Debate over Museum of Tolerance - an exchange
By
Bradley Burston, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: museum of tolerance
Dear Rabbi Hier,
It saddens me to find myself in opposition to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, whose goals and good works I have long supported.
But I have an honest and personal disagreement with a decision the center has taken, the location of the Museum of Tolerance on a Muslim burial ground.
I detailed my objection in an article entitled Dividing Jerusalem, one bad wall at a time. I noted that in the past, SWC had worked diligently and admirably in protecting the sanctity of cemeteries, in particular, that of the unmarked Jewish graves of Auschwitz.
You responded with a letter headed "Museum of Tolerance is a beacon of light, not a wall." You begin by saying that I deliberately hid the fact that the land was given to the Simon Wiesenthal Center by the government of Israel and the City of Jerusalem, who presented petitions to the Supreme Court in support of the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem.
It remains unclear to me why I or anyone else would want, deliberately or otherwise, to hide that fact. But, since you brought it up, here's something else that I did not include:In an interview with the Jerusalem Post in February, 2006, when you said that the plot of land was not considered a cemetery and was given to the center in good faith by the government of Israel and the Jerusalem Municipality,you went on to say:
"We never would have accepted a site if the government of Israel or the Jerusalem Municipality had said it was a Muslim cemetery."
"We would have laughed. It would have been preposterous. We never would have accepted it."
I believe you. Just as I still believe that as soon as bones began to be unearthed at the site, it was time to recognize that the idea of building a Museum of Tolerance over a cemetery - whether Muslim, Jewish, Christian, non-denominational or animist - is, at its root, preposterous.
The same 2006 Post article, citing the Israel Antiquities Authority, notes that "The authority has already removed 250 skeletons and skulls from the site and has reported to the court that the cemetery dates back centuries and that there are at least five layers of density of graves there."
You have marshaled learned arguments to prove that the land is no longer legally sacred to Muslims.
But do you truly believe that Muslim individuals, who have come forward to state that their ancestors were buried there, are lying? Do you believe that they do not, in fact, consider this land sacred, or that their dismay over the museum plan is unjustified?
You have said that many of the critics of the plan are extremists, and that is true.
But seriously, on the most basic, human level, can you say in all honesty that you cannot understand why many Israeli citizens, moderate, tolerant Jews, Muslims and Christians alike, are vexed by the concept of a Museum of Tolerance built on a graveyard?
You have spoken eloquently and convincingly of the potential importance and contribution of the museum.
But you have not made one compelling argument for preferring the Mamilla site over other possible building sites in Jerusalem.
Finally, you have stressed that the bones found during construction were between 300 and 400 years old, the graves unmarked.
Are you telling us that in another 300 or 400 years, it will be all right for the Catholic Church to go ahead and re-build the convent near Auschwitz that you so strongly opposed 20 years ago?
Are you telling us that there is a statute of limitations on memory?
People of good will in Jerusalem and its environs, intelligent, sensitive, tolerant Christians, Muslims and Jews, want to support a museum like this. These are exactly the kinds of people the museum needs to attract. These are exactly the kinds of people you need to listen to.
They are telling you that your flagship project may have lost its moral compass.
They are telling you that for all of your good will, this project, and, no less, your legacy, are in clear danger of defeating their own purpose.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
the topic refloats..
remember the tolerance museum fiasco? well click and refresh but come back and read what Brad had to say.. its interesting when a reporter expresses a view.. also copies below for your convenience..
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7 comments:
and again:
A monument to intolerance?
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre's plan for a 'Museum of Tolerance' on top of a Muslim cemetery is causing anger in Jerusalem
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/26/israelandthepalestinians
-humanrights?commentpage=1
Abe Hayeem
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday November 26 2008 09.00 GMT
The whittling away and destruction of Muslim memory and history has been a key aim in Jerusalem's development (as in the rest of Israel). This is especially so with the recent acceleration of the Judaising of illegally-annexed East Jerusalem, by infiltrating it with more Jewish settlements built on expropriated land and homes in the heart of Palestinian neighbourhoods. In Silwan, below the Old City wall, fundamentalist settlers, wishing to establish "the City of David" in the Arab neighbourhood, are illegally digging under people's houses, and ancient burial remains are being bundled away into boxes, preventing documentation of important evidence of the Islamic era of Jerusalem.
