Disrupting their eternal rest Considered the most important cemetery in Judaism, its dry earth is sent all over of world. Yet despite its importance, and even though the state comptroller issued a harsh report about it, The Mount of Olives is still open and unprotected, at the mercy of the residents of east Jerusalem. Menachem Begin, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, S.Y. Agnon and Rabbi Kook are turning over in their graves

If they only knew what was going to be happening someday in the future, it may very well be that Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, S.Y. Agnon, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Menachem and AlizaBegin would have thought twice before requesting to be buried on the Mt. of Olives. The most ancient and largest Jewish cemetery in the world, and in all likelihood the most important, has in recent years been abandoned to vandals, criminals and illegals who turned it into an abused public area, more closely resembling a garbage dump.

Exactly two years ago, in May 2010, then-State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss referred to conditions on the Mt. of Olives in a report. “Rehabilitation of the cemetery is proceeding at a snail’s pace, its level of maintenance is unsatisfactory, security is extremely low, and vandalism and criminal incidents continue to occur in it. We strongly suspect that if security is not ensured, all of the monies and work invested in will go down the drain,” Lindenstrauss wrote at the time.

Related stories:

• Report: Security at Mt. Olives slipping
• Vandalism returns to Mount of Olives cemetery
• Yeshiva on Mount of Olives to get 24 more housing units 

Several years before, the government decided in “Priorities – Reinforcing the city of Jerusalem,” to allocate more than NIS 80 million (about $22M) to deal with this issue. “There are serious doubts that the investment of millions of shekels in restoration and development works will go down the drain,” wrote the comptroller, in an understatement.

In the two years since, there was little change. After all, the dead are unable to protest, and the authorities are turning a blind eye, resulting in no real change on the ground. The site, where many of the outstanding Jewish leaders of the past few centuries along with tens of thousands of other people are buried, has been abandoned and forgotten.

The first problem the Mount has is its location – east Jerusalem, fertile ground for nationalist-based vandalism. In recent years, hundreds of headstones in the cemetery were destroyed and shattered or covered with garbage and excrement. Families who came for gravesite visits to their dear ones’ final resting place found empty liquor bottles, used condoms and other evidence of especially lively ‘night life.’

“In the mornings, we have been finding charcoal grills, used syringes, and all sorts of ugly sights among the graves of leading Jewish leaders and thinkers,” is how Rabbi Haim Miller, former Deputy Mayor and head of the Movement for Jerusalem and its Residents, described the situation.. “It has become a nightclub and brothel for the Arabs of east Jerusalem who are destroying the gravestones and turning sections into dog dens. There is no greater shame for the Jewish State than this. It embarrasses me to state that in the largest Jewish cemetery in the world there is not even one toilet stall, and all of the faucets and benches have been stolen or destroyed.”

Mt. of Olives cemetery (Photo: Jeff Daube / ZOA, ICPHH)

The first Jews were buried on the mountain during the Bronze Age. With the construction of the Holy Temple on the adjacent mountain, the cemetery became popular among Jerusalem’s departed, because Jewish tradition holds that whoever is buried on the Mt. of Olives will not undergo painful torments during the resurrection of the dead (when the Messiah comes), and worms will not devour the body. Throughout the entire world, Jews are buried with a small sack of dust from the Mt. of Olives by their side.

In the late 1950’s, construction of a small mosque was begun in the Ras al-Amud Square on the old Jerusalem-Jericho road. Even before the Jordanian laws which were then applicable to the West Bank, construction of the mosque was never legalized. Only after the Six-Day War was the building completed, and a decision was made to maintain the status quo – the mosque would remain as built, but the land adjacent was declared State land because it is part of the ancient cemetery.

US Congressmen Jerrold Nadler and Eliot Engel (both from New York) with Conference of Presidents' Malcolm Hoenlein and ICPHH's Abe and Menachem Lubinsky (Photo Jeff Daube / ZOA, ICPHH)

However, when the siren for Memorial Day for the Fallen in Israel’s Wars and Terror Attacks recently echoed throughout the country, young people and the families of fallen soldiers standing in the ancient cemetery found it difficult to concentrate. Sounds of power hammers and machines for concrete were pounding away in the mosque adjacent to the cemetery fence, heard throughout the mountain. The laborers working so energetically were not doing so to deliberately disturb mourners, but simply because it’s the only day of the year they can build the illegal additions to the mosque without anyone disturbing them. The story of the mosque provides an instructive example of the Municipality of Jerusalem’s failure in handling open and transparent criminal acts.

