Why a Visitor Center Must be Built on Har Hazeisim, By Menachem Lubinsky

It was just before Yom Tov that word came that the Regional Planning Council had approved the construction of a beautiful Visitor Center at the foot of the 3000-year old makom kadosh, Har Hazeisim. Several days earlier, the same project had passed the Local Planning Council, under the leadership of Deputy Mayor Rabbi Yosi Deutsch. For the International Committee on Har Hazeisim (ICHH), the Visitor Center was to be the signature project of restoring the security and sovereignty of Har Hazeisim.

Almost from the day of its founding in May 2010, the ICHH has been lobbying for the Visitor Center to be built on an area just outside the cemetery and adjacent to the Ras al Amud Mosque (in the Ras al Amud Square). The Mosque itself was problematic in that it illegally expanded beyond its original allocated land and despite several Municipal “Stop Orders.” According to documents obtained by the ICHH, the area designated for the Visitor Center was never part of the cemetery and thus did not pose a problem. In fact, says Prof. Aharon Kimelman, the octogenarian historian of Har Hazeisim, the area designated for the Center was used as a road by the Turks during their occupation.

Outgoing Mayor Nir Barkat saw the construction of a Visitor Center as an important symbol of sovereignty that would once and for all serve as a marker of Jewish sovereignty, as if the 150,000 Jews buried there under Hebrew markings were not enough. Barkat and the national government nearly 6 years ago asked the ICHH to be a full partner in the construction of the multi-million dollar Visitor Center. This was to emphasize the fact that Har Hazeisim was indeed the “Arlington Cemetery of the Jewish people.”  We agreed.

Despite its broad support in the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and the administration of Mayor Nir Barkat, the project constantly faced bureaucratic delays and at one point enough time had elapsed to require the permit application process to be reset. All of this was happening while the ICHH exerted enormous pressure on the government to end the violence on the historic holy cemetery. Up until late 2014, many cars ascending to Har Hazeisim were routinely stoned, with several resulting injuries. Tombstones were upended and desecrated almost daily with few arrests made. Fear had become the operative term for the oldest Jewish burial place and holy site overlooking the Makom Hamikdash. Most Israelis stayed away from the cemetery that includes so many kedoshim.

Responding to the worldwide pressure, led by the ICHH, enormous strides were made to secure Har Hazeisim. A network of 173 surveillance cameras and a 24/7 monitoring station were installed, a new police station was launched with a force of 24 police officers, a platoon of Border Police was stationed on the mountain, sanitation and grounds keeping services were restored, the infrastructure repaired and upgraded, and finally gating and fencing helped secure the cemetery. By 2015, security was restored to the bais hachaim. Hundreds of thousands came to the yahrzeits of the Or Hachaim Hakadosh, the admorim of Zhvill and Ger and to the saintly Bartenura, whose grave was previously a sight of blight and desecration. On one visit, I found Arab youths smoking pot.

The Prime Minister voiced support for the project in a meeting with the ICHH leadership earlier this year. His government had allocated NIS 10 million for the project nearly 7 years ago and despite the delays and attempts to reallocate the money, it remained in the budget until recently when Minister Moshe Kahlon’s Finance Ministry threatened to reallocate the money to other projects. The ICHH which has committed to at least match the funds has vowed to fight any attempt to remove the funds from this important project. Zev Elkin, the Minister for Jerusalem Affairs and his team, guarded the money up until recently. MK Rabbi Yoav ben Zur (Shas), who heads the unprecedented 67-member Knesset Caucus on Har Hazeisim, has also vowed to restore the funds.

The Visitor Center is slated to be a magnificent building with an amphitheater overlooking the historic cemetery where one can literally walk through 3000 years of history from the Neviim – Zecharia, Malachi and Chagai, to some of the greatest Gedolei Yisrael of the past generations. It is unfathomable that on the other side of Har Hazeisim, tens of thousands of tourists visit some of the 13 churches there, with dozens of busses lined up and on the Jewish side despite increased traffic in recent months, there is still somewhat of a feeling of fear.

