Springs come, springs go ...

... but the UN and its institutions do not change. Daily do we read of appalling crimes perpetrated by the Assad regime on Syria's people and what else do we find?

UNESCO’s executive board, which includes the US, France, the UK and other Western democracies, unanimously elected Syria to a pair of committees – one dealing directly with human rights issues – even as the Bashar al-Assad regime maintains its campaign of violence against its own citizens.

The Arab group at UNESCO nominated Syria for the spots, and though the 58-member board approved the pick by consensus on Nov. 11, the agency has not yet posted the results on its website.

Syria’s election came just a day before the League of Arab States moved to suspend Syrian membership of that body.

I wonder when they will post the result on the website. What are they waiting for?

Re-writing history

I shall continue to ignore the "gimme, gimme, gimme" riots (so-called) of students (so-called) up and down the country. No, this is not a revolt (though they are undoubtedly revolting) nor a revolution. These people are terrified of change, terrified of losing their hand-outs, terrified of losing their toys, terrified of actually taking some responsibility for their lives. Revolutionaries are not made of such cowardly and infantile stuff. Might as well have a revolution with a bunch of two-year-olds.

This, however, is far more important. History has been re-written by all sorts of groups, religious and national, to serve their aims and the twentieth century, as in other matters, saw a good deal of that. Well, this is happening again, as Phyllis Chesler writes. Muslims (relative newcomers on the scene in Palestine) are re-writing millennia of history and destroying archaeological evidence. The UNESCO, readers of this blog will not be surprised to hear, has gone along with it.

This year, on October 21, 2010, Muslims persuaded UNESCO to declare that Rachel’s Tomb is really a mosque. Before then, it was widely assumed that Rachel’s Tomb was most definitely a Jewish holy site. This revisionist counter-claim originated only in 1996.

Well, now, the first step is to shut down UNESCO.

Former Communist is more acceptable

Or so Ivo Indzhev, a Bulgarian political blogger, comments about the appointment of the Bulgarian diplomat Irina Bokova to become UNESCO's first woman Director-General.

Those who dislike communism in this country are not happy about her promotion. For people in this region, her appointment sends the message that the West can swallow someone’s communist past very easily but can’t abide an Arab who is anti-Israel.

It is not entirely clear whether this means that Mr Indzhev thinks it would have been a good idea to appoint a man who is not just anti-Israeli but downright anti-Semitic and who, as Egypt's Culture Minister, has presided over a destruction of any semblance of free media in that country or whether he is just incensed at the idea of Comrade Madame Bokova getting the position.

It is true that Madame Bokova comes from a privileged Communist apparatchik family and, as so many of them, she made the transition to a privileged post-Communist political and diplomatic life with great ease. She is, needless to say, a great supporter of European integration and, indeed, of all transnational organizations.

Farouk Hosni did not appear to be a good loser:

Meanwhile, the Egyptian culture minister defeated by Bokova has blamed her victory on "Zionist pressures". Last year Hosni said he would burn "Israeli books in Egyptian libraries". He later apologised for the remark.

"The organisation has become politicised," Hosni told reporters at Cairo airport on arrival on September 23. "The reality is that we waged a fantastic battle. The Egyptian candidate had the newspapers and Zionist pressures against him every day," he said, referring to himself.

The Egyptian press echoed Hosni's remarks. Opposition weekly Al-Ahrar wrote on its front page about "a ferocious campaign against him by the American administration, under Jewish pressure".

I am, of course, shocked to find that anyone should think that any organization to do with the United Nations can have been politicized but I do think that Mr Hosni can rest assured that Zionism is not a strong force in any of them. For one thing it strains credulity to imagine Madame Bokova to be a Zionist.

It is, however, interesting that the only two serious candidates were a highly oppressive, anti-Semitic Minister of Culture and a former Communist, whose own attitude to such matters as freedom of speech must be doubtful. (Incidentally, there are some curious gaps in the lady's career. Just exactly how long did she spend at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations?)

According to AFP, Egypt may grumble but is unlikely to change its foreign policy because of this outcome. Or its culture policy, one must assume.

A suitable head for UNESCO

The Wall Street Journal refers to Figaro bemoaning the fact that there might be the odd problem or two about the Egyptian Culture Minister of 22 years becoming the next chief of UNESCO:

To Farouk Hosni’s fans, it seems the only conceivable objection to crowning him global protector of culture is his public habit of making anti-Israel slurs, notably last year’s offer to burn Hebrew books. “If he had held his tongue, perhaps a red carpet would await Farouk Hosni in France,” an article in Le Figaro lamented last week, as the Egyptian Culture Minister landed in Paris ahead of this week’s meeting to decide the next chief of the U.N. Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (more commonly known as Unesco).

Mr Hosni, too, tells everyone that he has changed his mind on the subject, does not want to burn Hebrew books and thinks people should judge him on the whole of his career.

Cairo is now scrambling to quash any stray quibbles with his candidacy ahead of a vote this week on his appointment. To this end, since the Unseco job campaign began, Egypt has announced plans to allow the translation of Israeli books while feverishly "contextualizing" Mr. Hosni's past tirades against the Jewish state. And last month Egypt ostentatiously unveiled the ongoing restoration of an important synagogue in Cairo.

That scramble, sincere or not, cannot erase Mr. Hosni's sorry record as a culture czar in general. Human-rights activists are not the only ones reeling at the thought of one of Egypt's pre-eminent censors being named standard-bearer in Unesco's self-described goal to "build peace in the minds of men." One can only imagine the peace in the minds of thousands of Egyptian writers, bloggers, artists, musicians, filmmakers, lecturers, broadcasters and other culture-purveyors who have been tortured, harassed, imprisoned or banned in Egypt since Mr. Hosni took office in 1987. Or the 100-plus heavy-metal fans arrested there over the last decade for their supposed Satanism. Or any of the remaining 80 million Egyptians regularly denied access to any new ideas their government deems harmful.

Well, let us hope they do judge him on his entire career. Then again, it appears to be entirely appropriate for UNESCO.