I could have written the opening sentences to this piece. In fact, come to think of it, over the years and as recently as last week I have done exactly that on this very same issue.
“…Islamism is characterized by elements we have sadly come to know too well: brutal violence, terrorism, misogyny, suppression of “infidels,” and destruction of history and culture. That is their MO. Cultural destruction in the name of Islam has taken place everywhere from Timbuktu to Afghanistan, from Egypt to Libya. Precious art and artefacts, legacies of civilization, some more than a thousand years old, have been trashed. Ancient scholarship lovingly preserved in libraries, inspiring structures and museums have fallen to the Islamist ideology of erasing history and replacing it with chaos and ignorance. The Islamist policy of erasing history has been adopted by Muslim countries, with the help of fellow travellers on the executive board of UNESCO. The agency is too genteel to condone physical destruction of history. Instead, it passed a resolution last week that denies the deep historical connection of Jews to their most sacred sites, including The Temple Mount in Jerusalem. With breathtaking arrogance, and with a minority vote (24 for, 26 abstentions, 6 against), UNESCO passed a resolution that, besides accusing Israel of actions that never happened, and framing defensive and peacekeeping activity on the site as aggression, used only Arabic names for the Temple Mount and even the Western wall. Jerusalem’s Western Wall, aka Wailing Wall, has been a site for Jewish prayer for 2,000 years, ever since the destruction of the second Temple…” Like Islamists, UNESCO erases history