Aged Jew Weepingly Describes Arab Desecrations of Wailing Wall at Commission Hearing

While Moslem societies in Ramleh, Hebron, Ludd, Gaza and Egypt are deluging the Wailing Wall Commission with resolutions insisting that the Wailing Wall is part of the Aksa, the society for protecting the Mosques, and that the Palestine Moslems are its guardians, the Wailing Wall Commission, here to investigate Moslem and Jewish claims to the Wall, this morning heard Zion Benitscak Issachoroff, an aged Bukharian Jewish resident of Jerusalem who has lived here for 43 years, break down and weep at the conclusion of his description of the repeated defilement and desecration of the Jewish sanctuary by the Moslems.

Many of the resolutions from Moslem societies assert, “Our lives are cheap where the defence of Burak (the Wall) is concerned.”

Issachoroff, who worshipped at the Wailing Wall from boyhood, was wearing a black astrachan cap and a brocaded gray mantle. He recalled that years ago urchins occasionally pelted the Jewish worshippers at the Wall with stones but the congregation did not take any notice of it while responsible Moslems, he testified, never interfered with the worship.

He described the benches of the worshippers that were stored near the Wall at night and enumerated the many gifts he made for the Wall congregations. The 60-year old Jew, who presented a picturesque sight as he testified, described the complete congregational Sabbath service at the Wall and also the service for the high holidays when the shofar is blown and the Pentateuchal portion of the service is read.

Issachoroff’s laborious testimony was climaxed by the statement that he and others had often found the pavement in front of the Wall soiled by debris that had fallen from the passing rubbish-laden donkeys and the offal from a donkey stabled in the chamber, recently converted into the zahweih, by an Arab family which owned the animal. He also declared that this Arab family had built a rest room abutting the Wall, thus forcing the congregation into the other corner.

Weepingly he told how on Succoth, seven or eight years ago, he had found offal on the monoliths themselves and the worshippers, dressed in their holiday finery, washed and cleansed the stones before starting the service.

Abdul Auni Bey, Arab counsel, after several attempts at obstructing the testimony, including an endeavor to compel the witness to testify in Arabic, rigorously cross-examined Issachoroff.