Jewish Group Urges UNESCO to Reject Palestinian Calls to Place Hebron on Danger List

"A leading American-Jewish organization has called the UN's cultural body to reject Palestinian attempts to 'hijack the agenda' of the upcoming World Heritage Committee meeting by seeking to designate the city of Hebron as a 'World Heritage Site in Danger.'

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations released a statement on Thursday urging the director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to prevent such an outcome, calling Palestinians claim to the city, located in the West Bank and home to the Tomb of the Patriarchs (also known as Cave of the Patriarchs) as 'replete with false information and baseless charges.'...

The organization's chairman, Stephen M. Greenberg, and executive vice chairman/CEO, Malcolm Hoenlein, called on the UN body's head, Irina Bokova 'to assure that this scurrilous effort not be allowed to proceed.'

The World Heritage Committee is set to meet July 1 in Krakow, Poland...

'To succumb to this unwarranted call to designate the old city of Hebron as a 'World Heritage Site in Danger' would further denigrate the United Nations, diminish UNESCO and reinforce the irrational bias against Israel so common at the international body and its agencies,' they went on..."