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=> The Erasure of History

The Erasure of History
Posted by Marcello (Guest) - Friday, July 15 2011, 15:44:19 (UTC)
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The erasure of history

(Israel’s gives go-ahead to desecration of Mamilla cemetery)

by Lizzy Ratner on July 15, 2011

http://mondoweiss.net/2011/07/the-erasure-of-history-israels-gives-go-ahead-to-desecration-of-mamilla-cemetery.html

It's official: on Tuesday, the Israeli government gave the Simon Wiesenthal Center the go-ahead to begin digging the foundation of its so-called Museum of Tolerance, a name that would be ironic if Israel's political discourse hadn't become so mutilated that words like"tolerance" had simply stopped meaning anything. The museum is set to be built on the site of Jerusalem's Mamilla cemetery, a storied Muslim burial ground that dates to the 7th Century. Already hundreds of graves have been dug up and desecrated to make room for the angled planes of the Tolerance center, and the museum's construction crews are now free to build on thousands more.

The news that Israel's Interior Ministry has approved the museum's building plans was not unexpected but it is still devastating. It is the final defeat in nearly a decade's worth of efforts by Palestinians, Israelis, academics, and human rights groups to stop the desecration. Or rather, it is the final nail in the coffin of a desperate bid to save a sacred piece of Palestinian history -- before that coffin gets dug up and re-buried, that is.

The historical and religious importance of Mamilla cemetery (originally the Ma’man Allah cemetery) is well documented. Situated half a kilometer west of the Old City's walls, the cemetery is reputed to contain the remains of some of Jerusalem's oldest, most celebrated families as well as those of religious leaders, pilgrims, officers and soldiers of Saladin's army, every-day Jerusalemites, and even companions of the Prophet Muhammad. In its graves lie the secrets and stories of centuries of Palestinian history, most if not all of which managed to survived Persian siege, Christian crusades, Ottoman conquest, and British rule. Indeed, it was only after west Jerusalem was absorbed into Israel in 1948 that the "indignities" began, as Rashid Khalidi explains in an elegant essay recently published in Jadaliyya. (Khalidi's ancestors are, or at least were, among those buried in the Mamilla Cemetery, and he has been a leader of the Campaign to Preserve Mamilla Jerusalem Cemetery.)

Given various Israeli state agencies’ appropriation of religious holdings such as Mamilla, it goes without saying that such sites could not be protected, preserved or restored by the appropriate religious authorities. This is despite the fact that these authorities hold unassailable legal title to these properties, a title that the discriminatory legal system of the Israeli state does not recognize. Thus before sections of the cemetery were earlier turned into a parking lot, a park, or other profane purposes starting in the 1960s, they had been allowed to deteriorate significantly. This is what is currently happening to the remaining untouched area at the eastern end of the cemetery where numerous gravestones can still be seen. With the Muslim religious authorities forbidden from tending it, this remnant of the cemetery has become overgrown. Vandals have knocked down gravestones. The area came to be known as a seedy, disreputable, and dangerous place at night. The Jerusalem Municipality has repeatedly used earth-movers and other heavy equipment to remove both ancient grave markers and more recent ones restored by families or by private associations. The most recent episode of this sort took place on the night of June 25-26, 2011, when about 100 gravestones were destroyed by bulldozers.
I have now read these words several times, and each time I've been reminded -- overpoweringly -- of a pilgrimage I made two years ago to one of the only remaining Jewish cemeteries in Bialystok, Poland, birthplace of my grandfather and dozens of other relatives. The cemetery was deserted the day we visited and in bad disrepair. Of the original 40,000-50,000 headstones, all but 5,000 t0 7,000 had been destroyed or repurposed -- which is to say, uprooted, stolen, and turned into building fodder for streets, homes, and other random objects of daily living. Of those that remained, many had been toppled, and several bore the fresh, spray-painted markings of swastikas. Litter from picnics strafed the grounds.

Compared to the death camps and mass graves we'd visited the previous days, the desecrated Bialystok cemetery barely rated on the horror scale. And yet, there was something in the desecration, so common in those parts of the world as to be almost de rigueur, that suggested a level of intolerance so profound that the only option was complete erasure. It wasn't enough that a whole people and population had disappeared, they had to be redacted from history.

And now, of course, Israel is engaged in the same dance of intolerance, and once again we are reminded that the victim has become the victimizer, the desecrated has become the desecrator. And the vibrant history of a vital people is in danger of being lost. Which is, of course, the intent.

