Editorial - Comment

by Joseph Hunting

Considering the space it occupies on planet earth and its population of only just over three million Jews, Israel should hardly ever rate a mention in the news-hungry world's press. Yet the opposite is the case.

A news item caught my attention recently to the effect that UNESCO last year passed a resolution endorsing the rewriting of Biblical history to eliminate the role of the Jews. The finished product would be an abridged version indeed -- the first eleven chapters of Genesis and the book of Job!

One may well wonder what mentality could conceive of rewriting Biblical history in which the role of the Jews is eliminated -- it certainly reveals the mentality of those who walk the august halls of UNESCO.

But then we should not think too hardly of UNESCO -- others planned a far worse fate for the Hebrew people in the past.

Pharaoh in Egypt long ago thought to eliminate them. And the fate of Pharaoh and Israel's escape from him are celebrated by their descendants to this day.

Indeed, others despots have tried to eliminate them. Haman's schemes were brought to nought and he died on the very gallows he had erected for the Jew Mordechai. And the annual celebrations of Purim is the memorial to the folly of Haman and those who followed his suicidal policy.

In our own time Hitler embarked on the same madman's dream. Should this weary world wobble into the twenty-first century, the Jewish people of that time might well celebrate their survival in spite of the ghastly Holocaust into which they were plunged a generation ago.

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Jeane Kirkpatrick, recently stated: "Israel is a target inside the U.N. of a campaign that is comprehensive, intense, incessant and vicious." Long ago the God of Israel swore: "I will curse him that curses you", and 3,500 years of history endorse the validity of God's warning. It would be well for UNESCO to heed it.