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....

Letter to Netanyahu Pleads for Safety On Har Hazeisim

The International Committee for the Preservation of Har Hazeisim today made public a letter sent to Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu focused on the state of Har Hazeisim, imploring him to further secure access to the ancient cemetery. The burial site is the oldest and largest Jewish cemetery in the world - consisting of 150,000 graves and in continuous use for 3,000 years - where many Jewish leaders dating back to the Nevi’im as well as modern-day Israeli notables have been laid to rest.

The communication commends the Prime Minister for the great strides made by his government to secure and protect the ancient Jewish cemetery - which has increasingly come under attack in recent years with continuous violence against visitors, rampant grave desecrations, dumping of refuse, and gross defilement of the cemetery by local Arab youths. - but the letter also outlines the remaining actions necessary to sustainably safeguard the expansive burial ground.

The letter was signed by an unprecedented group of the leadership of American Jewish organizations. It included such major Orthodox groups as the Rabbinical Council of America, National Council of Young Israel, Agudath Israel of America, and the Orthodox Union. In addition, the letter was signed by Richard Stone, Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations as well its Executive Vice Chairman Malcolm Hoenlein on behalf of the members of the Conference. Mr. Hoenlein,, who is also an active leader of the ICPHH, personally delivered the letter to the Prime Minister during his organization’s recent mission to Israel.

The Jewish organizations note the marked security improvements initiated by the Prime Minister’s Office and implemented through the Jerusalem Development Authority, such as the installation of security cameras and the establishment of a permanent Police presence which has led to a sharp rise in the number of arrests of violent perpetrators at the Har Hazeisim Cemetery.

Yet the letter also details the ongoing violence directed towards Cemetery visitors along access roads and requests that Netanyahu fully complete security camera installation and the deployment of Police within a wider radius. In addition, the International Committee asks that the Prime Minister support Knesset legislation which includes significant punishment for minors committing Cemetery-related offences as well as mandating stiff punishment to address attacks carried out in cemetery perimeter areas, which are directed at visitors to intimidate and/or cause direct bodily harm.

“The International Committee for the Preservation of Har Hazeitim is committed to returning safety and sanctity to Har Hazeitim,” said American businessman and ICPHH Chairman Abraham Lubinsky. “Even after our imperatives are met and all are free to visit their departed in peace in an appropriate environment befitting this immensely important Jewish cemetery, we will continue to watch over the hallowed ground to assure that violence and vandalism never again plague this place. Only then will generations of Jews buried on Har Hazeitim truly be able to find eternal rest.”
A primary focus of the organization, said Mr. Lubinsky, is to end the “perception of fear” amongst Jews worldwide and to significantly increase tourism to Judaism’s second holiest site.

Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives

Arab Youth Use Jewish Cemetery as Playground Arab boys jump on Jewish graves in a recent video. Jewish sites expert: the problem is nearly 90 years old.

A recent video taken at the Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem shows young Arab men playing on the tombs by standing on top of them and jumping from grave to grave.

The offensive behavior was at first thought to be a new development in the long saga of deliberate desecration at the sacred site.

However, an expert on Jewish holy sites has revealed that the phenomenon is not new at all. In fact, Dr. Dotan Goren said, reports of similar behavior date back nearly 90 years.

Dr. Goren provided a newspaper clipping from August 1925 in which a letter writer expressed concern over Arab disrespect for the ancient Jewish cemetery.

“Whoever walks near the Jewish cemetery in Jerusalem towards evening will see the following: herds of animals grazing, Arab women making new paths to create a shortcut,” reader M. Lanberg wrote to Davar. "It is particularly joyful on the Sabbath. Groups of Arab youth jump from grave to grave for sport.”

He decried the phenomenon, saying, “Is there no institute in Jerusalem that, for the sake of the dear departed, can take care that the cemetery is not damaged or turned into a place for playing games and grazing sheep?”

Jewish MKs Michael Ben-Ari and Aryeh Eldad of the National Union party recently visited the Arab neighborhood along the road to the Mount of Olives and asked Arab adults about the repeated desecrations of the holy site. Local adults admitted that youth repeatedly attack Jews along the road, but gave varying excuses for the the phenomenon, rather than offering to try to put a stop to their youngsters' behavior.

