This just in. A group of human rights orgs have filed "urgent petitions" with UN bodies in Geneva to stop the desecration of the Mamilla cemetery in Jerusalem, where thousands of graves going back to Salahdin are being bulldozed to make way for a goddamn "Museum of Tolerance."
Israel has an obligation to respect and protect the holy sites of its minority religious and ethnic populations, including Mamilla cemetery, under international law, United Nations resolutions and under its own domestic law. Despite Israel’s legal obligations, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in favor of construction of the museum and the government has refused to halt the disinterment of bodies and the destruction of the ancient cemetery. For this reason, the petitioners have decided to bring this issue to the international community with the aid of human rights organizations such as Center for Constitutional Rights.
"This case has a wince factor," says Michael Smith of WBAI. Here are photos/description of Mamilla’s importance. The great Rashid Khalidi, whose own ancestors are buried/tumbling in Mamilla, is all over the case. "This is a cemetery that includes the remains of attested historical figures going right back to the Crusades, saints and religious figures and judges– every Muslim family in Jerusalem was buried there," he says. " An array of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian religious figures are against the project, which shows a degree of callousness that must be exposed. There is no recourse in Israel on this issue. All recourse has been exhausted."
Phil, you rock.
Imagine if it were a Jewish cemetary. The outrage, the cries of racism and antisemitism.
And not of word of it in the MSM.
Museum of Tolerance on a gravesite. What irony.
A sick nation, and Zionism is it’s disease. It’s like they
want to destroy themselves.
Dead Nazis in their graves are would say, look at the
caliber of these people. The chosen ones. Yeah right…
map: link to wikimapia.org
Once I was explaining this that and the other about Israel/Palestine history to a Jewish woman I was traveling with around the West Bank. She said it all clicked for her when I mentioned that there was a mental institution with holocaust survivor inmates on the grounds of the Deir Yassin massacre.
Don’t forget the Canadian funded “Canada Park” near Jerusalem was also built on Palestinian graveyard, mosque and church.
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
Tolerance is in such short supply amongst Israelis that they even have to put it in a museum — and get the US taxpayer to pay for the building (which is indeed the case).
They could use a museum of wisdom too then.
What’s the Muslim religious view on preservation of graves? It just seems like the real crime happened in the 60′s when the place was turned into a parking lot and not now when that parking lot is being turned into a museum. Or am I missing something?
This story brings two thoughts to mind. The first is the boundless gall and complete lack of self-awareness that allows a museum of tolerance to be built on a foundation of contempt for the Other. It is incredibly emblematic. The second is the abject failure of Israeli institutions – first and foremost the High Court – to safeguard the basic rights of non-Jews in Israel/Palestine. The same conclusion must be drawn from the evictions in Sheikh Jarrah. This too is emblematic – emblematic of the fundamental flaw in the “Jewish and democratic” formula. (And no, Israel is not Jewish and democratic like France is French and democratic, and it can never be.)
You think they don’t know exactly what they’re doing, Shmuel?
That’s an interesting question I often ask myself, potsherd, but the level of self-deception really is mind-boggling.
Rashid Khalidi and Michael Ratner talked about this on Democracy Now this morning:
link to democracynow.org
Interesting colloquy between Shmuel and potsherd over whether the Israeli authorities and SW Center are blind to their outrageous insensitivity or are deliberately flaunting it. I would guess the latter, because there must have been numerous alternative sites they could have chosen for the museum, and they could not have been unaware of this site’s cultural importance for the Palestinians. This surely is not the only instance of Israelis reinforcing Jewish sovereignty over competing Muslim/Christian claims, but it must be among the most flagrant and hypocritical. Most novelists would have been ashamed to come up with this plot.
Truth can be stranger than fiction, David. I lived in Jerusalem for twenty years, and the site is a public park in the heart of the city, with a very smal area in which some very old-looking graves are still visible, and one small mausoleum with an inscription in Arabic. There is a convenient road through it and a car park – above and underground. If the area is famous for anything, it’s for casual gay sex. It was all claimed by the municipality years ago, and I can’t believe that anyone in the municipality or among the city’s developers felt there was some point to make here, some territory to mark. I suspect they were truly shocked when the issue of the cemetery came up. It’s “West” Jerusalem, with nary an Arab in site. It’s the part of the city “everyone” agrees on, the part that will be “ours” in any agreement. When the objections did come up, the defence mechanisms simply kicked in: “the area was deconsecrated long ago”, “they just want to block anything we do in Jerusalem”, etc.
I have the evil thought that all they would need to do to stop this project is discover the possibility that there might be a Jewish grave among the others at the site.
The dynamic of possible Jewish graves is somewhat different. It goes something like this:
1. Secular authorities authorise a project and begin construction.
2. Rumours spread that there may be Jewish remains on the site.
3. Haredim demonstrate, riot, vandalise equipment, etc.
4. Work is held up.
5. A halakhically-acceptable compromise is found (special arches and underground chambers, moving something or other a few metres over, etc.)
6. Work resumes as before.
I will defer to your level-headed and informed opinion, Shmuel. We’ll never know for sure, but either way, the Museum of Tolerance is a testament to intolerance, just like the Anti-Defamation League specializes in defamation.
The hypocrisy is indeed striking and emblematic of a lot of Zionist discourse – using the very language and symbolism of human rights, civil rights, democracy, tolerance and peace, as tools of oppression.
That last phrase of yours is memorable, David.
I found this story on Hasbara Buster’s blog,
link to ynetnews.com
Phil should cover this story too.
Saree Makdisi has a great opinion piece in the LA Times on this
link to latimes.com