I opened our credit card statement and glaring at me were multiple payments made to a very luxurious spa in California. The only reason I know it’s luxurious is by the large dollar amount  on my bill. That spa must be super nice! I thought.

My family lives near Philadelphia, PA and I don’t remember my wife taking some personal “me-time” in California. I immediately called our credit card company to get the charges removed from my statement. Customer service told me I fell prey to something that seems to be very common these days––identity theft.

Identity theft is exactly what it sounds like: Someone steals your identity for their own personal benefit. Someone stole my identity and they enjoyed the day at the spa on me!

Recently, Israel has been dealing with an issue of identity theft. It’s not a credit card problem like mine; instead the United Nation has been facilitating an ongoing negative bias toward Israel that is allowing certain member states of the United Nations to target the Jewish state, and now they are attempting to steal Israel’s identity.

Now it might be easy to erase words from paper, but it’s impossible to remove historical evidence like those ritual baths, cemeteries, and the plethora of artifacts that prove a deep and abiding Jewish history in Jerusalem.

The previous secretary general of the UN, Kofi Anan, admitted that Israel is often judged harshly by standards that are not applied to their enemies. Ironically, the only democratic state in the Middle East, Israel, is considered by the United Nations the world’s top human rights violator, more than Sudan, Iran, China, and North Korea. The idea that Israel is the top human rights violator borders on both the sad and comedic.

UNESCO, which is the branch of the United Nations that deals with education, science, and culture, couldn’t help themselves when dealing with the issue of Israel and Jerusalem last month. Certain member states like Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan put forth a resolution that robs the Jewish people of any identity in Jerusalem by rewriting history. The resolution accuses Israel of planting Jewish tombs in Muslim cemeteries and converting Islamic and Byzantine areas into “so called” Jewish ritual baths. UNESCO believes these ancient artifacts that are uniquely Jewish have been planted there by the state of Israel to build a false narrative that Jewish people have a long history in Jerusalem.

The resolution also leaves out any Jewish identity from important biblical sites in Jerusalem. The Temple Mount, for instance, where both Jewish Temples once stood is called Al-Haram al-Sharif, which is the Arabic name for it. To add insult to injury, the Western Wall, the one location specific to Judaism where Jewish people can worship near the Temple Mount was renamed by UNESCO as “Al-Buraq Plaza.”

When you dig deep you see that this resolution has a desire to commit identity theft. They begin by calling Israel an “occupying power” in Jerusalem. Their ultimate goal is to remove any Jewish connection to Jerusalem like erasing pencil markings from a sheet of paper. Now it might be easy to erase words from paper, but it’s impossible to remove historical evidence like those ritual baths, cemeteries, and the plethora of artifacts that prove a deep and abiding Jewish history in Jerusalem.

All the evidence archaeologists have uncovered proves the Jewish people belong in Jerusalem. It’s the ancient capital of their ancestral homeland and they’ve had a continual presence in Jerusalem for millennia, yet certain member states of UNESCO know you can’t be an “occupying power” of something that was originally yours. However, if you can rewrite history, a history that doesn’t include a Jewish presence in Jerusalem, then you have a better chance committing identity theft, stealing something that wasn’t yours to begin with.