Jews and Muslims: united against Jerusalem Museum of [in]Tolerance?

Jews and Muslims unite against Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance

By Nir Hasson

A new Jewish-Muslim initiative is seeking to derail the planned Museum of Tolerance, which is currently being built in Jerusalem on the site of a former Muslim cemetery.

The initiative’s hopes to get the site declared ritually impure under Jewish law, due to the fact that the construction has involved unearthing the remains of hundreds of Muslims. Such a declaration would keep religious Jews from visiting the museum.

The proposal has already received the blessing of Rabbi David Schmidl, head of the ultra-Orthodox Atra Kadisha organization, which fights against the desecration of Jewish graves. Its Jewish sponsors – who include two left-wing activists plus one activist from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party – are also seeking support from Chief Sephardic Rabbi Shlomo Amar, but he has not yet replied to their letter.

See also: Museum of Intolerance

The museum, which is being built in Jerusalem’s Mamilla neighborhood by the Wiesenthal Center, occupies a site that served for hundreds of years as a Muslim cemetery, but was then turned into a parking lot. Because the work involves unearthing hundreds of skeletons and reinterring them at the margins of the site, it has aroused fierce opposition from Muslim groups, who petitioned the High Court of Justice against it.

However, the court accepted the museum’s argument that the lack of Muslim objection when the site was turned into a parking lot indicates that it is no longer deemed holy ground. (As if Muslims’ voices or objections are ever considered by the Nazi State)

The new initiative is the brainchild of Meir Margalit, a Jerusalem city councilman from the Meretz Party who is active in the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, and Gershon Baskin, who is co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information.

Three months ago, they approached Shas activist Meir Sheetreet, who is known to be close to the party’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Sheetreet said he believed it would be possible to obtain a joint Jewish-Muslim declaration about the sanctity of the site. It was Sheetreet who approached Schmidl and secured his support for the initiative.

Muslim, Arab and Palestinian - forever!

In return, Sheetreet asked his leftist partners to obtain a promise from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that the sanctity of Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus would be respected, and Baskin did so.

“Because Joseph’s Tomb is recognized in the [Oslo] Accords as a holy site, the PLO recognizes and honors what was agreed to,” wrote Rafik Husseini, Abbas’ bureau chief, in a letter to the activists. The Palestine Liberation Organization is the group that signed the Oslo Accords on the Palestinians’ behalf.

Husseini also wrote that he expected Israel to recognize and respect the sanctity of the Mamilla cemetery and refrain from moving the remains of the people buried there.

After receiving the letter, Sheetreet asked Amar to issue a similar statement demanding respect for the sanctity of the Mamilla cemetery. However, that was more than a month ago, and he has yet to receive a reply.

Sheetreet told Haaretz yesterday that he was sorry the initiative was being publicized at this stage. The goal, he said, is a joint, public declaration by Jewish and Muslim religious authorities against “trampling on the honor of the dead.”

He added that he has not approached Yosef on the matter because he wants to keep the initiative strictly religious, and due to Yosef’s role in Shas, his involvement might make it seem political.

A spokesman for the Simon Wiesenthal Center said in response to the criticism:

“The Museum of Tolerance project was built on land split between an an eight-level underground parking lot and an above-ground parking lot (fossils found in the above-ground lot have been moved to the nearby Muslim cemetery). The aforementioned parking lot was and is used to hold thousands of vehicles in the center of Jerusalem. Attempts to declare the land on which this lot is built a holy place has no grounding in common sense. The attempt to sell the idea to the Palestinian Authority borders on deception. It is unfortunate that sometimes observers take steps and use the name of the Museum of Tolerance without checking the facts with us.

This, from a NaZionist who considers Jews as “God’s people” while the rest are nothing more than animals: whether Christians or Muslims! Talk about an anti-Semitic religion!

News that You won’t Hear about in the U.S.

Egypt mourns ‘headscarf martyr’

Marwa Sherbini is being hailed as the shahida, or martyr, of the Hijab

The body of a Muslim woman, killed in a German courtroom by a man convicted of insulting her religion, has been taken back to her native Egypt for burial.

Marwa Sherbini, 31, was stabbed 18 times by Axel W, who is now under arrest in Dresden for suspected murder.

Husband Elwi Okaz is also in a critical condition in hospital, after being injured as he tried to save his wife.

Ms Sherbini had sued her killer after he called her a “terrorist” because of her headscarf.

The case has attracted much attention in Egypt and the Muslim world.

German prosecutors have said the 28-year-old attacker, identified only as Axel W, was driven by a deep hatred of foreigners and Muslims.

‘Martyr’

Medics were unable to save Ms Sherbini who was three months pregnant with her second child. Her three-year-old son was with the family in court when she was killed.

Axel W and Ms Sherbini and family were in court for his appeal against a fine of 750 euros ($1,050) for insulting her in 2008, apparently because she was wearing the Muslim headscarf or Hijab.

Newspapers in Egypt have expressed outrage at the case, asking how it was allowed to happen and dubbing Ms Sherbini “the martyr of the Hijab”.

Senior Egyptian officials and German diplomatic staff attended the funeral in Alexandria along with hundreds of mourners.

Media reports say Mr Okaz was injured both by the attacker and when a policeman opened fire in the courtroom.

ATW’s Comment:

Of course, if the woman was a Jew, the news will be all over the American media and a “Muslim” will be the suspect! But since she’s a Muslim and the killer is a F*&^@ German Christian Nazi terrorist, the media will ignore the story!

The “Gay” Agenda: A Zionist’s and Neocon’s?

For people of intelligence, no comments necessary.

All others, be ready for a fierce debate: don’t talk about “rights” without considering everyone else’s, capiche?

How Israel steals Palestinian Lands!

