Wiesenthal Center says planned Jerusalem museum will not be built on Muslim graves

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has rejected claims by Palestinian human rights groups that its planned Museum of Tolerance in west Jerusalem would stand on the site of a former Muslim cemetery. Opponents of the museum have complained to the United Nations, saying that construction at the site would desecrate the graves.

The Wiesenthal Center’s founder and dean, Rabbi Marvin Hier, however, said in a statement that “the Museum of Tolerance project is not being built on the Mamilla Cemetery. It is being built on Jerusalem’s former municipal car park, where every day for nearly half a century, thousands of Muslims, Christians and Jews parked their cars without any protest whatsoever from the Muslim community. Telephone cables, electrical lines, drainage and sewage lines were laid deep into the ground in the early 1960s, again without any protest.”

“We also want to emphasize that the Israel Antiquities Authority has confirmed that there are no bones or remains on the site, which is currently undergoing infrastructure work,” Hier declared, adding: “Remains found on the site, which have now been reinterred in a nearby Muslim cemetery, were between 300-400 years old. No remains from the 12th-century era were found.”

In 2004, Palestinian and Israeli advocacy groups filed a petition against the construction project. Israel’s Supreme Court considered the legal arguments for nearly four years, finally giving the go-ahead to the Los Angeles-based Jewish group in 2009.