Menachem Lubinsky..
Har HaZeitim Preservation..
03 January '12..
Jerusalem
For the past year and a half, I have become a student of security issues that relate to preserving the 3,000 year-old holy cemetery of Har Hazeisim. This resulted from my involvement with the International Committee for the Preservation of Har Hazeisim, a broad-based group my brother Avrohom founded. His initiative came following a critical report in May 2010 by Micha Lindenstrauss, Israel’s State Controller, criticizing successive Israeli governments for neglecting Har Hazeisim for 43 years (at the time) since its capture in the Six-Day War of 1967. (I am actually writing this on the yahrzeit of my father Chaim Pinchas Lubinsky zt”l, who is buried on Har Hazeisim along with my mother Pesa o”h).
Despite a dramatic improvement in the past year, including the installment of 80 surveillance cameras, thanks in large measure to the committee, graves are still frequently randomly destroyed and visitors and mourners occasionally stoned, albeit with far less frequency than before the committee swung into action. There are still areas of the legendary mountain that are without cameras, a small mosque near the main entrance of Har Hazeisim (and just several feet from the gravesite of the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his wife Aliza) was being significantly expanded despite a Stop Order from the Municipality, police deployment while promised is still sorely lacking, and broad support for a new bill imposing stiff new penalties for violence perpetrated in cemeteries is still elusive. In addition, there is concern for the continued budget allocation specifically designated for Har Hazeisim.
Most of the violence perpetrated on Har Hazeisim emanates from the three Arab neighborhoods that hug the sprawling mountain: Ras al Amud, A-Tor, and Silwan. The struggle to preserve the Jewish character of East Jerusalem extends even to the name as the Arabs consider Har Hazeisim, despite its obvious Jewish historic significance, as part of the Ras al Amud neighborhood. The controversial mosque is also known as the Ras al Amud Mosque. Arab vehicles and schoolchildren routinely use the cemetery as a thoroughfare, not to speak of the thriving drug trade in some areas.
While the committee has focused on the kedusha of Har Hazeisim and the kovod hameis of the nearly 135,000 people who are buried there, including three Nevi’im, many see the struggle for the Jewish character of Har Hazeisim as central to the larger battle of keeping Yerushalayim united under Jewish control, a pronouncement often made by Israeli leaders but not always accompanied by action. It is unconscionable to most Jews that Har Hazeisim should not be accessible to any Jew who wishes to daven there. How could it be that a state that prides itself in providing access to all religions should tolerate Jews being stoned as they seek access to the holy Har Hazeisim? Shouldn’t Jews in their own homeland at least have the same right as Christians and Muslims.
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