Six months ago, when UNESCO canceled an exhibition about the Jewish people’s connection to the Land of Israel just before its scheduled opening, Professor Robert Wistrich, its author, was livid. The cancellation, which followed Arab pressure, was disgraceful, he fumed, an appalling “betrayal” that proved that the organization is “subjected, entirely, to political considerations,” because “there’s one standard for Jews, and there’s another standard for non-Jews, especially if they’re Arabs.”Somehow I seem to have missed this story in January. At least I can't find anything about it in the archive.
The situation has much improved since then, Wistrich and others involved in the project assert, as the exhibition opened on Wednesday afternoon at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. And yet changes have been made to the exhibition since it was nixed in January.
Most strikingly, the word “Israel” has been deleted from the exhibition’s title and replaced by “Holy Land.” An exhibit that was initially called “The 3,500 year relationship of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel” is now entitled “The 3,500 year relationship of the Jewish People with the Holy Land.”
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Monday, June 16, 2014
UNESCO exhibition
BUT THE EXHIBIT IS NOW HAPPENING: UNESCO deletes ‘Israel’ from title of its exhibit on Jewish ties to Israel. Arab pressure nixed original show, which traced history of Jewish connection to ‘Land of Israel’. Revived version, which opened Wednesday, refers only to the ‘Holy Land’ (Raphael Ahren, Times of Israel).