Palestinians Petition UNESCO Over Israeli Appropriation Of Terrorism

“It poses a serious challenge to the Palestinian sense of unique identity.”

Paris, December 28 – Representatives of the Palestinian Authority submitted a formal complaint to the United Nations’ main cultural body today over some extremist Israelis’ use of terrorism, saying the phenomenon constitutes cultural appropriation of what is properly Palestinian behavior.

The petition submitted to UNESCO, signed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, calls for the organization to condemn Israel for allowing such exploitation and theft of the Palestinian cultural tradition, and to demand that Israel take concrete steps – but very specifically not the concrete of the separation barrier – to prevent recurrences of such acts. Failure to comply, according to the petition, would subject Israel to sanctions.

Specifically, the petition refers to an incident this past summer, in which a Palestinian family was killed as a result of a firebomb attack on their home. Both Palestinian and Israeli authorities believe the perpetrators were Jewish Israelis, but no indictments have been issued in the case yet, despite the arrests of several suspects. While the violent act prompted outrage on both sides of the Green Line, Palestinians felt doubly violated, since the use of such terrorism by Israelis represented yet another instance of what Palestinians consider colonialist exploitation and appropriation of their culture.

“That is OUR way of doing things,” insisted Hamdallah. “The intolerable Zionist appropriation of what is authentically a Palestinian act constitutes one more example of the abuse we suffer at the hand of the Occupation.” He noted that the arson case was but the latest case of such cultural appropriation, citing the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, in which an Israeli killed dozens of Muslim worshipers in the city of Hebron, as the event that drove home to Palestinians that their cultural heritage was being assumed by their oppressors. “I recall my shock at realizing the depravity to which the Zionists had sunk. Not the murders – that of course we made noise about, but our real concern was the dilution of our brand. If Israelis can up and engage in terrorism, that poses a serious challenge to the Palestinian sense of unique identity.”

UNESCO controls millions of dollars’ worth of funding for cultural, scientific, and educational programs worldwide, and such sanctions might deprive Israeli institutions or cultural heritage sites of crucial funding. As a start, said a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, UNESCO might revoke its declaration of Tel Aviv as a city with architecture worth preserving, a status it earned for having a significant number of buildings constructed in the 1930’s Bauhaus style. That UNESCO decision remains controversial, as it remains unclear what, if any, historical or aesthetic contribution Bauhaus has to offer, so a revocation of the decision would not be entirely unwelcome  even in Tel Aviv itself.

As it is, Israelis regard UNESCO designations with more than a modicum of suspicion, given the organization’s skewed priorities in designating sites exclusively Islamic.

(h/t @JudgeDan48)

Please support our work through Patreon.