The Renewal of Jewish Life atop Har Hazeitim

The Mount of Olives

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.

Har HaZeitim Cemetery a Most Sought After Resting Place

Jerusalem - The Mount of Olives in Jerusalem is home to the largest and most important Jewish cemetery in the world.

The mount, a Jewish cemetery for over 3,000 years, is comprised of 150,000 graves. Biblical tradition holds that the resurrection will take place at the site.

The zone comprises numerous locations mentioned in the Bible.

Tourists make their way up a steep, narrow path alongside a low wall, behind which sit white gravestones of the Jewish cemetery.

Most of the thousands of gravestones dotting the barren hillside lie flat so as not to obstruct views of the Old City.

Jews have sought burial plots on the mount for thousands of years, in the site's chalky, soft soil.

The earliest tombs are located at the foot of the mount, and include those traditionally associated with prophet and First Temple priest Zechariah, and David's rebellious son Absalom.

Unlike Christian burials, where the dead are laid out and buried in a coffin, Orthodox Jews bury their dead as quickly as possible in a shroud. Stones are placed atop graves instead of flowers.

'A person visiting a grave puts a stone on it as a sign that they were there,' explains tour guide and Jerusalem native Ruth Eisenstein.

The tradition dates back to when the Jews were a desert people and marked graves in this way to protect them from being eaten by wild animals. Not surprisingly, graves on the Mount of Olives are much sought after.

For example, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin asked to be buried on the mount rather than at Mount Herzl, while Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the linguist who restored the Hebrew language, is also buried here. 'Every Jew wants to be buried here,' says Eisenstein, because they believe that this is where the resurrection will begin.

On top of the hill is the hotel Seven Arches, from where tourists snap photos of the Old City bathed in late-evening sunlight.

Directly opposite to Seven Arches is the Golden Gate and the Muslim cemetery in front of it.

Considered the most important and impressive gate in Jerusalem, it was walled up in the 9th century. This gate is relevant because the Bible says that the messiah will enter through it.

Ruth Eisenstein noted that the site is holy to all religions.

'It has been holy for Jews and Muslims for centuries. They all want to be buried as close to the Old City - The Holy City - as possible.'

New Jewish Neighborhood on the Mount of Olives

"You are invited to come rejoice in the joy of Jerusalem on the occasion of the inauguration of the Maaleh Zeitim neighborhood on the Mount of Olives, and to strengthen Jewish settlement in Jerusalem,” read the invitation sent out for the inauguration of a new Jewish neighborhood on the Mount of Olives.



The new neighborhood is a project of the Ateret Kohanim Yeshiva, which is located in the Moslem Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. 


The dedication comes at a time when President Barack Obama's speech demanding 1949 Armistice boundaries serve as the basis for Israel-PA negotiations has been countered strongly by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's refusal to consider the division of Jerusalem. United States officials have expressed displeasure with Jewish building east of the 1949 armistice line, in eastern (where Maaleh Zeitim is located), northern and southern Jerusalem Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin, Education Minister Gidon Saar, Minister of the Interior Eli Yishai, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and  other political and religious leaders are at the event.

The Mount of Olives, site of the new neighborhood, is where King David wept as he fled Jerusalem during his son Absalom's rebellion. It is also the site of a historic Jewish  cemetery which was vandalized during the period when Jordan occupied Jerusalem, from 1949-1967, and is now undergoing restoration. The gravestones, some used by Jordanians for latrines, tell the history of Jewish presence in Jerualem and are witness to the desire for Jews in the Diaspora to be buried there, as tradition has it that they will be resurrected first when the Messiah comes. Until now, the eight families living in the Jewish-owned Beit Choshen buiding on the Mount of Olives, were the only Israeli presence there. An Israeli flag waves atop the building, whose residents will soon be joined by those who make their homes on the mount in Ateret Kohanim's Maaleh Zeitim neighborhood.

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.

The Mount of Olives in Jerusalem: Why Continued Israeli Control Is Vital

• The Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, that the Palestinians demand to transfer to their control, is the most important Jewish cemetery in the world. The area has constituted a religious and national pantheon for the Jewish people and the State of Israel, containing the tombs of the illustrious dead of the nation over the course of 3,000 years and serving as a site for Jewish gathering and prayer at the time of the ancient Temple and even prior to it.