When Arabs defile the graves on the Mount of Olives, that's not news. Why not?

...But now that Israel is once again sovereign over all of Jerusalem, how can we stand by silently and watch as this national treasure is being defiled, despoiled and desecrated on a daily basis? Let's restore some dignity to the Mount of Olives and, by doing so, to ourselves as well.

Michael Freund..
Pundicity/JPost..
02 July '15..

Amid the recent surge in Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israelis, our ostensible peace partners have also launched an unprecedented assault against the oldest and most prominent Jewish cemetery in the world: the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Not content with trying to snuff out the lives of innocent Jews, Palestinian vandals have been systematically and with impunity smashing tombstones, setting fires and desecrating graves.

Though the phenomenon itself is not new, the pace of destruction has been gaining pace in recent weeks, and Israel must act to protect this ancient and hallowed ground.

Located in the heart of the capital, the Mount of Olives has been used since at least the First Temple period, more than 2,500 years ago, as a place for Jewish burial. That's right: thousands of years before Islam was founded or Palestinian nationalism was invented, Jews were living in Jerusalem and burying their dead on the Mount of Olives, a tangible sign that our presence in this land predates that of our critics or foes.

If you haven't strolled through its vast and varied sections, you might be surprised to learn of the wide range of prominent figures whose final resting places are located there. Rabbinic giants such as the Ramban (Nahmanides), from the 13th century, Rabbi Ovadiah Mibartenura, the 15th-century commentator on the Mishna, and the famed 18th-century biblical exegete the Ohr Hachayim Hakadosh, Rabbi Chaim ben Attar, are all buried at the site, as are Rabbi Yehudah Alkalay, one of the founding fathers of religious Zionism, and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the Land of Israel.

But it is not only prominent rabbis who were interred on the Mount of Olives. Eliezer ben-Yehuda, the founder of modern Hebrew, was buried there, as was Nobel Prize winning author S. Y. Agnon, poet Uri Zvi Greenberg, former prime minister Menachem Begin and the legendary Henrietta Szold, who established Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America.

A host of other rabbinical luminaries, leading cultural and historical lights and Zionist figures were laid to rest in the burial grounds, as was my relative, Rabbi Shmuel Salant, who served as Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Jerusalem for almost 70 years until he passed away in 1909.

In any other country, such a site would be treated with the proper veneration and respect, and any attempt, concerted or otherwise, to desecrate it would be harshly punished.

Nonetheless, here in Israel and across the Jewish world, the systematic Palestinian assaults on the Mount of Olives have largely been under-reported, and too little has been done to find and punish the perpetrators.

Under Armed Escort - A Visit to the World’s Largest Jewish Cemetery

NRG..
harhazeisim.org..
12 March '13..

Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Naomi Tsur recently made a moving journey to Har Hazeitim to visit the grave of her grandfather. What would be a common event for most mourners was anything but typical for Tsur – under Police escort, it was the first time she paid her respects to the gravesite since 1967. Fear of frequent attacks en route to and inside the world’s largest and oldest Jewish cemetery played a role in the decades which elapsed since Tsur’s original visit 46 years ago, not allowing the Deputy Mayor to remember the site of the actual tombstone.

The final resting place of Tsur’s grandfather was identified by the Israeli branch of the International Committee for the Preservation of Har Hazeitim. Founded by New York City businessmen Abraham and Menachem Lubinsky, whose Shoah-surviving parents are buried on Har Hazeitim, the two dedicated brothers have made it their personal mission to preserve and safeguard the cemetery where Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Nobel Laureate Shai Agnon, American Zionist leader Henrietta Szold, reviver of modern Hebrew Eliezer Ben-Yehudah, religious Zionism founder Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and three Biblical prophets are buried, among countless other notables of the Jewish People.

AfterNaomi Tsur’s long-awaited return to her grandfather’s grave, she was then guided by Harvey Schwartz and Jeff Daube of the Committee to other areas of the extensive cemetery where more than 150,000 Jews have been buried in a period stretching over 3,000 years.