More than 300 meters (984 feet) of the area belonging to the Mount of Olives cemetery has already been annexed to the mosque, which presently stands 10 paces from the plot belonging to the man who revived the Hebrew language, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and his family, and only a few meters from the graves of Menachem and Aliza Begin. The former Prime Minister refused to be buried in the plot reserved for the great leaders of the Jewish People (on Mt. Herzl) and requested that, “when the time comes, I ask to be buried on the Mt. of Olives, near Meir Feinstein and Moshe Barazani.” Imprisoned by the British, his two underground comrades killed themselves rather than be hung, and now Begin is buried in a simple plot overlooking the Temple Mount from afar, but adjacent to the mosque.

The area on which the mosque is built is considered especially prestigious due to its proximity to the site of the Holy Temple (Beit Hamikdash) and the price of a tiny piece of land (a plot for a grave) begins at $20,000 – to the Burial Society (Hevra Kadisha). The demand is so high that the gravestones are situated very close to one another, and sometimes the only way to place a stone on a grave (Jewish custom upon leaving a gravesite visit) is to throw it from afar.

Photo: Yair Altman

In October 2010, right-wing activist Arieh King filed a first complaint with the Jerusalem Municipality. A few months afterward, Ofir May, head of the Municipality’s Inspectorate, wrote to Legal Counsel Adv. Amnon Merhav and to the Municipality’s Chief Prosecutor Adv. Einat Ayalon, “In the eastern section of the city, there are several mosques constructed without building permits, constituting construction felonies. Criminal case files were opened for them, however, the enforcement processes did not succeed in applying the Law, due to the sensitivity involved.”

May continued, and stated that “In the past, I contacted the Municipality’s Attorney on the issue, and he contacted the Attorney General about this, (however), I do not know whether there was an answer or what it was. The issue has recently come up again due to the construction work going on without a permit, enlarging the mosque in the Ras al-Amud neighborhood. I wish to receive clear directives on how to handle the mosques.” As of now, these directives have still not been received.

Since then, the mosque has only become bigger, and expanded into the cemetery area. Although Jerusalem City Hall claimed that this involved “an internal renovation of the bathrooms and moving the faucet installations,” they did demand that the Waqf cease adding to the building. Since then, the construction work has been conducted at night and on weekends, with the building serving as lodging for illegals.

A Jerusalem Police official estimated that this is a deliberate policy so as not to inflame hostilities. “Here there is a super-explosive potential in one of the most flammable places in the whole world,” said the Police official. “For one building, it’s not always worth it to set fire to the entire area. Sometimes it’s easier not to enforce every violation.”

The official response from the Jerusalem Police was that “enforcing the construction laws is the Municipality’s responsibility. The Police emphasize that each time it was asked to help Municipal Inspectors in delivering injunctions or enforcing them, they were accompanied by police officers who made sure to execute them fully and completely.”

Jerusalem City Hall stated. “The Municipality operates according to the Law and pursuant to instructions from the State’s Attorney on handling construction infractions in religious institutions. There is a construction infraction on that site, which is being handled by the Municipality in court. Continued handling of the issue is in coordination with all of the relevant authorities.”

Meanwhile, what is saving the Mount is the fact that among other graves are also the parents of a number of very wealthy Jews from all over the world. The brothers Avraham and Menachem Lubinsky, businessmen from the US, recently came to visit their parents’ graves and were shocked by the situation. They established the “International Committee for the Preservation of Har Hazeitim” and began to exert heavy pressure on the Israeli government and the Jerusalem Municipality.

The Americans find it difficult to grasp the feeling of insecurity that visitors experience at the Mount – a feeling to which most Israelis apparently have become accustomed. The pressure that they are exerting is now beginning to bear fruit in the form of widespread renovation of destroyed gravestones, the installation of 137 security cameras throughout the cemetery, and the arrest of dozens of young Arabs for vandalism.

For now, the overall effect of rehabilitating the Mount is displacing some of the terrorist stone-throwing activities directed at Jews traveling to the Mt. of Olives. Each week, drivers are stoned on the A-Tur and Ras al-Amud roads, usually by bored adolescents. The International Committee for the Preservation of Har Hazeitim recently sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appealing for an increase in the punishment to minors in the cemetery area, since they are usually detained and then immediately released.

“We are obligated to restore security and holiness to the Mt. of Olives,” declared American businessman Avraham Lubinsky, the Committee Chair. “In the majority of western countries and many US States, there is specific legislation requiring imprisonment for defilers of graves, up to several years in prison.”

