Mamilla Cemetery Chutzpah and the Museum of Tolerance

[Behind the Aegis]

Last week, the Jerusalem Post ran a front page story on the decision of the Supreme Muslim Council, in 1945, to turn the Mamilla Cemetery into a business center. The reason the Post gave it such prominence is because it belies the sheer hypocrisy of Palestinian groups and a few of their Israeli supporters and NGOs who, for four years, have criticized the Simon Wiesenthal Center for building a Museum of Tolerance on what was once the City’s municipal car park.

The article appeared in the Palestine Post on page 2 on November 22, 1945, when Jerusalem was still under British Mandate and before Israel came into being. Entitled “Cemetery Into Business Centre,” the article read:

“An area of over 450 dunams <111 acres> in the heart of Jerusalem, now forming the Mamillah Cemetery, is to be converted into a business centre. The townplan is being completed under the supervision of the Supreme Muslim Council in conjunction with the Government Town Planning Adviser. A six-storeyed building to house the Supreme Muslim Council and other offices, a four-storeyed hotel, a bank and other buildings suitable for 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 Muslim warrior of Crusader times.”

“The remains buried in the Cemetery are being transferred to a spot round the tomb of al Sayid al Kurashi, ancestor of the Dajani family, in a 40 dunams walled reserve.”

“In an interview with ‘Al Wihda,’ the Jerusalem weekly, a member of the Supreme Muslim Council stated that the use of Muslim cemeteries in the public interest had many precedents both in Palestine and elsewhere. He quoted the cases of the Bab al Sahira (Herod’s Gate) Cemetery, which formerly stretched down Saint Stephen‘s Gate; the Jaffa Cemetery, which was converted into a commercial centre and Queen Farida Square in Cairo, which not long ago was a cemetery.”

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[ConsAreLiars]

1. It is a rather different case than this writer for a small Boston religious publication describes.

Apart from citing precedent as a justification -- there are many historical precedents that are certainly not justification for any mass murder, slaughter, starving oppressing, punishing -- this is a stupid a bit of jackassery as one can find on many levels. No surprise you repeated it.

"Some Muslims did something similar several decades ago so it's a good and just thing."

Sort of like the meme repeated here by the more simple-minded that since some Muslims oppress and kill others, Jews are justified in oppressing and killing Muslims. Or Palestinians vs. Israelis. Choose your descriptors.

There is rather a bit of difference between relatives and co-religionists deciding to excavate and move the remains than when an outsider, and a hostile one, does that. I'm certain you are offended, as am I, at the very least, when some headstones get defaced with swastikas by haters here who've killed a few here.

Put that offense on a scale where the mass murders by one side in the conflict are many magnitudes greater, and compare the desecration of spray-painting headstones to removing the remains and dumping them someone else.

Rhetorical challenge, of course. I know you can't see the aboriginal population as anything but subhuman savages whose desire to live on/from and regain access to the land they and their families lived on for generations as anything other than anti-semitism. And further evidence that kill-em-all is the only (final?) solution.

[shergald]

2. The real issue here is the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem....

that we see intensifying this past year since Likud regained power. It is taking Palestinian land and transferring it for use by Jewish Israelis, which seems to be part of this current mayor's plan to oust the "Arab" element from East Jerusalem. It may take decades, but given Israel's segregation laws, we can expect to see one family at a time lose their property to Jewish dwellers in East Jerusalem.

Regardless of the earlier proposal by Palestinian busnessmen, the current proposal is based purely on "Arab" racism, because it is highly doubtful that we will ever see lands used for Jewish cemetaries confiscated for other uses by the state.

[aranthus]

3. Except that the cemetary is in West Jerusalem!

Instead of parroting the lying party line, maybe you should educate yourself. This particular fight is about sticking it to the Israelis.

[bemildred]

4. So Muslim businessmen think the same way as Israeli businessmen.

I presume, since the cemetery is still there, that the effort to make it a business park failed back then, and that therefore there were people back then that objected to the project, and hence that it is THOSE people who are the real predecessors of the people that object to the "Museum of Tolerance" project now. I personally prefer to think of tolerance as something current and active rather than as something one has to visit in a museum anyway.