Published on June 26th, 2012 | by Usman Butt
Image © [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="566"] Simon Wiesenthal Centre in LA. Rights: Cbl62[/caption]   A controversial spin off museum to the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles is being built in Jerusalem, Israel. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre is a Jewish human rights centre, dedicated to confronting anti-semitism, hate and terrorism, defends the safety of Jews worldwide and teaches lessons of the holocaust to future generations. The New Museum is Jerusalem is set to expand on this theme, the controversy lies in the chosen location of this museum. The location is Mamilla Cemetery, an ancient Muslim cemetery which dates back to the Byzantine era. Many significant figures in the Muslim world are buried there ranging from scholars to rulers. The ancient site was allocated to the Wiesenthal centre in 2000 by the Jerusalem municipality, with the approval of the Israeli antiquity authority. However, there has been a strong opposition to the use of this site from Muslim groups, Palestinian groups and from sections of the Israeli media. Professor Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University claimed “This project is a grotesque attempt to erase the well-established history of a continuous Muslim presence in the city that dates back over a millennium.” Supporters of the project state that part of the cemetery has been used as a parking lot for the past 50 years. Avra Shapiro director of public relations at the Simon Wiesenthal centre wrote in a letter to the Daily Beast that the museum will be over the parking lot. He goes on to say that the idea that they will be uprooting graves is not true. However, he does not outright deny that the Museum will be built over the cemetery. Petitions have been signed against it and even challenges in the Israeli high court of justice, by Muslim groups who have set out to stop the project. These challenges failed and the Jerusalem city council gave their final approval to the building of the museum last summer. Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder of the project said that the museum will deal with international conflicts but not the Middle Eastern conflict.  Alongside Muslim and Palestinian opposition to the use of this site has been international opposition.  Groups such as the centre for constitutional rights has released video footage that suggests that archaeological artefacts and human remains still exist even in the parking lot.  Some Palestinian and Palestinian solidarity groups have turned to the United Nations. The destruction of this ancient site and the potential loss to world heritage makes this issue of grave importance.  In addition to this, it is set to further escalate tensions in a troubled region to boiling point.  However, this episode should not be understood in isolation. There is a wider context which makes this issue even more sensitive. As the quote from Rashid Khalidi indicates there is a sense amongst Palestinians that this latest incident is part of a greater attempt to destroy and deny a Palestinian presence in the Holy Land. The process which has been called many names from internal colonialism, Hebrewization, Judification, de-Arabization and de-Palestinization by Palestinians and some scholars. Israeli-born historian Ilan Pappe wrote about the process of Hebrewization in his book ‘the ethnic cleansing of Palestine’.  Pappe stated that, before the creation of the state of Israel, the Zionist leadership in British mandate Palestine set up naming committees, whose function it was to re-name the mostly Arab towns and villages from Arabic names to Hebrew names. These Hebrew names became official after the founding of the state of Israel and the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians from the newly formed state.  As well as renaming places, the state of Israel changed the topography of the land which  included removing the houses and structures in what had been Arab towns and villages and replacing them with European houses and structure, as well as repopulating the towns and villages with Jewish populations. In some cases as Pappe documents, some of the destroyed towns and villages were converted into national parks and forests. Palestinians view the latest attempt to build a museum over the cemetery as being part of a process which has gone on for over sixty years. There is a general belief amongst Palestinians that Israel does not want them to exist. They view the latest incident as part of a systematic attempt to wipe their history out, as former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once said “There are no Palestinians”.  The idea of there being no Palestinians, has been brought up in the US presidential elections with Newt Gingrich, who claimed that the Palestinians were an invented people and terrorists. With all that has happened and continues to happen, for Palestinians the cemetery’s destruction is not just about the destruction of graves but also about the destruction of them as a people.