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UNESCO Pulls Jewish Exhibit after Last-Minute Protest from Arab League
(Algemeiner) Dovid Efune - UNESCO, the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, has pulled a Jewish exhibit two years in the making, entitled "People, Book, Land - The 3,500-Year Relationship of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel," after a zero hour protest from the Arab League. The exhibit, which was created by the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) together with UNESCO, was to open on Jan. 20, 2014, at UNESCO's Paris headquarters. The invitations had gone out, and the exhibition material was in place. The display was co-sponsored by Israel, Canada and Montenegro. Ten days prior to the suspension of the exhibit, the U.S. declined co-sponsorship, citing "this sensitive juncture in the ongoing Middle East peace process." Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean of the SWC, said, "We made a clear attempt to work with them [the Arabs at the UN]...and still, in the end, the Arabs protested and they kicked us out." UNESCO "is not supposed to be a place of censorship," Hier said, "It is not supposed to deny one nation the right to their history." "The Arab Group's protest is not over any particular content in the exhibition, but rather the very idea of it - that the Jewish people...trace their historical and cultural roots in that land for three and a half millennia