More than a dozen United Nations (UN) ambassadors are in Israel on a week-long fact-finding mission sponsored by the UJA-Federation of New York in collaboration with the office of Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan. 

The trip is meant to help educate the ambassadors about the reality on the ground in the Jewish state – both about the security situation and the deep religious and spiritual ties of the Jewish people to its land.

“The ambassadors are being exposed to the crimes of Hamas and Hezbollah and the security challenges we face,” Erdan told Israel365 News. “They also saw with their own eyes the freedom of worship that exists in Jerusalem and our thousands of years of connection to the city. I am sure that when they return from here to the UN, they will remember and be influenced by what they saw.”

On Friday, the delegation visited the Aish World Center in the Old City of Jerusalem, including standing on the rooftop, which faces the Western Wall. There, they were briefed by Rabbi Eitiel Goldwicht and Erdan.

“Sometimes, you hear that Jews have no connection whatsoever to Jerusalem – to the Old City, to the Holy City,” Erdan said. “Do you see the Temple Mount? This is the holiest site in Judaism. The Western Wall is very important, but this is the western wall of the Temple Mount – where our Temple was located.”

Today I took my UN friends, Ambassadors from 13 countries, to Israel’s eternal capital Jerusalem. I explained that only since 1967, when Israel reunited Jerusalem, have all people had access to their holy sites. Freedom of religion for everyone is a hallmark of Israeli democracy. pic.twitter.com/82G7TtQwqc

— Ambassador Gilad Erdan גלעד ארדן (@giladerdan1) May 27, 2022

As Erdan spoke, the sound of Muslim prayers echoed through the Old City. He paused to listen.

“What you hear now is the muezzin,” he said. “During the last Ramadan that just ended, more than a million Muslim worshipers came here to pray, and we are proud of it. Only under Jewish sovereignty can freedom of worship for every religion continue here.”

He made the remarks only two days before Jerusalem Day, which is celebrated on Sunday and memorializes the reunification of Jerusalem following the Six-Day War. Thousands of Jewish men, women and children are expected to walk through the streets waving Israeli flags and chanting. Terror groups have called on their Muslim constituents to rage against the march.

The participants will end their events at the Western Wall, since they cannot go up and pray on the Temple Mount since Jewish and Christian prayer at the holy site are forbidden by the Jordanian Waqf.

‘Israel is a beautiful country’

The UN delegation includes ambassadors from Benin, Burundi, Czech Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Malawi, Mexico, Panama, Poland, Slovakia, Tanzania and Uzbekistan. In addition to Jerusalem, the travelers were slated to head up North on Sunday and enter a Hezbollah tunnel, where they would receive a briefing by the IDF and residents of the area about the threat emanating from Lebanon. 

Last week, the ambassadors visited Sderot, located near Israel’s southern border, where they were briefed about how families live under constant barrage of Hamas rockets. They also held meetings with the president and prime minister and were expected to visit Start-up Nation Central on Tuesday to learn about innovative food and water technology developments.

They toured Yad Vashem and ate at an Ethiopian restaurant, where they learned about the story of the Ethiopian Jews who longed for the Land of Israel and trekked through the desert to get there.

“Bringing UN ambassadors to visit Israel is a central and necessary part of our struggle to change the voting patterns at the UN that still discriminate against Israel,” Erdan said. 

He noted that Israel’s “enemies” spread lies about the Jewish state, including that there is no freedom of the press in Israel and that the country regularly violates human rights. In addition, the Palestinians and some Arab states are trying to erase the Jewish connection to Jerusalem.

Back in December, the majority of UN delegates (129-11) voted in favor of a resolution that denied Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and called the site only by its Muslim name, al-Haram al-Sharif. Of the UN delegates on the mission, nearly all of them voted in favor of the resolution.

While those who would speak on the record told Israel365 that they are unlikely to change their vote if the resolution comes up again, the trip did open their eyes and get them to start thinking.

“Israel is a beautiful country with amazing and resilient people,” Panama’s Ambassador Markova Concepción Jaramillo said. She described the country as “very different from what I thought” and said that “it is important to visit Israel in your lifetime. Now I see how many cultures are living together in this one country with tolerance, awareness and empathy.”

Another ambassador, Agnes Mary Chimbiri Molande from Malawi, said that she expected to see a developing country whose citizens dressed and behaved like the people she reads about in her Bible. Rather, she said, Israel is a modern country.

“Israel has grown so big and with so much technology,” she said. 

When asked if she now believes that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, Molande said, “based on the history, I think this is the capital.”

“I could never get so many hours of hasbara with influencers like this other than paying and bringing them here for a whole week,” Erdan added. “They listen and experience it firsthand and they internalize it.”