The letter was signed by leaders of the Rabbinical Council of America, the National Council of Young Israel, Agudath Israel of America and the Orthodox Union, as well as the Executive Vice Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein. All of the organizations benefit from a very strong lobby in Israel and the US. If not for tradition and history, perhaps it is through politics that those buried on the Mt. of Olives will have their honor restored.

Vandalism (and assault) at the World's oldest Jewish cemetery

JPost is spot-on in this editorial about the World's oldest Jewish cemetery: The Mount of Olives. 

It is not difficult to imagine the deafening outcry that would have arisen had Jewish stone-throwers attacked Arab mourners and visitors to a major cemetery. The chorus of condemnation would have become shriller yet, had the attacks not been isolated but daily harassment and outright physical endangerment.

It is safe to assume that the violent assailants would have been castigated as despicable racists and that all-out manhunts would have been mounted to apprehend them.

But as it happens, the assailants are Arab while the mourners and visitors are Jewish. Hence there is no outcry, no condemnation, no manhunts and the word “racist” is on nobody’s lips. No one talks about the regular predations on Jews trying to reach Jerusalem’s ancient Mount of Olives Cemetery, regarded by many as the second holiest Jewish site anywhere.

It is almost as if brutal onslaughts and lynching attempts against Jews are only to be expected and even accepted as the norm.

It is a sad testament to an even sadder state of affairs that Diaspora Jews feel obliged to take action to preserve the world’s largest Jewish cemetery, while successive Israeli governments serially fail to stem lawlessness, vandalism and neglect there.

Read the whole thing.  The solution is really quite simple....

The Mount of Olives

Ancient Jewish graves near Awarta desecrated with praise of mass murderers

The graves of Elazar and Ithamar - the two sons of the first High Priest, Aaron - were desecrated near the Arab village of Awarta in Samaria, along with the graves of the 70 Elders who acted as a court/legislature when the Jews entered Israel. The graves were desecrated with slogans praising the mass murderers Hakim and Amjad Awad, who murdered five members of the Fogel family in the nearby Jewish town of Itamar. The Awad's used to live in Awarta. Recently, official 'Palestinian Authority' television - operated by our 'moderate' 'peace partner' - praised the Awads.

At Least 14 Kevorim Destroyed in New Rampant Destruction and Abuse on Har Hazeisim

In a development of events that continues to infuriate Jews worldwide, fourteen kevorim were destroyed on Har Hazeisim over the in the past few days, including the kevorim of several American Jews. Most of the damage occurred within the Kolel Polen and Agudas Achim sections of the cemetery. Two of the kevorim were near the burial place of two Rebbes of Gur. The latest desecration comes after the Israeli government continues to delay implementation of proper security measures in and around the ancient cemetery, including the activation of surveillance cameras installed around the area’s perimeter.

Avrohom Lubinsky, Chairman of the International Committee for the Preservation of Har Hazeisim, a group dedicated to restoring and securing the cemetery said that “every day that the security measures are delayed is a day when mourners and visitors are routinely stoned, kevorim desecrated, and garbage strewn throughout a sacred place.” Further, Mr. Lubinsky placed the blame squarely on government bureaucracy saying that, “It seems that every time we take a step in the right direction, the government takes two steps backwards. It is ironic that while local Arab workers refurbish kevorim, Arab criminals are destroying kevorim.”

The most recent spate of violence comes in the wake of both Nakba (day Arabs called Catastrophe which is the day Israel declared its independence in 1948 and Naksa (a day of “Setback” for Arabs which actually marks the reunification of Yerushalayim) during which many newly installed cameras were damaged.  Additionally, as a further blow to the site’s sanctity and burial place of so many esteemed Jewish residents, a mosque is being illegally expanded a mere sixteen feet from the grave of the late Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.  Mr. Lubinsky called it “outrageous” blaming the Yerushalayim Municipality for not stopping the construction.

In a further absurd development, the Committee has learned that the electricity controlling the new cameras and lighting on Har Hazeisim may in fact be controlled by the East Yerushalayim Electric Company instead of the Israel Electric Company. Officials have vowed to assure that control over the electricity remains with the Israel Electric Company. Residents of the new Maaleh Zeitim development across the road have opted for private generators rather than come under the control of the Palestinian East Yerushalayim Electric Company.

Mr. Lubinsky revealed that a new bill imposing stiff penalties against perpetrators of crimes in cemeteries was currently in the works. Sponsored by MK Yoel Hasson of Kadima, the bill that would give the police new authority to make arrests, mandate tough penalties and sentences, and even hold the parents of minors who desecrate kevorim responsible for damages. With time, this bill may help to alleviate some of the criminal activity that currently takes place on Har Hazeisim.

