Bernard Weber, a Swiss museum curator, has launched “The New 7 Wonders of the World Project” to revise the list of the Seven Wonders of the World. There are sufficient grounds to suspect it is a plan to establish that the Jewish civilization had a key role in the growth of culture and civilization in the world.

Weber’s explanation for his project is that “there has never been any public consensus of opinion on the last 2000 years of human achievement. The beginning of the new millennium is a poignant historical moment for determining the New 7 Wonders of the World.”

Weber believes that the renowned ancient wonders such as the Pyramids, the Colossus of Rhodes, etc. belong to antiquity and are not worthy enough to be considered as wonders.

The idea amounts to an attack on the achievements of ancient civilizations and a mockery of history of the world, particularly the 7000-year long Egyptian culture.

Since ancient times the Pyramids, Alexandrian lighthouse, Artemis Temple, Zeus statue, Giant Colossus at Rhodes and Hanging Gardens of Babylonia, Halicarnassus Mausoleum and the Great Wall of China have been viewed as the great wonders of the world.

The Weber Project has been conducting an opinion poll to determine the new seven wonders out of 21 items selected from 77 sites. It claims that 19 million people participated in the poll on the Internet. The project has deleted five of the approved wonders including the renowned Alexandrian Lighthouse. The proposed 21 sites include the Petra in Jordan, the Statue of Liberty in the United States, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Opera House in Sydney, Stonehenge Fort in Britain, Taj Mahal in India, Timbuktu Fort in Mali.

Several of them do not carry the historical or cultural value that makes them eligible to be considered a world wonder. Let us examine the history of the Statue of Liberty, for instance. The Egyptian government under Khedive Ismail had originally placed the order for the statue with a French company. Unfortunately the Egyptian government could not pay the cost of the statue and so the French company sold it to the French government. The French government presented it as a gift to the United States on the occasion of its independence after making some alterations to it.

Disturbed by the Weber project’s aim to discredit the ancient civilization, Saleh Lamei, a representative of the UNESCO, said that only a body constituted by the international heritage committee of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization would carry any credibility to such attempts as there are several standards set by the heritage committee to include any new site in the list of the world heritage.

The UNESCO’s heritage committee comprising seven members meets once in a year to discuss the heritage sites. There is no authority for any organization other than the UNESCO’s subsidiary to declare any site as a world wonder.

The New 7 Wonders have been striving to attract Egypt to participate officially in the opinion poll. However Egypt refused to be drawn into the scheme. It is evident that the international Zionism is behind the project. The Zionist aim is to draw up a list of the world wonders in such a way that it highlights the achievements of the Jews. However the Jews did not play any role in the 8000-year-old Middle Eastern history except for 450 years. The Zionists, such as the former Israeli Premier Menachem Begin, who was a hard-core terrorist, believed that it was the forefathers of the Israelis that built the Pyramids though there is no evidence to support the claim. During his visit to the Pyramids, Begin reportedly said to the media, “Look at what our ancestors achieved.”

Egypt and Israel no more fight with weapons. But the battle still continues in the arena of culture and civilization.