The Visitor Center will include a gallery of some of the most prominent leaders buried there, including Roshei Yeshiva, Admorim and even Israel’s national leaders, including former Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his wife Aliza. It will be a place to educate young and old on the amazing history of the mountain, it serving the makom hamikdash, the place of the proclamation of the new chodesh, the burning of the ashes of the Parah Ha’adumah, and, of course, the future arrival of Moshiach. The Center will include a computer bank to help people locate an approximate documented 79,000 Jews who are buried there. There will be a room for lectures, seminars and special occasions. It will also include a comfort station with rest rooms and water. Plans call for a huge picture window with a splendid view of the Har Habayis, just across the road.

Of great importance will be a permanent police station that will be housed within the Visitor Center. It will include a modern communications hub which will connect it to the network of surveillance cameras and to the police sub-station on the upper part of the mountain.

The Visitor Center is extremely important in safeguarding the enormous security gains over the years and for preserving the Jewish character and sovereignty of the mountain. It will no doubt attract tens of thousands of visitors which will reinforce the importance of the concept of “there is safety in numbers.” The Center will assure that there is no further encroachment by the Arabs in the area. It will offer the police a modern permanent headquarters safeguarding Har Hazeisim.  It will send a strong message to the local Arab populace that Har Hazeisim will no longer be their dumping grounds of waste, construction materials and garbage, soccer fields, and drug-infested headquarters, all of which it was in the past. It will enable families of loved ones or leaders buried on Har Hazeisim to freely and securely visit the holiest Jewish cemetery.

The hope is that the government at all levels will fully comprehend what people like Prime Minster Netanyahu, Mayor Barkat, Deputy Mayor Deutsch, and MK Yoav ben Zur fully grasp. A Visitor Center on Har Hazeisim will guarantee their investment of hundreds of millions of shekels to secure the mountain.

When my brother Avrohom and I launched the ICHH back in 2010, we could only dream that we would succeed in restoring the safety and glory to Har Hazeisim. It was as if our parents who are buried there pleaded with us to finally help them rest in peace. Now, Boruch Hashem, we are well on the way to achieving our goal. Let us hope that the Visitor Center will soon be the signature to a historic initiative.

Menachem Lubinsky is president and CEO of Lubicom Marketing Consulting. He, together with his brother Avrohom, are the co-founders and co-chairman of the International Committee on Har Hazeisim.

Israelis Mapping Every Tombstone of Har HaZeitim

Jerusalem - A Jewish group in Jerusalem is using 21st-century technology to map every tombstone in the ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives, a sprawling, politically sensitive necropolis of 150,000 graves stretching back three millennia.

The goal is to photograph every grave, map it digitally, record every name, and make the information available online. That is supposed to allow visitors to find their way in the cemetery, long a bewildering jumble of crumbling gravestones and rubble surrounded by Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem. Beset for many years by neglect, it is among the oldest cemeteries in continuous use in the world.

Around 40,000 graves have been mapped so far by the team, which began work in 2008. They expect to finish recording all of the intact gravestones — an estimated 100,000 in total — by the end of next year. The rest are either so old they are unrecognizable or lie underneath later layers of burial.

Mappers look at aerial photographs, consult handwritten burial records dating back to the mid-1800s, walk along the rows of graves and dig through piles of dislocated tombstones, noting names and dates.

"This place has been used for burial since there have been signs of life in Jerusalem," said Moti Shamis, a member of the mapping team. "The cemetery is a mirror of the city — in wartime, we see more graves. When new groups of Jews reach the city, the names on the graves change."

Like so much in Jerusalem, this project is linked to the city's fraught politics. The mappers are from an organization called Elad, affiliated with the settlement movement, which also works to move Jews into east Jerusalem in an attempt to prevent the city's division in any future peace deal.

Elad has made it its business to develop sites of Jewish importance in east Jerusalem, reinforcing the Israeli presence in the part of the city the Palestinians want as their capital.

