Last year in February, I attended a press conference in Jerusalem, held simultaneously in New York and Geneva, announcing that a petition was filled with the U.N. against the destruction by Israeli authorities of a Muslim cemetery near the Old City (http://www.mamillacampaign.org/). The Mamilla cemetery is a holy site for Muslims since the 7th century; according to the tradition, the companions of the Prophet were buried there. In 1944, the British mandate recognized it as a historic site. Shortly after, in 1948, this part of the city fell under Israeli control and the access to the cemetery was closed to Palestinians for years. Now the cemetery is located in the West part of Jerusalem and a construction project threatens the site.
Last year’s petition was a cry for help, hoping that the international community would prevent the desecration of the Mamilla cemetery. Despite various appeals, the Israeli Court has repeatedly ruled in favor of the use of the site for the construction of a "Museum of Tolerance" by the Simon Wiesenthal Center based in Los Angeles (http://www.wiesenthal.com/). The municipality of Jerusalem recently reissued the authorization for the construction and this past Sunday morning, at the crack of dawn, Israeli bulldozers destroyed nearly 100 headstones in the cemetery (http://ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/jerusalem-municipality-destroys-cemetery-headstones-approves-museum-of-tolerance-construction/). Not many media covered this information; even here, in Jerusalem, it seems people learned it by accident. Such a desecration in any other part of the world would have raised loud condemnations.
According to the Jewish tradition, a cemetery can never be dismantled; does it mean that some dead have more rights than others?
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