The Muslim cemetery in Mamilla, West Jerusalem, is suffering a similar fate in one section, where hundreds of skeletons are being unearthed and boxed, to make way for the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's euphemistically-named "Museum of Tolerance". The recent judgment by Israel's Supreme Court to allow the construction of the museum complex to proceed on top of this cemetery of religious and historical importance defies all satire and irony, making it a flashpoint for more conflict and hatred, and still engendering strong protests.
This project, started in 2004, was frozen due to public outcry, most especially from Muslim religious authorities and the Israeli Islamic movement, as well as Orthodox Jews, about disturbing family graves, and the graves of venerated figures from Arab history and religion going back to Saladin and Muhammad. The site, near Independence Park in the centre of Jerusalem, is on disputed land, taken over by Israel's Land Administration in 1948 as absentee property, whose ownership is claimed by the Islamic authorities as Waqf land, with their very present dead. It has been described as "disused", but local Muslims disagree and point out that it is still visited by relatives of the dead.
It is disingenuous and misleading for the Weisenthal representatives to claim this was declared a "deconsecrated" cemetery by an Islamic trust in 1964, and that there were no protests when a car park was built over part of it in 1960. Jonathan Cook pointed out in a recent article: "The Islamic trusts have no legitimacy among Palestinian Muslims in Israel, nearly one-fifth of the country's total population, let alone among Palestinians in the occupied territories. The Islamic officials on the trusts are widely seen as corrupt, appointed by the state because of their willingness to do the government's bidding rather than because of their public standing or Islamic credentials."
In any case the avenues for protests by Palestinians are extremely limited, as they impotently view the expropriation of their land and property and the breaches of the human rights using the might and force of the Israeli state and army. In the 1960s much of Israel's Arab population "was under martial law, and in little position to voice opposition". It is well known that the secrecy of decision-making in the planning process, as for the Museum of Tolerance, precludes genuine consultation and objections.
As Esther Zandberg of Haaretz pointed out, "Very few things filter out to the general public in an orderly fashion - and when they become known, it is often too late to do anything. The list of building plans approved under a veil of secrecy and guile is lengthy ... Most prominent is the Museum of Tolerance, set for central Jerusalem and planned by Frank Gehry. Not merely was this plan approved before being presented in full to the Israeli public, but those involved refused to reveal it even after it had been published in foreign architectural magazines. The plans were finally made public at a festive cocktail party, once they were already a fait accompli."
The building itself will be "the world's largest and most expensive museum complex", 30,000 sq m , built at a cost of $250 million, with money raised by wealthy American Jewish donors. It will include "two museums, a library-education centre, a conference centre and a 500-seat performing arts theatre" and seems more of a tourist attraction that will "swamp the fragile urban fabric of Nahalat Shiva" a poor area of Jerusalem. The building contains the Gehry trademarks and shapes - twisting, leaning, colliding, collapsing, folding, tilting, swirling (which Zandberg considers
McDonaldesque) - all crammed together fortress-like on a raised plinth, and an unnecessary intervention into Jerusalem's uniqueness. In fact local reaction has described it variously as a white elephant, Orwellian, or the world's largest physical oxymoron. Some say it is doubling up on the Yad Vashem with its proposed Holocaust library, and that the money would rather be spent on helping still-impoverished Holocaust survivors.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre claims that "All citizens of Israel, Jews and non-Jews, are the real beneficiaries of this decision" and that the project will be used to create mutual respect. Yet this will be a distinctly Zionist-orientated complex, which, as declared at the launch, is to express the dream of the foundation of the Israeli state.
It poses many questions. Would such a scheme have been built over a Jewish cemetery? Will the new museum of tolerance include the history of the Naqba, the Palestinian tragedy parallel to the founding of the Israeli state?
