{"id":3326,"date":"2023-10-07T21:34:59","date_gmt":"2023-10-07T18:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/?p=3326"},"modified":"2023-10-07T21:34:59","modified_gmt":"2023-10-07T18:34:59","slug":"ghosts-of-the-past-for-israel-war-on-unesco-is-an-existential-battle-by-ramzy-baroud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/?p=3326","title":{"rendered":"Ghosts of the Past: For Israel, War on UNESCO is an Existential Battle By\u00a0Ramzy Baroud"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"the-post-header s-head-modern s-head-modern-a\">\n<div class=\"post-meta post-meta-a post-meta-left post-meta-single has-below\">\n<h1 class=\"is-title post-title\"><strong>Ghosts of the Past: For Israel, War on UNESCO is an Existential Battle<\/strong><\/h1>\n<div class=\"post-meta-items meta-below has-author-img\"><strong><span class=\"meta-item post-author has-img\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"post_avatar no-rate avatar-32 avatar-default\" src=\"https:\/\/znetwork.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/avatars\/baroud.jpg\" alt=\"avatar\" width=\"32\" height=\"32\" \/><span class=\"by\">By<\/span>\u00a0Ramzy Baroud<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n<div class=\"post-meta-items meta-below has-author-img\"><span class=\"meta-item has-next-icon date\"><time class=\"post-date\" datetime=\"2023-09-28T11:53:00-04:00\">September<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"post-meta-items meta-below has-author-img\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"z-post-source\">Source:\u00a0Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.<\/div>\n<div class=\"single-featured\">\n<div class=\"featured\">\n<div class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ancient Jericho has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. (Photo: Berthold Werner, via Wikimedia Commons)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"the-post s-post-modern\">\n<article id=\"post-1255016\" class=\"post-1255016 znetarticle type-znetarticle status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail category-international-relations category-israel-palestine\">\n<div class=\"post-content-wrap\">\n<div class=\"post-content cf entry-content content-spacious\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Jericho does not belong to the Palestinians alone. It belongs to the whole of humanity.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">For Israel, however, the\u00a0recognition\u00a0by UNESCO of Jericho as a \u201cWorld Heritage Site in Palestine\u201d complicates its mission of erasing Palestine, physically and figuratively, from existence.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The decision was\u00a0described\u00a0by Israel\u2019s foreign ministry as a \u201ccynical\u201d ploy by the Palestinians to politicize UNESCO.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">This is ironic, as Israel has politicized history by removing anything that could be interpreted as part of Palestinian historical heritage, while elevating a self-centered, and largely fabricated, view of history that supposedly belongs to Israel, and Israel alone.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Though Israel has succeeded, thanks to its massive military power, in dominating the Palestinian physical landscape, it has largely failed in dominating Palestine\u2019s history.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Apartheid walls, military checkpoints and illegal Jewish settlements are easy to construct. Constructing a historical narrative that is dotted with lies, half-truths and omissions, however, is almost impossible to sustain for long.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">All of this is part of a protracted Israeli-US war on UNESCO. In 2019, the US and Israel officially\u00a0withdrew\u00a0from UNESCO, citing anti-Israel bias. This followed repeated threats by various US administrations, and a\u00a0cut\u00a0of funding by the Obama Administration in 2011.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">But why such a fierce and determined war against an organization that\u00a0describes\u00a0itself as a promoter of \u201cworld peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture\u201d?<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In fact, UNESCO is one of very few UN-linked international institutions that is the least politicized, based on the belief that the past, and whatever remains of it, is a common heritage that belongs to all of us.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">As acceptable as such a claim may be for many countries around the world, for Israel UNESCO\u2019s innocuous gestures to the Palestinians are simply heretical.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Not only Jericho \u2013 and, specifically, Tell Es-Sultan \u2013 belongs in the list of World Heritage Sites, the two should top the list. This is not grandstanding or another \u2018cynical\u2019 utilization of history but simply because Jericho is the \u201coldest inhabited city in the world\u201d and Tell Es-Sultan is the \u201coldest town in the world\u201d as it dates back to the 10th millennium BCE.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">For example, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Era Tower, circa 8300 BCE, is\u00a0believed, by recent studies, to mark the summer solstice. It was, for nearly 6,000 years, the tallest human-made structure in the world. This is just one of numerous astonishing facts about Tell Es-Sultan.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">All of Palestine is rich with such history, which traces our common ancestry to ancient civilizations that have merged or fused into other cultures, giving us the fascinating tapestry that is humanity.