UN Agency Agrees To Hold ‘Jewish Israel’ Show

By JTA January 22, 2014

UNESCO, the cultural arm of the United Nations, said it will delay for six months the opening of an exhibition on the Jewish presence in the land of Israel.

UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova had said Jan. 15 in a letter to the Simon Wiesenthal Center that the exhibit, titled “The People, the Book, the Land — 3,500 years of ties between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel,” which the center organized along with the governments of Canada and Montenegro, would be postponed indefinitely. She said the decision arose out of UNESCO’s support for peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. UNESCO now says the exhibit is scheduled to open in June, pending final discussions with the Wiesenthal Center, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, confirmed to the AP that his group was negotiating with UNESCO over the exhibit.

He said the Wiesenthal center opposed changes to the text on the some 30 illustrated panels in the exhibit, but there were still discussions regarding some of the photos, the AP reported.

Complaints by the 22 Arab member states led to the postponement of the exhibit, according to UNESCO. The U.N. agency also said it needed extra time to revise “unresolved issues relating to potentially contestable textual and visual historical points” that member states could perceive as “endangering the peace process.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the postponement of the exhibit earlier this week, saying: “It would not harm the negotiations. Negotiations are based on facts, on the truth, which is never harmful.”

The Obama administration also expressed “disappointment” with the cancellation.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO