Hebron, former capital city of Israel’s King David, site of the Tomb of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs (Maarat HaMachpelah), and location of the 1929 Massacre, when the Arabs murdered the Jewish residents of the Hebron and ended thousands of years of Jewish life in the ancient Jewish city.
UNESCO has declared that city of Hebron a “Palestinian World Heritage Site.”
Israel fought tooth and nail to block Friday’s vote, which took place just 40 miles from Auschwitz, and Poland had promised to make sure it was a secret vote, to increase the likelihood that the resolution wouldn’t pass. But the Poles failed to keep their agreement and the vote was held in the open, with 12 voting in favor of the resolution, three against, and six abstaining.
During the period when the Arabs controlled the Tomb of the Jewish Patriarchs, they did not allow Jews to pray at our holy site. That’s their heritage.
Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon reacted and said, “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 patriarchs of our nation is an ugly display of discrimination, and an act of aggression against the Jewish people.”
Earlier this week UNESCO passed a vote denying Israel’s connection to Jerusalem.
Some other notable UNESCO decisions.
– 1982: UNESCO declares the Old City of Jerusalem as a World Heritage Site “endangered” by Israel.
– 2009-2013: UNESCO adopted 46 (!) resolutions against Israel, compared to only 1 (!) against any other country (Syria).
– 2014: UNESCO abruptly cancels an exhibit on its grounds titled “The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel” which was sponsored together with the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
– 2016: UNESCO declares the Temple Mount, the site of the First and the Second Temples, and the adjacent Western Wall as Muslim sites,
thus effectively denying the historical millennia-long bond of the Jewish people to their holiest place on earth.