The International Committee consists of representatives of major Jewish organizations including Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Recently, the Committee announced the establishment of an Israeli chapter to be their representatives on the ground. The chapter will be headed by Harvey Schwartz, chairman of the AmericanIsraeli Action Coalition (AIAC), a well known activist, and Jeff Daube, the Israeli representative of the Zionist Organization of America and the man responsible for bringing the situation on Har Hazeisim to the attention of American consular officials in Yerushalayim, including several congressmen and politicians as well as the state department. For more information about the Committee and its activities please visit www.harhazeisim.org.

US, Israeli leaders fight to protect desecrated ancient cemetery in east Jerusalem

JERUSALEM — A wide patch of steep hillside overlooking Jerusalem’s Old City holds row after row of graves. Biblical prophets, revered rabbis and a prime minister are buried there. Yet many of the tombstones have been smashed, litter is strewn around and tethered donkeys defecate on top of graves.
The ancient cemetery is just one point of contention in the struggle for control of Jerusalem, an explosive issue in decades of Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
Israelis and American Jewish leaders are demanding that the Israeli government increase protection to ensure that those buried on the Mount of Olives can rest in peace.
The cemetery is believed to hold the graves of biblical prophets Haggai, Malachi and Zechariah. The list of modern Jewish figures buried there includes Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the father of modern Hebrew, and Nobel Prize laureate Shai Agnon.
Rabbi Avraham Kook, the chief rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine, and Rabbi Shlomo Goren, a former chief rabbi of Israel, are also buried there.
Some Israelis claim Palestinians from surrounding east Jerusalem neighborhoods attack visitors two to three times a week, sometimes stoning funeral processions. They accuse Arabs of building illegally on top of graves, using tombstones as goalposts for soccer games and lobbing firebombs to desecrate the cemetery.
At a recent visit to the cemetery, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said he’s heard from hundreds of families in the U.S. who can’t visit buried relatives without protection from armed guards.
“If you hear the families, the pain and the fact that they’re afraid to come here, what does it say?” Hoenlein asked. “In Jerusalem, Jews can’t go and visit an ancient burial site that is supposedly sacred?”
The Mount of Olives has held a holy place in Judaism since the period of the biblical First Jewish Temple more than 3,000 years ago.
It appears in the Second Book of Samuel, when King David weeps upon climbing the hill. Some Jews believe that in the end of days, the dead will be resurrected there, and Christians regard it as the place where Jesus ascended to the heavens.
At least 150,000 graves line the hill opposite the gold-capped Dome of the Rock mosque, built atop the ruins of the biblical Temples. On Friday afternoons, visitors to the cemetery can hear the Muslim prayer calls echoing across the valley from the site.
Between 1948 and 1967, the Mount of Olives was under Jordanian control. The International Committee for the Preservation of Har Hazeitim (Mount of Olives), a Jewish group, claims that during that period, 40,000 graves were destroyed, and new graves were built on top of old ones.
Israel seized east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed it in a move not recognized by the international community. The cemetery has been under Israeli control ever since, surrounded by Arab neighborhoods.
Palestinians claim all of east Jerusalem, including the Mount of Olives, as the capital of a future state. Projects that strengthen the Jewish presence in east Jerusalem are hotly opposed by the Palestinians and frequently lead to protests. The issue of Israeli construction in east Jerusalem and the West Bank lead to a breakdown in peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians last year.
Parts of the sprawling cemetery on the Mount of Olives are pristine and tranquil. In other areas, vandalism has reduced many gravestones to piles of shattered shards. Arabic graffiti blots some of the walls lining the narrow, winding pathways. In the sparser areas, farm animals can be seen standing on graves and grazing on wild grass.
There are conflicting claims that the Mount of Olives is being used as a political tool.
The Jewish activist leading the campaign to protect the cemetery is Aryeh King, who manages the nonprofit Public Office of East Jerusalem.
King said the vandalism and violence are a part of an Arab plan to make Israel more willing to cede east Jerusalem in future negotiations.
“Nobody will fight against giving these dirty, dangerous places to Arabs, because nobody’s coming here,” King said.
Others argue it’s exactly the opposite.
“They have an interest in giving the impression that there are security problems in order to legitimize the Jewish settlements up there,” said Orly Noy of Ir Amim, an Israeli nonprofit that opposes Israel’s policies in east Jerusalem.
Palestinian officials and organizations declined to comment.
Jewish groups have secured the support of American and Israeli leaders for increased protection. U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., wrote to Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. requesting a timetable for securing the cemetery. Information Minister Yuli Edelstein toured the Mount of Olives to show his support.
Although the Israeli government hasn’t announced an increased police presence on the Mount of Olives, the Jerusalem Development Authority said it is installing 180 motion-sensitive cameras to blanket the area.
The video feeds will be monitored from a control room by a private security company. Police will also have access, enabling them to dispatch officers at the first sign of trouble.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Shameful dereliction at the Mt. of Olives Cemetery; Acquiescence in the dereliction of a landmark of such central emotive importance to Jews blemishes Israel’s honor.

