Jewish Group Faces Challenges over Building Museum in Israel

Since its beginning in 1977, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has become a major player on the international scene, but it now faces its most daunting challenge. At risk is its Center for Human Dignity-Museum of Tolerance in the heart of Jerusalem. For the past five years, Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Wiesenthal Center’s founder and dean, has poured his formidable energies and negotiating skills into the $200 million project as the capstone of his career.

But now the project is running into a roadblock: In a petition to the Israeli High Court of Justice last week, lawyers for two Muslim organizations asserted that thousands of Muslims who died during the Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries were buried at the site where the center is being built.

They also argue that associates of the Islamic prophet Mohammed were interred at the site in the 7th century.

But Muslims aren’t the only ones opposing the project — the building plan is also unpopular among many Israeli Jews.

A three-man panel of Israel’s High Court, headed by presiding Justice Aharon Barak, listened to competing arguments, with an early decision expected.

After the years of bureaucratic wrangling and vocal opposition from influential Jerusalemites, the road seemed finally clear last May, when a gala ceremony marked the groundbreaking on the three-acre campus. Ready were architect Frank Gehry’s plans for seven buildings, including two museums, a library, education center, performing arts theater and international conference center.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the then-mayor of Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert, lauded the new center’s goal of promoting civility and respect among Jews and between Jews and Muslims.

But in recent weeks, workmen excavating the site unearthed bones and partial skeletons from the old Muslim Mamilla, or Maman Allah, cemetery.

There is agreement that Muslims have been buried at the site, possibly five layers deep, for many centuries.

Hier, in an interview with JTA, forcefully laid out his case for the project, on which $10 million has been expended so far.

Looking back, he declared that “Never in a million years would we have undertaken this project if the government of Israel or the Jerusalem municipality had told us that we were building atop a Muslim cemetery. We would have rejected the site out of hand.”

In a region where religion and politics are so closely entwined — and where the Islamist Hamas recently won Palestinian elections and Israelis are poised to vote on March 28 — the ramifications of the dispute are bound to inflame already edgy tempers.

But Hier said he was assured by local and national authorities that there were no legal impediments to building on the site, now mainly a large open parking lot.

Also on the site is a four-level underground garage, excavated and built 30 years ago, with no protests from Muslim religious authorities, according to Hier.

Even earlier, in 1964, when the now-defunct Palace Hotel stood on part of the parcel, the highest Muslim religious council in Jerusalem ruled that the cemetery had been inactive for such a long time that it had lost its sacred character and could be used for public purposes, Hier said.

Lawyers for the Wiesenthal Center presented three possible compromises at the Supreme Court hearing: build a dignified monument to the ancient cemetery, refurbish a nearby modern Muslim cemetery or rebury the bones at another site, all at the center’s expense.

“We want to do the right thing,” Hier said.

Israeli politicians have criticized the plan.

Likud Party member Reuven Rivlin, the speaker of the Knesset, asked, “Why, for God’s sake, does a house of tolerance need to be built on a Muslim cemetery. It goes against logic.” He added: “My parents are buried on the Mount of Olives. If someone decided they needed to be moved to build a museum of tolerance, I’d be very angry.”

The Israel office of the Anti-Defamation League has appealed to the Wiesenthal Center for a “pause” in construction.

On the Muslim side, Irkrima Sabri, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, has petitioned UNESCO to declare the disputed area an international historical site.

One factor in the confrontation not mentioned is the long-standing hostility to the project by influential segments of Jerusalem’s citizenry, despite the support of municipal and national political leaders.

Such opposition, well before the cemetery dispute, may help explain the fiercely antagonistic tone of some Israeli critics.

Among the early skeptics were officials at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, who argued that there was no need for a competing Holocaust museum.

After lengthy discussions with Yad Vashem, the Wiesenthal Center agreed that its new museum would not deal with the Holocaust.

Hier is not about to quit.

“I have absolute faith that the Center for Human Dignity will rise in Jerusalem,” he said. “If not on the present site, than at another location.”

However, it may not be that easy to find another piece of land in Jerusalem large enough to accommodate the visions of Hier and Gehry without encountering the same obstacles.

As a spokeswoman for the Israel Antiquities Authority told the Los Angeles Times, “There are 35,000 archaeological sites in Israel. All of Jerusalem is an archaeological site. This is a place where a lot of history happened — Jewish history, Christian, Muslim,” adding, “And where people lived, they also died.

“You can say that no one can build on an archaeological site, and then you won’t have a country, OK — no one can live here.”