World Heritage Sight

The Henry Jackson's Society's briefing paper about UNESCO's admission of Palestine is truly priceless. It blusters on that Christian and Muslim holy places on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem might now be declared World Heritage Sites, thereby preventing the Israelis from bombing them to smithereens. It is assumed to be self-evident that such protection would be a bad thing, while such destruction would be a good thing. The Tomb of Rachel and the Tomb of the Patriarchs are explicitly included, but then the HJS's Israeli parent party wants to denaturalise the Orthodox Jews as surely as it wants to denaturalise the Arabs.

The UNESCO vote has still not quite brought home to the Americans that no one really notices their opinion anymore. It is a difficult lesson to learn. Even we and the French still dig out the trappings of Empire from time to time, and we both continued to affect them all the time for decades after the reality had gone away. That said, neither of us has ever become a bankrupt Chinese satrapy with the political institutions of a failed state or a banana republic. As the Arabs say, the dogs still bark, but the caravan has moved on.

And even in America, the nomination of Obama rather than Clinton was a serious blow to the Israel Lobby in the Democratic Party, historically its stronghold. The Republican Party, always more dubious about Israel, will nominate, if not in 2012 then certainly in 2016, a Presidential candidate most ill-disposed towards turning America and Americans into military and paramilitary targets by funding socialised medicine thousands of miles away in a country which is not even an American ally, but rather maintains an enormous spy network on American soil, also at the American taxpayer's expense.

First up to be declared World Heritage Sites should be the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and, just, to cover all political bases in America, the Garden Tomb, although it is possible that UNESCO might be academically purist enough to reject that last application, a view with which it would be difficult to disagree. Israel should be defied to proclaim her inalienable right to demolish them in order to build supermarket carparks or what have you. Along with her right to do the same to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, which mean as little to the people running Israel, nothing if not faithful to Zionism's militantly atheistic and secular founders, as do the Tomb of Rachel and the Tomb of the Patriarchs. Future Walmarts both, if Netanyahu, Lieberman and the HJS get their way.

The construction of those Walmarts would be crimes under international law if World Heritage Sites had been damaged in the process. If Palestine can join UNESCO, then Palestine can also join the International Criminal Court. No vote would be necessary. And by joining, Palestine would oblige all other state parties to extradite anyone whom she had indicted for crimes committed on her territory. Keep an eye out for that one.