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.
Like thwarted spoiled bullies, both Israel and the US reacted with theatrical pique and fury. The US, never applying sanctions against Israel’s decades- long war crimes in Gaza and the OPT’s by suspending its steadfast cornucopia of billions in aid and arms, immediately withdrew its $80 million contribution to UNESCO as a collective punishment.
The continuous desecrations taking place in Mamilla are not isolated or random acts. They are part of a pattern of systematically discriminatory policies that have been implemented against Palestinians since 1948, and are still being implemented inside Israel proper and in the territories occupied in 1967. These policies have resulted in the expropriation of most of the over ninety-three percent of the property of Mandatory Palestine that in 1948 was owned by Arabs.
Yesterday, parties defending a 12th century Muslim burial ground in Jerusalem from disinterment and desecration provided new information on the latest demolitions by Israel’s Jerusalem Municipality to the United Nations and other international officials whom they initially petitioned on the matter in February 2010. The letter was sent by US academic Rashid I. Khalidi on behalf of the Campaign to Preserve Mamilla Jerusalem Cemetery.
Sixty-two years after the founding of the state … it is time to acknowledge that the Jewish state is not interested in also being the state of its Arab citizens. The predicament of the Arab minority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Green Line, especially the Muslim Arab minority, is an indication of the attitude of the Jewish democratic state toward those who do not belong to the lords of the land.
Yesterday, the day before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began, at 2:30 in the morning, workers sent by the Israeli authorities, protected by dozens of police, destroyed the tombstones in the last portion of the Mamilla cemetery, an historic Muslim burial ground with graves going back to the 7th Century, hitherto left untouched. The government of Israel has always been fully cognizant of the sanctity and historic significance of the site.
Rashid Khalidi: “Our efforts to insure that the competent UN authorities fully address this issue will continue, and we intend to keep the campaign on the international agenda until Israel and the Simon Wiesenthal Center desist from this project that has desecrated an important Muslim and Palestinian cultural heritage site.”
Senior Israeli Antiquities Authority archaeologist: “They call this an archaeological excavation but it’s really a clearing-out, an erasure of the Muslim past. It is actually Jews against Arabs.” Jonathan Cook reports.
[C]reate a park at the site in memory of the people buried there, serving all the city’s residents… the part of the cemetery that remains should be restored and cared for; it should be turned into one of the sites that Jerusalem is proud of. The absence of construction on the excavation site must be part of the healing process that Jerusalem so needs: healing through tolerance.
The decision to resume opposition to the project follows a Haaretz investigation into excavation at the site, located in the Mamilla area of Jerusalem, and the damage it has caused to hundreds of graves there. The museum is being built by the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Haaretz: Skeletons, High Court rulings, bigwigs embroiled in other scandals, a world-famous architect and some Hollywood panache − all are part of the story of the Museum of Tolerance, slated for one of the most sensitive parts of Jerusalem: on top of a Muslim cemetery. For the first time, Haaretz reveals evidence of a highly dubious, five-month rescue excavation that took place secretly on the site, plus other previously unknown details. A three-part saga.
IOA Editor: The Mamilla Cemetery is a Muslim cemetery with thousands of grave sites that go back some 1200 years. Grave sites are sacred to both Islam and Judaism. This case demonstrates vividly how important it is for Israel to eradicate every possible trace of Palestinian life from the history of Palestine – chapters of history that document non-Jewish life – and doing so even at the risk of embarrassment and international criticism. And while the erasure of the history of the Palestinian dead is important, it actually compliments a far greater injustice: the razing of some 500 Palestinian villages by Israel during the 1948 Nakba and the Occupation.
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Following Haaretz report: Arabs to resume Museum of Tolerance battle
Haaretz: Skeletons, High Court rulings, bigwigs embroiled in other scandals, a world-famous architect and some Hollywood panache − all are part of the story of the Museum of Tolerance, slated for one of the most sensitive parts of Jerusalem: on top of a Muslim cemetery. For the first time, Haaretz reveals evidence of a highly dubious, five-month rescue excavation that took place secretly on the site, plus other previously unknown details. A three-part saga.