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">And, because the history of Palestine is the history of humankind, serious Palestinian historians, archeologists and intellectuals rarely display any ethnocentric ownership over that history, thus refusing to claim any ascendency over other cultures.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cAll archeological and historical evidence shows that Palestine was inhabited by many people,\u201d wrote respected Palestinian archeologist, Dr. Hamdan Taha, in the recently-published\u00a0volume\u00a0\u2018Our Vision for Liberation\u2019.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Palestinian history spans a period starting from the \u201cHomo Sapiens until the 21st century and, over this history, marked by many wars, invasions and conversions, (..) the indigenous population was never completely eliminated,\u201d Taha writes.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">A careful reading of Taha\u2019s comments is enough to explain Israel\u2019s fears, bordering on panic, whenever Palestine and the Palestinians are linked to a credible historical narrative.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Two points are worth a pause: one, all the \u201cwars, invasions and conversions\u201d did not succeed in interrupting the demographic flow and continuity of the \u201cindigenous people\u201d of Palestine, culminating in today\u2019s modern Palestinians; and two, those indigenous people, though some invaders have tried in vain, were \u201cnever completely eliminated\u201d.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Israel has done more than attempt to rewrite history and to marginalize the main actors of Palestine\u2019s historical narrative. It has also actively and continuously tried to eliminate the natives altogether.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">But it failed. The number of Palestinians\u00a0living\u00a0in historic Palestine today at least equals, and in some\u00a0estimates\u00a0is even higher than the number of Israeli Jewish immigrants from Europe and elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Failing at the \u2018elimination\u2019 part of history, Israel is now resorting to the two-pronged strategy of ethnic cleansing and racial separation, or apartheid. The latter practice is now increasingly\u00a0recognized\u00a0by international human rights groups, including Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and many others.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The ghosts of the past are another problem facing Israel. A brilliant cadre of Palestinian historians and archeologists, like Taha, joined by courageous and equally brilliant Israeli historians, like Ilan Papp\u00e9, are determined to unearth the truth on Palestine\u2019s history and on Israel\u2019s meddling in history.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">It is because of such respected individuals, a parallel history to the one invented by Israel following the Nakba has emerged.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Another Tell \u2013 the Arabic word for \u2018hill\u2019 \u2013 aside from Tell Es-Sultan, was recently unearthed. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz\u00a0said\u00a0earlier this month that the excavations of Tell Qedesh is \u201cthe first-of-its-kind project\u201d uncovering a not so distant past.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In this Palestinian village near the Lebanese border, war crimes were committed, and the hapless villagers, after doing their best to resist Zionist militias, were forced to flee.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">To ensure the villagers never return, Israeli authorities bulldozed the village entirely.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cThe dig is the first in Israel specifically dedicated to archaeologically exploring the legacy of what Palestinians remember as the Nakba,\u201d Haaretz\u00a0wrote.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">For decades, Palestinians have been doing just that. Several generations of Palestinian archeologists have helped reanimate much of that history, ancient and modern. \u201cThe rule of archeology is to reconstruct the past in order to build the future,\u201d according to Taha.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Unlike Israel, however, Taha\u2019s vision aims to \u201cincorporate the voices of all peoples, groups, cultures and religions that have lived on the land of Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">This inclusive vision is at direct odds with Israel\u2019s exclusivist, selective, and often fabricated \u2018vision\u2019, predicated on military domination and cultural erasure.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In its Extended 45th Session of the World Heritage Committee in Riyadh on September 17, UNESCO has just\u00a0confirmed\u00a0the validity of the Palestinian vision. Naturally, Israel is angry because invaders hate the truth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ghosts of the Past: For Israel, War on UNESCO is an Existential Battle By\u00a0Ramzy Baroud September Source:\u00a0Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely. Ancient Jericho has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. (Photo: Berthold Werner, via Wikimedia Commons) Jericho does not belong to the Palestinians alone. It belongs to the whole &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3327,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3328,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3326\/revisions\/3328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}