Rabbi Hier is reported to have said that while the museum will not conspicuously avoid the Palestinian situation, "It's not about the experience of the Palestinian people. When they have a state, they'll have their own museum."
While its predecessor, the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles may contribute to communal harmony, to pursue this enormous sister project in Jerusalem, at this critical time, when the "peace process" is in turmoil, would seem highly insensitive, a statement of Israel's hegemony over the Palestinians, rather than any expression of tolerance. Though the Wiesenthal Centre claims it will promote inter-communal harmony, it will not be particularly appealing to most Palestinians, since they are institutionally discriminated against within Israel, and walled off, imprisoned and under siege in most of the West Bank and Gaza. It will further inflame passions in an already combustible Middle East, and push any peace accord further off the horizon.
Rabbi Hier, enraged by the protests of the whole Muslim community, and IPCRI's Gershon Baskin, has branded them all extremists and in league with Hamas, and accused them of attempting a land grab.
Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (of which I am a founder
member) is responding to IPCRI (Israel/Palestine Centre for Research &
Information) who have asked for support in stopping this project from going ahead, and who say that Jerusalem "is the one city in the world where there is a real potential to demonstrate that Jews, Christians and Muslims can live together in peace, understanding and real tolerance, where we can learn to celebrate the diversities of our civilisations."
This is obviously the wrong building in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Maybe when there is a really genuine peace with justice, it can be built in a different location, with full participation of all sectors of the community in a truly free and undivided Jerusalem.
Im realy pleased you posted this Lirun. So did they stop building the Musuem? where do u think is the correct place to build such a musuem of Tolerance? I think next to the wall in East Jerusalem that is dividing Abu Dees and Arab towns. In other words, what Tolerance, how can there be if there is an Aparthied wall! You and I must think of something more serious to do that just writing in our blogs, dont you think?
i think we're still in the process of making the concerns heard.. dont think construction has in fact started.. i should visit the site myself and see..
i think the idea place is anyone's guess.. on the one hand the green line would be good.. on the other hand if we divide into two states i dont know who needs it more.. good question..
in terms of doing more than just blogging - well i do more my friend.. but sure - if you can think of a joint project let me know..
i am still keen to join you on that radio show.. but you went ahead without me.. antisemite!
:)
Lirun, you made me laugh about the antisemite statement. Hey, I promised to put you on that Radio show and you will be man,,soon.
You can do more as you are in Israel and in reach to people who need to change the way they see Peace. Im working on that as well, but still you and I should have joined effort, Ill figure out something
Great post and comments on another great Burston piece. (He needs to wear a flack jacket for his courageous column published for all to read.) I love how varied the voices in the Jewish community. From settlers to neturey karta and from extremists to lefties. All the labels, most of which I omitted unintentionally... because I don't keep up with them all, and understand little of some distinctions. I love how the Jewish people speaks in varied voices and is outspoken and takes action (words are often action, aren't they, Ali?) to point out inconsistencies in our statements, policies, and programs. Plenty of us in Israel and worldwide care no less about our Muslim, Christian, and fellows of all faiths and none than we do our own co-religionists. I live to work with all faiths defending everyone's right to tell their story and to listen to others' stories. I support, especially, my Muslim cousins and Christian fellows who cry out against the killing of Israeli and Jewish civilians, among other systematic efforts to rub out the state of Israel and sometimes, the Jewish people, too.
Hi Lirun
Trust you are doing well. I am pretty shaken by the terror attacks in Mumbai, India. In fact, one of my school friend was gunned down as he and others sat in a restaurant.
I understand there are about 20 Israelis still being held hostage in a popular Jewish Centre. This included Rabbi and his family.
I am interested in knowing whats Tel Aviv opinion and how is the local press covering these horrendous developments which are bound to have an impact globally.
Would be great if you could do a post on the Israeli perspective for us here in India.
Cheers..
Manish
hey manish
very very very sorry to hear! thats aweful..
telaviv has been capturing the news as the prime piece and israel is constantly following..
i will write about it tonight..
very sorry to hear about it your loss my friend..
complicated times..
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