Desecration of graves and illegal construction

Tsur’s deeply personal pilgrimage took place against the backdrop of the present-day struggle that exists at Har Hazeitim.

Tsur witnessed illegal building of Arab homes on cemetery grounds, a mosque expansion in defiance of a yet-to-be-executed Jerusalem municipality demolition order and rampant garbage dumping that desecrates the holy site. The Deputy Mayor also learned about widespread grave desecrations and continuous violence directed against cemetery visitors. Those en route to the Cemetery and visitors onsite have suffered from stone-throwing incidents, Molotov cocktails and violent attacks by the local Arab population. Two United States Congressmen visiting Har Hazeitim were subjected to a stoning attack and, on a separate occasion, a near-lynching of a groom trying to visit his mother’s grave on the way to his wedding was narrowly avoided.

Shragai - The Mount of Olives under attack

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
18 May '12..

In the winter of 1948, driving to the Mount of Olives became dangerous because the route passed through Arab neighborhoods. The British allowed the Jews to hold burials on the mountain only twice a week, at night, and only with an armed escort. When the security situation worsened in the spring, burials on the Mount of Olives ceased entirely, and the burial societies were given plots of land in western Jerusalem.

Sixty-four years later, with the Mount of Olives under Israeli sovereignty, there is no escaping the painful comparison. The incidents that have taken place on the way to the Mount of Olives over the past several months are reminiscent of the British Mandate era. Almost every week, Jews are attacked on their way there. Families who wish to visit the graves of their loved ones or hold funerals there need armed security guards. As a result, the public has made its choice: many families who had formerly wished to hold funerals on the Mount of Olives now choose cemeteries in the city’s western section.

An Israel Hayom survey reveals that since the year 2000, approximately 3,500 Jewish burials have taken place on the Mount of Olives — a drastic drop of about 50 percent compared with the first decades following the 1967 Six-Day War. According to the cemetery council, demand for burial in the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, the largest and most important Jewish cemetery in the world, is declining after 3,000 years. Taxi drivers from all over Israel sent a letter to the police commissioner stating that at certain hours of the day, the drive to the Mount of Olives endangers their lives, since vehicles belonging to Jews are pelted with stones and boulder fragments from both sides of the road. Several drivers have stopped taking families to memorial services there. One driver, Pinhas Saidoff, declared that he "won’t risk my life or the lives of my passengers."

"What is happening on the way to the Mount of Olives is a disgrace. If Jews were to throw stones at Arab cars, the authorities would put a stop to it quickly enough,” Saidoff said.

After a long period of dormancy, the authorities have finally started to wake up over the past few years, perhaps not a moment too soon. In an attempt to prevent vandalism and gravestone desecration, 123 cameras placed throughout the Mount of Olives transmit images to centers run by the Housing Ministry. Soon, the cameras will also be connected to the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and to the new police station on the mount. As yet, no cameras have been mounted on the road where most of the Jews have been attacked — the road that connects Mount Scopus to the Mount of Olives and goes through the A-Tur neighborhood. Therefore, the police cannot ensure the safety of Jews driving to or from the mount.

Mt. of Olives? Yes, we have a problem.

02 May '12..







Anybody visiting the Mount of Olives in recent years will recognize quite well the abysmal situation confronting all but the most intrepid who arrive in the vicinity. This needs to stop, and stop now, not tomorrow.

This from Melanie Lidman/JPost:

“I can’t take you to the Mount of Olives, it’s 10:15 a.m.!” I threw up my hands in exasperation when the third taxi driver in a row refused to take me to the new police post on the mount.

“Fine,” I told him. “Take me to the Hebrew University and I’ll walk from there.”

Activist organizations have cited an increase in stone-throwing attacks against Jewish vehicles trying to get to the cemetery on the capital’s Mount of Olives in the past year, but never was this fact more visible than on Wednesday morning when I couldn’t find a cab to take me to... a police station.

