Israel’s War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands

Muslim gravestones desecrated in Jerusalem in suspected ‘price tag’ attack

10 November 2011

Assailants spray paint Mamilla Cemetery headstones with the slogans ‘Death to Arabs’ and the name of a settlement outpost slated for demolition. This is only the last in a series of violent activities against Palestinians and Israeli anti-Occupation activists.

IOA Editor: Mamilla Cemetery, a historic Jerusalem and Muslim landmark, has now been relegated by a junior Haaretz journalist to a site “next to the [yet-to-be-built] Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance.” The cemetery, containing centuries of Palestinian history, has been desecrated for decades by Israeli governments intent on eradicating Palestinian history. The museum, representing a distorted view of Jewish history, and imported from the US, is intended to physically replace yet another bit of Palestinian history — in Jerusalem, the very heart of Israeli-Palestinian contention. The Mamilla Cemetery case is crucially important: it is a very real, yet also a very symbolic, representation of Israeli ethnic cleansing in action.

More on the Mamilla Cemetery


 

By Oz Rosenberg, Haaretz – 10 Nov 2011
www.haaretz.com/news/national/muslim-gravestones-desecrated-in-jerusalem-in-suspected-price-tag-attack-1.394804

Assailants spray paint Mamilla Cemetery headstones with the slogans ‘Death to Arabs’ and the name of a settlement outpost slated for demolition

Graffiti scrawled across two broken headstones was discovered on Thursday in a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem.

“Death to Arabs” and “Givat Asaf” – the name of a West Bank settlement outpost that is slated for demolition – were spray-painted on the gravestones in the [Mamilla] Cemetery, next to the Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance.

Desecration of Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem, 10 November 2011

Desecration of Mamilla Cemetery, Jerusalem - 10 November 2011

It is still not known who is responsible for the desecration of the gravestones, or even exactly when it took place.

A month ago, on Yom Kippur, graves were desecrated with anti-Arab graffiti in two cemeteries in Jaffa, Christian and Muslim.

Police arrested a 21-year-old on Wednesday on suspicion of spray-painting ‘price tag’ and anti-Arab slogans, and on suspicion of being behind a false a bomb scare at the offices of left-wing political activists Peace Now. The young man had already being arrested in the past after he rang the doorbell of Yariv Oppenheimer, head of Peace Now, and threatened to harm him.

After police interrogated the man over the threats he uttered, he was released. A Jerusalem court remanded the man for another six days on Wednesday.

The man took responsibility for some of the crimes attributed to him at the beginning of his interrogation, including causing damage to the car of an Arab. He said that he did it because he “hates Arabs and hates Leftists.” But later he retracted his confession, and he is currently denying all accusations made against him.

The man’s lawyer, Shaul Ezra, claims that his client’s confession is inadmissible because it was extracted by force. Even when he confessed to some acts at first, the young man denied that accusation that he was responsible for spray-painting graffiti at the home of Hagit Ofran, the Settlement Watch Committee of Peace Now.

Israel Police Commander Yohanan Danino vowed to Peace Now activists on Wednesday that the police was taking every measure to ensure their security and apprehend those responsible for the attacks.

The police struck out in court in another incident that had triggered suspicions of being a ‘price tag’ attack. The police believed that they had enough evidence against three suspects who were caught in Wadi Ara soon after the murder of a family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar, carrying bottles of propane.

The three men claimed in court that they were on their way to visit the graves of Jewish saints and had taken propane will them in the event of an emergency.

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