Reacting to a recent UNESCO resolution that implicitly denies the historical Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, Yossi Klein Halevi points to the destructive agenda behind it:
At the heart of the anti-Zionist assault is the notion that the Jews aren’t a people but only a faith. That premise is normative throughout the Arab world, and especially in the Palestinian national movement, all of whose factions—from Fatah to Hamas—deny the existence of a distinct Jewish people with a right to national sovereignty.
The Jewish [calendar] tells a different story. Passover celebrates the birth of the Jewish people, the beginning of a coherent historical narrative. Shavuot, two months later, celebrates the giving of the Torah at Sinai, imprinting the Jewish people with a distinct path to God. The Jews, then, are a people, with a specific faith. In that order. . . . There is no Judaism without the Jewish people and its story. . . .
The UNESCO resolution erases us from our own story. There were no temples on the Temple Mount; the Mount isn’t the holiest site in Judaism; the Western Wall isn’t the heart of Jewish prayer. Of all the attempts to destroy us throughout our history, the campaign against history itself is the most devious. . . .
The current assault on the Jewish story is so dangerous precisely because it strikes at the core of Passover. If we lose the story, our sense of the basic justness of our narrative, we will lose the essence of our being.
Read more on Times of Israel: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-war-against-passover/