.{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }

Chaos4700 July 15, 2011 at 9:02 am
But Israel isn’t apartheid, huh? Tell me this would ever happen to a site that Jews consider sanctified in Israel.
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. eGuard July 15, 2011 at 9:03 am
Meanwhile, in Germany a secret tankdeal with Saudi Arabia is brewing. Germany (Krauss-Maffei Wegmann company) is planning to deliver 200 Leopard tanks type 2a7+ to Saudi Arabia. The political part of the deal is done is a secret commission (“Bundessicherheitsrat”) under president Merkel.
Israel agrees –sine qua non– because it is good to “stabilise” the region (Iran!), and of course because that Arabic spring should be over by now. Merkel seems to forget that Saudi Arabia has send their tanks to Bahrein (and Qatar in 2009).
(Please forgive me going OT: that’s the only way it can go with secrets).
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. seafoid July 15, 2011 at 10:02 am
Zionism sickens me. It is such an ignorant ideology. The notion that you can start from scratch and reinvent a people is repellent. You can’t. Israel’s Jews, au contraire, are prisoners of their own tortured history. It is hardly a coincidence that Israel itself is a political shtetl. Run by Cossacks. Where the people are fed mythology and Masada is something they are proud of.
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. Kathleen July 15, 2011 at 10:25 am
Apartheid growing. Anger and hatred along with it
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. seafoid July 15, 2011 at 11:03 am
And they moan about thugs who desecrate Jewish graves in Eastern Europe or the middle East . The hypocrisy is nauseating.
link to indianexpress.com
“Dozens of Jewish graves have been desecrated in St Petersburg in the city’s second xenophobic attack in a week, a Jewish community leader said on Monday, accusing authorities of negligence.”
link to jpost.com
“Public prosecutor says out of 126 headstones, 49 were either vandalized, damaged or knocked down in what the BNVCA called an “anti-Semitic” act. “
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. Kathleen July 15, 2011 at 10:14 am
“that suggested a level of intolerance so profound that the only option was complete erasure. It wasn’t enough that a whole people and population had disappeared, they had to be redacted from history.”
As horrific and criminal as the Holocaust was and the trauma continues to be. “a whole people and population” did not disappear the holocaust tragedy has certainly not been “redacted from history” In fact this holocaust is mentioned,written about, films, on the news mentioned every time anyone turns around as well it should along with all other genocides.
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. Kathleen July 15, 2011 at 10:14 am
Israel’s effort to wipe out all Palestinian history is criminal. Human rights crimes
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. annie July 15, 2011 at 10:31 am
thank you lizzy. fyi wrt Khalidi’s statement, i wrote In the cover of darkness on july 1 which documents w/video the destruction of the remaining section he references.
Israeli bulldozers entered the part of the ancient Mamilla Cemetery that remained intact to destroy and dispose of nearly 100 grave markers, both ancient and renovated. The bulldozers worked under the cover of night (from 11pm to 1am on June 25-26, 2011), and retreated hastily when their operators realized that they were being filmed by local media and activists, as can be seen in the coverage broadcast by Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera
there are two videos at the link showing the bulldozers. also hostage has an excellent comment in the thread w/extra links:
The Mamilla Cemetery was not state property prior to the 1948 War. It was an Islamic endowment property, or waqf in Jerusalem. So, its immunities were guaranteed under Article 13 of the Mandate and the UN Partition Plan. It was taken over by the Israeli Custodian for Absentee Property. …..The use of abandoned or absentee property laws to confiscate the properties of inhabitants or their communities as a result of a change of sovereignty has long been considered a violation of the laws of nations and international law. See for example Article 144 of the Treaty of Sčvres or United States v. Percheman, 32 U.S. 7 Pet. 51 51 (1832).
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is headquartered in Los Angeles. This appears to be a violation of the provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 956 regarding damage to religious or cultural property in a foreign country:
(b) Whoever, within the jurisdiction of the United States, conspires with one or more persons, regardless of where such other person or persons are located, to damage or destroy specific property situated within a foreign country and belonging to a foreign government or to any political subdivision thereof with which the United States is at peace, or any railroad, canal, bridge, airport, airfield, or other public utility, public conveyance, or public structure, or any religious, educational, or cultural property so situated, shall, if any of the conspirators commits an act within the jurisdiction of the United States to effect any object of the conspiracy, be imprisoned not more than 25 years.
these are americans doing this and they should be persecuted to the full extent of the law!



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