Buried Facts Around Cemetery Controversy

TS
CAMERA/Snapshots
21 February'10

Saree Makdisi, a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times Op-Ed page who calls for the dissolution of the Jewish state of Israel, argued Feb. 12 against the Simon Weisenthal's planned Museum of Tolerance, slated to be built over a parking lot which was formerly a Muslim cemetery. His impassioned plea to prevent the alleged desecration of Muslim graves took a huge hit last week with the revelation of a 1945 Palestine Post article about Muslim plans to build over the very same site. The Jerusalem Post reports:

However, a November 22, 1945 article from The Palestine Post (the pre-state name of The Jerusalem Post), which was forwarded to the Wiesenthal Center on Monday after being posted on a blog, reports Muslim plans to build directly over the cemetery.

The report states, “An area of over 450 dunams in the heart of Jerusalem, now forming the Mamilla Cemetery, is to be converted into a business centre.

“The town-plan is being completed under the supervision of the Supreme Moslem Council in conjunction with the Government Town Planning Adviser,” the article continues.
“A six-storeyed building to house the Supreme Moslem Council and other offices, a four-storeyed hotel, a bank and other buildings suitable for it, a college, a club and a factory are to be the main structures. There will also be a park to be called the Salah ed Din Park, after the Moslem warrior of Crusader times.”

The 1945 article also describes plans by the council to transfer remains buried in the cemetery to a separate, “walled reserve” and cites rulings from prominent Muslim clerics at the time allowing for the building plans to progress.

“In an interview with Al-Wih-da, the Jerusalem weekly,” the Palestine Post article continues, “a member of the Supreme Moslem Council stated that the use of Moslem cemeteries in the public interest had many precedents both in Palestine and elsewhere.

“The member added that the Supreme Moslem Council intended to publish a statement containing dispensations by Egyptian, Hijazi and Demascene clerics sanctioning the building programme. He pointed out that the work would be carried out in stages and by public tender. Several companies had already been formed in anticipation, and funds were plentiful.”

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A proper site for a Museum of Tolerance

The Wiesenthal Center's project has been approved by the government and the courts, and will be built on property that is not a cemetery but a parking lot.


Marvin Hier
L.A. Times
12 February '10

Listening to the few vocal opponents of our Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem project -- among them the notorious Sheik Raed Salah, leader of the extremist Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel -- you would never know that the Israeli Supreme Court deliberated for almost three years before unanimously rejecting all their claims and authorizing the Wiesenthal Center to begin construction. Just six weeks ago, Chief Justice Dorit Beinish also rebuked those who re-petitioned the Supreme Court for an "abuse of court proceedings," ordering them to pay professional costs.

Still, our opponents would have you believe that in the name of tolerance, our bulldozers actually have invaded the adjacent Mamilla Cemetery, desecrating ancient Muslim tombstones and historic markers.

They don't want you to know the real facts. The museum is not being built on what can rightfully be called the Mamilla Cemetery, but on a three-acre site in the heart of West Jerusalem that, for more than half a century, served as the city's municipal car park. Each day, hundreds of people of all faiths parked in the three-level underground structure without any protest from Muslim religious or academic leaders or interest groups. Additionally, telephone and electrical cables and sewer lines were laid deep below ground in the early 1960s, again without any protest.

As the Supreme Court noted in its ruling, "for almost 50 years the compound has not been a part of the cemetery, both in the normative sense and in the practical sense, and it was used for various public purposes." It also noted: "During all those years no one raised any claim, on even one occasion, that the planning procedures violated the sanctity of the site, or that they were contrary to the law as a result of the historical and religious uniqueness of the site. . . . For decades this area was not regarded as a cemetery by the general public or by the Muslim community. . . . No one denied this position."

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Related article: Demagoguery at its finest
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Demagoguery at its finest

Seth Frantzman
Terra Incognita/JPost
09 February '10

In early January it was reported that famed architect Frank Gehry had ended his participation in the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s project to build a Museum of Tolerance in downtown Jerusalem. It is the latest in a controversial saga that has united old Muslim Jerusalemite families, Arab protesters and Reform Jews in attempts to stop the project. In April 2004, a groundbreaking was held to inaugurate construction. The museum was slated to be built atop an eyesore of a parking lot that abutted a disused cemetery that was the site of overgrown weeds, trash, illicit meetings and drunks. Its graves lay in a state of extreme neglect.

When rumors circulated that, in the course of removing the parking lot, skeletons were discovered, people began to take notice. Reports speak of the cemetery containing “long-ago associates of the prophet Muhammad.” Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism and not usually an expert on the historical geography of the Holy City or its Muslims, claimed it was “a plot of land where Muslims have been burying their dead for most of the last 800 years.”

Ya’acov Yehoshua (father of A.B. Yehoshua) wrote in 1950 that the cemetery contained “70,000 of the Muslim fighters who were in Saladin al-Ayoubi’s army.”

In general, media reports have had shocking headlines, such as the Independent’s “Israel plans to build ‘museum of tolerance’ on Muslim graves.” Had photos accompanied the reports, the public might have realized the existing cemetery, including such noticeable graves as that of former Ottoman governor Ahmed Agha Duzdar, was being left untouched.

Supporters of the museum claim an 1894 Shari’a court ruled that the sanctity of the cemetery could be lifted. In 1928, the Palace Hotel, whose investors included Haj Amin al-Husseini, was given the right by the Higher Islamic Council to build on a site next to the cemetery. When ancient tombs were discovered in laying the foundations of the hotel, Husseini, who was also the mufti of Jerusalem, “ruled that any bones could simply be removed and issued a gag order for the entire operation.”

The hotel was turned over to the State of Israel in 1948 as absentee property. In 1964 the Supreme Islamic Council in Jerusalem declared the “location was so old it was no longer sacred.” During the 1960s, a parking lot was paved over a small portion of the cemetery. In 1992 that part was given to the municipality. Haggai Elias, a former municipal spokesman, claims that “in Islam, after 25 years the sanctity wears off.”

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