IOA Editor: The Mamilla Cemetery is a Muslim cemetery with thousands of grave sites that go back some 1200 years. Grave sites are sacred to both Islam and Judaism. This case demonstrates vividly how important it is for Israel to eradicate every possible trace of Palestinian life from the history of Palestine – chapters of history that document non-Jewish life – and doing so even at the risk of embarrassment and international criticism. And while the erasure of the history of the Palestinian dead is important, it actually compliments a far greater injustice: the razing of some 500 Palestinian villages by Israel during the 1948 Nakba and the Occupation.
Haaretz: Skeletons, High Court rulings, bigwigs embroiled in other scandals, a world-famous architect and some Hollywood panache − all are part of the story of the Museum of Tolerance, slated for one of the most sensitive parts of Jerusalem: on top of a Muslim cemetery. For the first time, Haaretz reveals evidence of a highly dubious, five-month rescue excavation that took place secretly on the site, plus other previously unknown details. A three-part saga.
IOA Editor: The Mamilla Cemetery is a Muslim cemetery with thousands of grave sites that go back some 1200 years. Grave sites are sacred to both Islam and Judaism. This case demonstrates vividly how important it is for Israel to eradicate every possible trace of Palestinian life from the history of Palestine – chapters of history that document non-Jewish life – and doing so even at the risk of embarrassment and international criticism. And while the erasure of the history of the Palestinian dead is important, it actually compliments a far greater injustice: the razing of some 500 Palestinian villages by Israel during the 1948 Nakba and the Occupation.
Haaretz: Skeletons, High Court rulings, bigwigs embroiled in other scandals, a world-famous architect and some Hollywood panache − all are part of the story of the Museum of Tolerance, slated for one of the most sensitive parts of Jerusalem: on top of a Muslim cemetery. For the first time, Haaretz reveals evidence of a highly dubious, five-month rescue excavation that took place secretly on the site, plus other previously unknown details. A three-part saga.
IOA Editor: The Mamilla Cemetery is a Muslim cemetery with thousands of grave sites that go back some 1200 years. Grave sites are sacred to both Islam and Judaism. This case demonstrates vividly how important it is for Israel to eradicate every possible trace of Palestinian life from the history of Palestine – chapters of history that document non-Jewish life – and doing so even at the risk of embarrassment and international criticism. And while the erasure of the history of the Palestinian dead is important, it actually compliments a far greater injustice: the razing of some 500 Palestinian villages by Israel during the 1948 Nakba and the Occupation.
Haaretz: Skeletons, High Court rulings, bigwigs embroiled in other scandals, a world-famous architect and some Hollywood panache − all are part of the story of the Museum of Tolerance, slated for one of the most sensitive parts of Jerusalem: on top of a Muslim cemetery. For the first time, Haaretz reveals evidence of a highly dubious, five-month rescue excavation that took place secretly on the site, plus other previously unknown details. A three-part saga.
IOA Editor: The Mamilla Cemetery is a Muslim cemetery with thousands of grave sites that go back some 1200 years. Grave sites are sacred to both Islam and Judaism. This case demonstrates vividly how important it is for Israel to eradicate every possible trace of Palestinian life from the history of Palestine – chapters of history that document non-Jewish life – and doing so even at the risk of embarrassment and international criticism. And while the erasure of the history of the Palestinian dead is important, it actually compliments a far greater injustice: the razing of some 500 Palestinian villages by Israel during the 1948 Nakba and the Occupation.
Haaretz: Skeletons, High Court rulings, bigwigs embroiled in other scandals, a world-famous architect and some Hollywood panache − all are part of the story of the Museum of Tolerance, slated for one of the most sensitive parts of Jerusalem: on top of a Muslim cemetery. For the first time, Haaretz reveals evidence of a highly dubious, five-month rescue excavation that took place secretly on the site, plus other previously unknown details. A three-part saga.
IOA Editor: The Mamilla Cemetery is a Muslim cemetery with thousands of grave sites that go back some 1200 years. Grave sites are sacred to both Islam and Judaism. This case demonstrates vividly how important it is for Israel to eradicate every possible trace of Palestinian life from the history of Palestine – chapters of history that document non-Jewish life – and doing so even at the risk of embarrassment and international criticism. And while the erasure of the history of the Palestinian dead is important, it actually compliments a far greater injustice: the razing of some 500 Palestinian villages by Israel during the 1948 Nakba and the Occupation.
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