Israel Matzav

Just build baby, build!

I have discussed the problems that the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center has had building a Museum of Tolerance here in Jerusalem many times, most recently here and here.

The latest update is that the Museum is being 'sued' before the United Nations. I don't understand this one at all. The one country whose courts have jurisdiction has finally ruled in their favor. So why aren't they just building?

A 1940s newspaper article detailing plans by Muslim officials to construct a commercial center atop the Mamilla Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, near the controversial site upon which the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance is slated to be built, bolsters the center’s assertions that Muslims at the time no longer considered the cemetery a sacred heritage site.

But the article, published in the Nov. 22, 1945, issue of the Palestine Post (later renamed the Jerusalem Post) and discovered by the Wiesenthal Center in mid-February, has done nothing to deter the museum’s opponents from attempting to put a stop to the long-planned project.

After the museum’s detractors exhausted all legal channels in Israel — last October Israel’s High Court gave the museum the green light to build — 60 individuals whose ancestors were buried in the cemetery petitioned the United Nations to fight against the museum’s construction.

While some of these individuals told The Jewish Journal they had heard of the 1945 business plan, they insisted that it is irrelevant to their case.

That is not the opinion of Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Wiesenthal Center, who has maintained from the start that Muslims have long regarded the ancient cemetery as beautiful but expendable.

We knew that four years ago. So did the Wiesenthal Center.

So why don't they just build already?

By the way, among the 60 people appealing to the United Nations is one with a friend in high places: Rashid Khalidi.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:37 AM