"Following the shameful decision by UNESCO members to deny history and ignore thousands of years of Jewish ties to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, I have notified the Israel National Commission for UNESCO to suspend all professional activities with the international organization," Bennett said. A letter signed by Democratic and Republican lawmakers from the House of Representatives and Senate was sent earlier in the week to the executive board of UNESCO, the world body’s educational, scientific and cultural Organization, which is set to discuss the resolution on Thursday while meeting in Paris. T’ruah, the New York-based rabbinic human rights group, said the vote “represents an offensive and anti-Semitic attempt to erase thousands of years of Jewish history.”

While the UNESCO resolution affirms “the importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls for the three monotheistic religions,” it refers to the Temple Mount several times only as Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif, the Islamic term for the Temple Mount, without mentioning its Jewish names in Hebrew or English. Israel’s permanent delegate to UNESCO, Carmel Shama Hacohen, said of the vote, according to Ynet: “Israel and the Jewish people don’t require UNESCO’s or any other country’s confirmation of the special connection between the Jewish people and the State of Israel and Jerusalem in general and the holy sites therein like the Western Wall and the Temple Mount in particular. “When these divisions carry over into UNESCO, an organization dedicated to dialogue and peace, they prevent us from carrying out our mission.”

Bennett in his statement said of the UNESCO countries, “Your decision denies history and encourages terror. “Those who give prizes to the supporters of Jihad in Jerusalem the same week that two Jews are murdered in the city could god forbid encourage more victims.”

The United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Lithuania and Estonia voted against the resolution as 26 additional countries abstained, in what Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO called an improvement to previous UNESCO votes that were supported by Western countries although they contained similar language on Jerusalem. One of the world's most important religious sites and Judaism’s holiest site, Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and Western Wall, was called an exclusively Muslim shrine Thursday in a United Nations draft resolution that denies Jewish connection to the site. The Palestinian Authority initiated the UNESCO campaign to reclassify the Temple Mount in 2015 and garnered support from Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar and Sudan. While it affirms “the importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls for the three monotheistic religions,” it contains two references to Judaism: One in describing holy sites in Hebron and the other in decrying “the enforced creation of a new Jewish prayer platform south of the Mughrabi Ascent in Al-Buraq Plaza.”

The so-called al-Buraq Plaza is better known as the Western Wall Plaza – possibly Judaism’s holiest site.
UNESCO declares the Western Wall an "Islamic site" and refrains from mentioning its connection to Jewish culture. Over half the voting countries chose to abstain.