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UNESCO condemned as “shameful and offensive” for continued campaign to erase Jewish history, declaring Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs an “endangered” Palestinian heritage site.
On Friday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted to designate Hebron’s Old City and the Cave of the Patriarchs “Palestinian World Heritage Sites.”
This designation attempts to eliminate the Jewish people’s millenia-long connection to the sites, at which the founders of the Jewish religion are buried.
In response, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, harshly condemned the biased UNESCO vote. Danon commented in a press release, “This attempt to sever the ties between Israel and Hebron is shameful and offensive, and eliminates UNESCO’s last remaining shred of credibility.
“To disassociate Israel from the burial grounds of the patriarchs and matriarchs of our nation is an ugly display of discrimination, and an act of aggression against the Jewish people,” Danon continued.
INN reported Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan declaring that “UNESCO’s obscenity has been exposed: While ISIS destroys historical sites in Aleppo, Palmyra, Mosul, and other areas, UNESCO chooses to concentrate on Hebron and the Cave of the Patriarchs, which were never under any threat for as long as the State of Israel has existed.”
“You cannot rewrite history, and you cannot erase it,”, said Erdan. “Our father Abraham bought the Cave of the Patriarchs and paid for it in full. It is, and has always been, the burial place of our forefathers.”Our response will be to strengthen and deepen our connection to the Jewish city of Hebron.”
Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett noted that the Jewish people “had a continuous presence in Hebron from the time of our forefathers until 1929, when the Arabs slaughtered dozens of Jews in the city. But even that horrific slaughter did not manage to break our connection to the city and to the Cave of the Patriarchs, which has been a Jewish site since the days of the Bible. No vote will change these simple truths.”
Bennett blasted UNESCO for how it repeatedly “denies history and warps reality in order to serve, consciously, the interests of those who wish to destroy the Jewish state and wipe it off the map.”
“Israel will not cooperate with UNESCO until the organization ceases to be a political goring tool instead of a professional organization,” said Bennett.
UNESCO’s vote follows a string moves by its World Heritage Committee that form a Palestinian campaign to rewrite history to negate the Jewish people’s connection to the Land of Israel. Earlier this month, the body voted to brand the Jewish nation an “occupying” power in Jerusalem’s Old City, which is home to Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
By: United with Israel staff
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