Jews began burying their dead on the hill that later became known as the Mount of Olives about three millennia ago. It was a convenient site a short walk from the city walls. Over the centuries, burial here became linked to a prophecy in the Book of Zecharia according to which the Messiah would approach Jerusalem from the mount, splitting it in two. Those interred on the hill, this belief posited, would be the first to be resurrected.

The mount became, and remains, a sought-after place to be buried for Jews in Israel and abroad.

"As a place of burial it differs from almost every other on earth, in being, as no other is, a witness to a faith that is firm, decided and uncompromising until death," wrote Norman Macleod, a missionary, after a visit in 1864. "It is not therefore the vast multitude who sleep here, but the faith which they held in regard to their Messiah, that makes this spectacle so impressive."

Numerous churches were also built here, associated with events in the life of Jesus. In Christian burial grounds and crypts on and around the mount visitors can find the remains of people like Princess Alice of Battenberg, mother of Prince Phillip of Britain, and Russian Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, killed during the Russian Revolution with the rest of the czar's family.

The project is mapping only the Jewish cemetery, which includes several burial monuments from the time of the second Jewish Temple, about 2,000 years ago. Among the oldest graves that still bear names is one of a medieval scholar, Ovadia of Bartenura, an Italian who came to Jerusalem and died here around 1500.

The work of the mappers has solved several mysteries, one of them that of the missing grave of Shmuel Ben-Bassat.

Ben-Bassat was a soldier who died in combat in the war that surrounded Israel's creation in 1948. He was buried on Jan. 14 of that year, before Jewish forces lost the cemetery, along with the rest of east Jerusalem, to the Jordanian army.

For the next 19 years Jordan controlled the cemetery, paving over part of it to build a road, using gravestones to pave paths in a nearby military camp and abandoning the rest to disrepair. When Israel recaptured the Mount of Olives in 1967, the soldier's family could find no trace of him.

Going through old burial records as part of the new project, the mapping team discovered a note saying he had been interred "next to Gader Gurjis and in front of Deborah, the widow of Reuven Mirabi." Those graves still existed. Ben-Bassat now has a military gravestone.

Sometimes the graves recount small tragedies, like that of Joseph Almozig, a Jewish conscript in the Turkish army in World War I who was charged with desertion in 1916.

Almozig's broken gravestone says he was "executed by hanging at the hands of the Turkish government." Next to him is his mother, Hanina, whose tombstone from more than three decades later notes that to her right lies Joseph, her only son.

Elsewhere in the cemetery lies Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the man responsible more than any other for reviving Hebrew as a spoken language, and a national hero in Israel. He was buried here in 1922. Nearby is Menahem Begin, buried in 1992 in a modest grave that makes no mention of the fact that he was Israel's prime minister.

Begin requested burial here, rather than in the country's national cemetery alongside other Israeli leaders, because he wanted to be close to two fighting comrades who killed themselves with grenades moments before they were to be hanged by the British in a Jerusalem prison in 1947.

Some see the new mapping work in the cemetery as part of what might be termed Jerusalem's "grave wars," by which Israelis and Palestinians use their dead to bolster their claims to the holy city.

Last year, Israeli authorities accused Israel's Islamic Movement of manufacturing about 300 graves as part of what was supposed to be a restoration of a Muslim cemetery in west Jerusalem. Elsewhere in the same cemetery, an Israeli initiative to build a Museum of Tolerance on land that contained human remains has drawn fierce criticism from Muslims. More recently, Palestinians have sparred with Israeli officials and archaeologists over use of part of a different Muslim cemetery just outside the walls of the Old City.

"On the Mount of Olives, we have a cemetery that is undoubtedly important to the Jewish people, but we also have a battle over land," said Yonathan Mizrahi, an archaeologist whose group, Emek Shaveh, is critical of much of the Israeli activity in east Jerusalem as heedless of Palestinian residents.

"The cemetery is identified as Jewish and thus as Israeli and there is an attempt to say — this is a place that needs to be under Israeli control," he said.