Holocaust education ‘not enough’ to tackle antisemitism, Unesco warns – The Jewish Chronicle

2018/06/05 Leave a comment

Valid points and a reminder that UN organizations are not blind to antisemitism:

Openly antisemitic attitudes are no longer limited to extremist circles and are increasingly voiced in the mainstream, the United Nations’ cultural agency has warned.

Unesco said that Jews in Europe were feeling under “renewed danger” and that while teaching people about the Holocaust is important, it is not an adequate substitute for education that aims to prevent antisemitism.

“If anti-Semitism is exclusively addressed through Holocaust education, students might conclude that anti-Semitism is not an issue today or misconceive its contemporary forms,” the agency said in a report, which was published on Monday.

“It is appropriate and necessary to incorporate lessons about anti-Semitism into teaching about the Holocaust because it is fundamental to understanding the context in which discrimination, exclusion and, ultimately, the destruction of Jews in Europe took place.”

The study – jointly produced with the OSCE, a security and democracy watchdog – calls on European governments to uses education to make young people more resilient to antisemitic ideas and ideologies.

Unesco director-general Audrey Azoulay (Photo: Getty Images)
“It is alarming that, as survivors of the Holocaust pass on, Jewish communities in Europe feel in renewed danger from the threat of anti-Semitic attacks,” Unesco’s director-general Audrey Azoulay said.

“Anti-Semitism is not the problem of Jewish communities alone, nor does it require the presence of a Jewish community to proliferate. It exists in religious, social and political forms and guises, on all sides of the political spectrum.”

She added: “This is both an immediate security imperative and a long-term educational obligation.”

The document contains a list of tropes that students should be taught to identify as antisemitic.

They include blood libel claims, the perception that Jewish people are more loyal to Israel than to their home countries, and conspiracies that Jews are plotting to take over the world for their own gain.

“It is appropriate and necessary to incorporate lessons about anti-Semitism into teaching about the Holocaust because it is fundamental to understanding the context in which discrimination, exclusion and, ultimately, the destruction of Jews in Europe took place,” the report says.

“Similarly, the study of anti-Semitism should include some attention to the Holocaust, as a nadir of anti-Semitism in history, through the state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and their collaborators.”

via Holocaust education ‘not enough’ to tackle antisemitism, Unesco warns – The Jewish Chronicle

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UNESCO Exhibition on Jewish History in Middle East

2014/06/23 Leave a comment

In addition to the meeting with Hollande, the UNESCO exhibit on Jewish history and presence in the Holy Land finally sees the light of day (Canada led campaign to save exhibition on Jewish history in Middle East after Arab coalition quashed it):

Meanwhile, Cotler was effusive in his description of the Wistrich exhibit, which he called “historic.”

“It is a remarkable dramatization of history and heritage, of people, book, land, memory and state,” he said.

In 24 panels, it traces Jewish history back to the patriarch Abraham, through Moses, King David and all the way through to the struggle for Soviet Jewry, the birth of Zionism and the reconstitution of the State of Israel.

The exhibit, which will run for nine days, had been scheduled to open last January. Pressure from 22 Arab countries, who argued it would prejudice the peace process, prompted UNESCO to cancel it.

Responding to that decision Rabbi Hier stated, “It is ironic, that while the Arab League was trying to kill this exhibition and all the attention was focused on Paris, the UN headquarters in New York is hosting an exhibit entitled, Palestine, based entirely on the Arab narrative, which was not criticized as an interference with Secretary [John] Kerry’s mission.”

Following public criticism from Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird and U.S envoy Samantha Power, the exhibit was rescheduled to open last week, but with the name “Israel” removed from the title and replaced with “Holy Land.” UNESCO also required the removal of an image of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which had been part of the initial exhibit prepared by Wistrich, a professor of European and Jewish history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Hollande’s stand on anti-Semitism impresses delegation | The Canadian Jewish News.

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Canada led campaign to save exhibition on Jewish history in Middle East after Arab coalition quashed it | National Post

2014/01/27 1 Comment

Interesting story about the UNESCO exhibit on Jewish history in the Mid-East, caught up in the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Historical narratives are powerful, and both sides want to ensure that the historical narratives reinforces their political position. Denial of the Jewish presence and history in the Mid-East has antisemitic overtones, just as denial of the Palestinian narrative has anti-Arab overtones. And while Canada played a role in reversing the UNESCO decision:

Ultimately, however, it was likely the United States who had the better clout in having the exhibition reinstated. On Jan. 17, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power disavowed any assertion that the Paris show would compromise John Kerry’s peacemaking efforts.

“UNESCO’s decision is wrong and should be reversed,” she said in a statement cited by Reuters. “The United States has engaged at senior levels to urge UNESCO to allow this exhibit to proceed as soon as possible.”

Four days later, the cultural agency reversed its decision, writing in a statement that “the exhibition has not been cancelled but postponed.”

“People, Book, Land” is now set for a June 11 opening.

Canada led campaign to save exhibition on Jewish history in Middle East after Arab coalition quashed it | National Post.

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