It’s a sad testament to an even sadder state of affairs that Diaspora Jews are feeling obliged to take action to preserve the Mount of Olives Cemetery, while successive Israeli governments have allowed lawlessness, vandalism and neglect to reign there.

An international watch-committee set up by overseas Jews hopes to reverse the desecration inflicted systematically by neighboring Arab vandals on the Jewish people’s most ancient burial ground – the final resting place of a veritable pantheon of religious, spiritual, cultural and national paragons, including the biblical prophets Zechariah, Haggai and Malachi.

The initiative was formally launched on Saturday night at Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue. It was triggered by a recent visit of members of the Lubinsky family of New York to relatives’ graves on the Mount. There, they noticed adjacent tombstones were wrecked, according to Menachem Lubinsky, with “the kind of maliciousness that defies the imagination.”

Stirred by what they witnessed, the family reached out to well-known Jews and Jewish organizations worldwide to set up a framework to keep an eye on the cemetery.

It’s not as if the sorry situation were unknown. Last December, the Prime Minister’s Office announced moves to heighten security there. In May, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss excoriated the ongoing neglect of the issue: “Repair work proceeds at snail’s pace, maintenance standards are inadequate, security is sorely lacking and vandalism and criminal acts continue unabated, accentuating the danger that funds and labor already invested at the site will go down the drain,” he said.

Many words and still more months later, little appears to have changed. Mourners are still stoned frequently near the cemetery and headstones are regularly defaced and smashed. This on the mountain slopes where Jews have been interring their dead for over 3,000 years. Its proximity to the Temple Mount, as well as the traditional proscription against burials within Jerusalem’s walls, made the Mount of Olives hallowed as far back as First Temple days.

The chain continued unbroken, save for 19 years of Jordanian occupation (1948-67), during which the cemetery was despoiled in a callous breach of the Hashemite Kingdom’s undertakings to safeguard holy places. The destruction was unbridled and premeditated. Ancient tombstones were ripped out to be used as latrine floors, urinal walls and pavement stones. The Intercontinental Hotel and Jericho Road were constructed over graves. Garbage was regularly dumped on the tombs.

After the Six Day War, when the area came under Israeli sovereign control, prominent Israelis like former prime minister Menachem Begin, Nobel laureate Shai Agnon, poet Uri Zvi Greenberg, and rabbis Shlomo Goren and Zvi Yehuda Kook asked to be laid to rest there. Nevertheless, this did not bring the necessary allocation of resources for upkeep and security at a cemetery of peerless historical continuity and significance.

The preferred target of the vandals, who recurrently raid after sundown, is enigmatically the Gerrer Rebbe’s grave, but Begin’s has also been damaged. Vandals have smeared human feces on tombs and deluged them with household rubbish and construction debris. Markers have been daubed in tar and paint. Hate-graffiti has been scrawled and gravestones have been hammered and shattered.

Because of the frequent daytime assaults on visitors, many fear going there. Vehicles are routinely stoned from the yard of a nearby Arab school in an especially dismal expression of enmity.

Had a minuscule proportion of such aggression occurred in Jewish cemeteries abroad, Israel would have lodged formal complaints and demanded better protection.

It is long overdue for the government to practice what we preach.

Official Israel should be shamed by the fact that private American Jews have had to recruit major Jewish organizations to take upon themselves what our government should have done long ago.

Fences, electronic surveillance, cameras and the like are frequently promised but have not yet been completed or installed. The government, Knesset committees and Jerusalem’s Municipality regularly announce impressive renovation projects to rebuild, record and map thousands of destroyed graves. The results fail to match the hype.

Acquiescence in the dereliction of a landmark of such central emotive importance to Jews blemishes Israel’s honor. It also makes a mockery of Israel’s declared aspiration to keep its capital undivided.