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Benjamin Netanyahu's historic visit to Africa this week is the first by an Israeli prime minister in close to 50 years. While the occasion is to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Entebbe raid in which he lost a brother and Israel's military prowess dazzled the world, Israel has considerably more to celebrate in Africa today. Little of this is publicly known, as it is a fraught story of people-to-people affinities ill-served by frequent government-to-government misalliance.

Last October, UNESCO (the UN Educational, Social, and Cultural Organization), was widely rebuked and ridiculed for passing a one-sided, hypocritical resolution that denied the millennia-old Jewish link to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest site. Sponsored by seven Arab nations—Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, and Sudan—the resolution failed to garner a majority. This marked a significant setback for those seeking to use the UN to internationalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Before and after the vote, nations reversed their decisions and apologized for supporting the measure. Even UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova criticized the resolution.