Jesus was born, the David’s ancestral home no longer existed. Why? Because Herod the Great had destroyed all trace of the Davidic dynasty and the ‘castle’ of David there. James says in Acts 15, that the ‘Tabernacle of David had fallen down’. Herod did not hesitate to kill off his own sons and wives if he thought they would usurp him. It is therefore certain that he would wipe out any trace of a Davidic dynasty he could find.
The NT says that at the time of the Magi’s visit Joseph had a house there. How come? Joseph was of direct royal lineage. He had the temerity and obligation to register the lands of David as his own. The registration took place as the first one under Quirinus, governor of Syria. (He made two.) This coincided with the celebration of twenty-five years of Augustus’s reign and the 750th anniversary of the foundation of the city of Rome. (See Dr Ernest L Martin: The Star that astonished the World).
Augustus was proclaimed Pater Patriae, Father of the Fatherland. Prominent citizens were required to register their smaller fatherlands and acclaim allegiance to Caesar. Thus Joseph registered his right under Roman and Israelite laws as patriarch of the tribe of Judah. This was a very dangerous move as his life was at immediate risk by Herod. But Joseph also had protection under Roman law. Herod could not simply kill a Davidic son without Roman acquiescence. As James said, the ruins were prophesied by Amos to be rebuilt.
So why in the Middle Ages did the Magi become a source of controversy? Firstly, the Magi were not Christian or even Jewish as far as the ignorant scholars of the time could say. People asked: why did pagans come and worship the infant Jesus? Why did they come at all? How many were there? Why didn’t Herod kill them?
The answers are clear once we understand the dilemma faced by the Roman State Church founded under Constantine in the 300s CE. Constantine’s amalgam of paganism and Christianity replaced Rome’s ancient pantheon. The Roman Empire had its capital in Constantinople, today’s Istanbul.
The lasting shame of the Roman Empire is that it destroyed the kingdom of Judah, its capital Jerusalem and its Temple. The term ‘Magi’ relates to the rival super power of Rome, the Parthian Empire. It extended from the River Euphrates to India and modern Afghanistan. Parthians traded with the Far East. It was a feudal confederation of kingdoms, not a military dictatorship like Rome.



The Head of the Parthian Empire was called Arsaces, ‘King of kings’. A single dynasty had a succession of 30 Arsakoi kings. They ruled from 255 BCE for nearly half a millennium, more than any dynasty there before or since. The kings were selected, elected and sometimes rejected by a Council of Wisemen, priestly scientists. Its name? The Magi! (See Rawlinson’s Parthia or Steven M Collins: Parthia, Forgotten Ancient Super-power.) Rawlinson says that Parthia divided ‘with Rome … the sovereignty of the earth.’
There is good reason why Europeans are so ignorant about Rome’s super-power rival. The Magi again! The paradox became an intense political problem for the Roman Empire of Constantinople. Why? Because, although the ruling Arsakoi tribes of the Parthian Empire had migrated by then, the Roman Empire was still at war with the successor Sassanian Persian Empire.
It was excruciatingly painful for the priests of the Roman ‘Mother Church’ to explain why the Magi of Persia had worshiped the infant Jesus and the Roman Empire had destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. Parthia worshiped Jesus. Rome pillaged Jerusalem and destroyed the Jews. How could Romans justify a Christian heritage?
The Roman Mother Church therefore blamed the Jews for the death of Jesus although the crucifixion was conducted by the Roman soldiers, under Roman imperial authority and with Roman nails.
As for the Magi, they became non-persons. They were reduced to just three foreigners. But in reality the Magi helped govern Parthia. They performed a similar task to the Levitical priesthood for the Israelitish kings.
Were there three Magi or more? We can say with near certainty that there were not three but many thousands! The Parthians were highly mobile and had several capitals. They traveled in massive, opulent, oriental style. The general selected by King Orodes to fight the Roman invader Crassus arrived with two hundred litters for his concubines. A thousand camels carried his personal baggage. A body of ten thousand horsemen and slaves served his personal needs. The Magi, the resplendently rich Parthian kingmakers, would have come to Jerusalem in their thousands or not at all!
This is how Matthew’s gospel describes the scene:
Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judah in the days of Herod the king,
BEHOLD! There came wise men (Magi) from the East to Jerusalem, saying:
‘Where is he that is born King of the Jews? … We are come to do homage to him.
When Herod heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him.
The word ‘troubled’ can better be translated ‘terrified’, ‘set in a tumult’ ‘consternated’.
Parthia had forged a peace treaty with Rome two decades earlier. This came after Roman legions had been grossly humiliated. In 55 BCE the avaricious Consul Crassus sought booty. Crassus, he of the saying ‘as rich as Crassus,’ was the powerful oligarch of Rome. Parthian king Orodes slaughtered his 40,000 strong legions. Presented with his severed head during a performance of the Euripides play ‘Bacchae’, Orodes filled its mouth with molten gold, mocking him to drink to his fill. In 40 BCE Parthia invaded Judea and deposed the Roman-selected high priest at the Temple and installed another, Antigonus. In 37 BCE Mark Antony invaded Parthia with a massive 16 legions of 100,000 men. They were decimated. He barely escaped with his life. In 34 Julius Caesar planned to attack Parthia. He was assassinated in Rome.
If in the next few days you hear people talking about ‘Three wise men’, you can tell them, ‘It’s time to wise up on the Parthian Magi!’
Today’s leaders need to remind themselves how this area of an amazing peace, became again the furnace of conflict.