An exhibition detailing the millennia-long links between the Jewish people and the land of Israel is due to open next week in the House of Commons.
But as Shimon Samuels, director for international relations at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre — which has brought the exhibition to London — explained, People, Book, Land is no ordinary exhibition. Instead, Dr Samuels says, it is part of “the fightback against the theft of the Jewish narrative” by the Palestinians. Since the Palestinians joined the Paris-based Unesco in 2011, he says they have made consistent attempts to “reclaim” world heritage sites.
The Wiesenthal Centre is the only Jewish organisation accredited to the Unesco World Heritage Committee, and has repeatedly lobbied against Palestinian bids to redesignate Jewish and Christian heritage sites, from Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity to the designation of Rachel’s Tomb and Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs as mosques.
The latest move — due to be debated in April — is to claim the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Qumran caves where they were found, as Palestinian heritage.
