For the Jewish people, no place is as holy as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a sacred site where memory, tradition, and faith are sown in the very soil.
Last week, the United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted to declare that this millenniums-old site was not Jewish at all, but exclusively Islamic.
This outrageous vote is an affront not just to the Jewish people, but to all those who value the vital role of historical truth in navigating current global issues.
And yet, two dozen countries voted in favor of the resolution, with only 6 opposing—the US, the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Lithuania and Estonia. Many other countries abstained, including France, Italy, Spain, and Sweden.
A vote of abstention is a vote of silence. For Jews, these abstentions carry an extra sting. In our history, we have far too often witnessed the staggering costs of silence. We have experienced the pain of a world that looks away when anti-Semitism lurches forward.
In 1946, Winston Churchill expressed his hope that the UN would come to be a “true temple of peace.”
For the UN to fulfill its potential and become a temple of peace, it must start by reversing its outrageous erasure of the Jewish people’s ties to the Temple Mount.
Ronald S. Lauder
President of the World Jewish Congress