“You have to understand, at 10:30 a.m. the students at the boys’ school will go out for recess and they’ll just throw stones at us for fun,” the driver explained apologetically as we headed toward the university.

Kushner - From Israel: On the Mount of Olives

Arlene Kushner..
27 February '12..

Before beginning my discussion about the Mount, I am delighted to be able to share good news:

Some days ago, I sent out an e-mail about a 16 month old boy -- Rafael Zakkai Avraham ben Yakira Avigael -- who had a very rare cancer in the spine. The situation sounded dire and I asked for prayers. The news now is that the child was misdiagnosed: the tumor in his spine is benign. The parents were very cautious about accepting this new diagnosis prematurely, but have now had confirmation from two labs. Baruch Hashem.

What this means is that this poor baby will not need intense chemotherapy, and the tumor will not metastasize. But he will still require complicated surgery on his spine. The prayers are working, writes the mother -- please, keep praying!!

~~~~~~~~~~

Now to the Mount of Olives (Har HaZeitim), which is on the periphery of eastern Jerusalem.

Found on the Mount is the oldest cemetery in Jewish history, dating back 3,000 years and containing some 150,000 graves. The earliest burial caves date from the First Temple; the cemetery is still actively in use today.

Daphne Anson - Desecrating The Jewish Cemetery On The Mount Of Olives: The Way It Is, & Was

Daphne Anson
21 December '11

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/12/desecrating-jewish-cemetery-on-mount-of.html

On his blog Israel Matsav has posted a video (hat tip: reader Shirlee) of an Arab vandal caught red-handed uprooting and destroying a tombstone in the Jewish cemetery on Har HaZeitim, the Mount of Olives, the most ancient burial ground in the world that is still in use, and of course one in which scores of renowned sages repose. (That of the prophet Zachariah can be seen in this photograph, right foreground.) As Israel Matsav's blog notes, the vandal (who received a three-month gaol sentence) had been paid to carry out the task of desecration, and the incident is by no means isolated; even mourners are sometimes physically attacked.


Uploaded by LoneStarJLM on Dec 19, 2011


Hooliganism on Har HaZeitim was rampant during the Jordanian occupation of the Old City from 1948-67. And what's more, it was state-sponsored.

In 1954 the Israeli Government wrote to the then Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold, telling him that it had (to quote the London-based Jewish Chronicle, 16 July 1954, which carried a photo of damaged tombstones):

"[C]onclusive proof of the extent to which the destruction and spoilation of the cemetery proceeded.

More than half of its area had been stripped of all signs of its consecrated character... Tombstones had been completely destroyed or removed and some part of the grounds showed marks of ploughing. Some of the missing stones are said to have been used in the construction of a cinema in Jericho.

Jews from at least 28 countries, including scores of sages and holy men, lie buried in this ancient and historic cemetery..."

With the liberation of the Old City from Jordanian rule in June 1967, the full extent of the abuse suffered by the cemetery became apparent.

Postmortem of a (Faulty) Cemeteries Comparison

Tamar Sternthall
CAMERA/Snapshots
16 August '10

Ha'aretz's Nir Hasson labors hard to draw a tortured comparison between two cemeteries -- the Jewish cemetery of Mount of Olives in eastern Jerusalem and the Muslim cemetery in Mamilla, western Jerusalem. The false comparison that really gets under our skin is:

Until the Six-Day War, both cemeteries were neglected, the Jewish cemetery by Jordan and the Arab cemetery by Israel.

The Jordanians neglected the Mount of Olives cemetery? Neglect, as in failing to make repairs, pick up trash, and generally maintaining the site? In fact, the fate of the Mount of Olives cemetery under Jordanian control from 1948-1967 is well known, and the desecration way surpasses anything akin to passive disrepair or the accumulation of trash.

(Read full post)

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