Lawsuit brings murky West Bank land deals to light

OFRA SETTLEMENT, West Bank – It reads like a standard real estate contract between a Zionist institution and an Israeli couple. But it offers a rare glimpse into the bureaucratic smoke screen that helps ensure a strong Jewish presence on lands claimed by the Palestinians for a future state.

The document, which surfaced in a case before Israel’s Supreme Court, shows that the World Zionist Organization, acting as an agent of the Israeli government, took private Palestinian land in the West Bank and gave it to Jewish settlers, even though the state itself had declared the property off-limits to settlement.

Photo taken June 1, 2009 shows Jewish Nazi "settlers" in the West Bank settlement of Ofra

The affair points to a chaotic mix of a government at odds with itself and involved in murky real estate deals fronted by one of the Zionist movement’s most respected organizations.

It’s not the first time such land deals have come under fire, but in the year since the case went to court, the political context has been overturned. President Barack Obama, in a departure from Bush administration policy, is pressing for a complete freeze in settlement development as a prelude to a new push for Mideast peace.

The contract authorized Netzach and Esther Brodt, a couple in their early 20s, to lease land in the settlement of Ofra where their home and eight others are in contention. When Israeli human rights groups and Palestinians who claim to own the land went to the Supreme Court to get the houses torn down, they went with the knowledge that demolition orders had been issued against construction at the site.

The court gave the state two weeks to explain itself, during which time the settlers hastily completed construction of the homes. Then, in another reversal, the Defense Ministry froze the demolition plan, and left the case no closer to resolution.

The affair also threw a spotlight on the World [Na]Zionist Organization, an international body founded more than 100 years ago that promotes Jewish education and immigration to Israel.

After Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the 1967 war, the government began settling Jews in the captured territories.  To avoid complications stemming from international law, it turned to the WZO, setting up a special settlement division not technically part of the government but entirely funded by it. [Jewish Deception & Treachery!]

The maneuver has served to cloud the issues and confuse the finger-pointing when uncomfortable questions arise. Such questions had already arisen in 2005, when a government-commissioned report accused the settlement division of complicity in diverting funds and confiscating West Bank land to put up some of the more than 100 “outposts” — small wildcat settlements — that settlers have built, some on privately held Palestinian land.

They had no government sanction, yet a slew of former Cabinet ministers, settler leaders and lawmakers have confirmed that they went up with the full knowledge of the state, and their removal is viewed by the U.S. and others as a first step toward a broader rollback of settlement expansion in the West Bank.

The case before the Supreme Court involves not a flimsy “outpost,” but Ofra, a full-blown settlement of 3,000 Jews, 15 miles north of Jerusalem.

The contract shows that the settlement division authorized the Brodts to lease land allocated to Ofra even though Israel’s Justice Ministry had declared it to be private Palestinian property.

“Here you have proof” of a settlement deal violating Israel’s own rulings, said Talia Sasson, the former chief state prosecutor who wrote the 2005 report.

Defying international objections, Israel has allowed nearly 300,000 Jews to settle in the West Bank plus some 180,000 in Jerusalem’s Arab sector, which the Palestinians hope to make their future capital. In a speech last week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said, “We have no intention to build new settlements or set aside land for new settlements,” (More Jewish Deception and Treachery) but he gave no commitment to stop expanding existing settlements as the White House has demanded.

Land deals between settlers and the settlement division are usually shrouded in confidentiality and the contract with the Brodts is a hard-to-find example. The settlers maintain that secrecy is essential to protect Palestinian sellers from retribution.  The Ofra purchase is such a case, they told the court. Ofra’s lawyer, Yaron Kosteliz, said proof that the land was bought from Palestinians has been given to the state confidentially to protect the sellers. (Deception and Treachery)

Yesh Din, one of the Israeli rights groups that went to court, says the land was stolen.

“It’s like I was going to sell a house that didn’t belong to me,” said Dror Etkes, Yesh Din’s settlement expert. “It’s an international organization that is, simply put, stealing land.”

The government referred questions about the contract to the World Zionist Organization, which referred the questions back to the government. The Justice Ministry refused to discuss the case because it is under litigation.

The Defense Ministry, named as a respondent in the court petition, did not respond to an e-mail and calls seeking comment.  Another respondent, the military’s Civil Administration in the West Bank, said only that “there are differences of opinion pertaining to the ownership of the property.” (Deception and Treachery)

“The issue is currently under discussion in the Supreme Court that will ultimately decide on this issue,” it added in a written response to questions from the AP.

The Justice Ministry confirmed to the court that the land was owned by Palestinians, that a construction freeze had been ordered there a year earlier, and that a final demolition order for all nine houses had been issued.

“The construction was done in violation of stop-work and demolition orders,” the state said in papers presented to the court.

As is often the case, however, the state was not speaking with one voice. Defense Minister Ehud Barak suspended the demolition order in December because of broader questions about the legal status of settlement activity in Ofra. Kosteliz, Ofra’s lawyer, said the settlement never received the demolition order. (Deception and Treachery)

The Brodts said they were unaware of it when they signed the contract with the settlement division. They said the settlement was in charge of the construction.

The houses were near completion when the legal appeal was filed, and settlers hurried to finish construction during the two weeks the state was given to respond to the petition. They even won a rare and controversial dispensation from Ofra’s rabbi, Avi Gisser, to allow construction to continue on the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest, using non-Jews as workers. (The Ultimate Deception and Treahery)

Palestinians and Israeli right groups say the case is nothing unusual, and that settlements are often built on private Palestinian land.

Yesh Din says it has seen a classified database prepared for the Defense Ministry and that it shows that much of the construction at Ofra and in many other settlements is on land registered to Palestinian owners.

Palestine belongs to Palestinians!

Israeli Government: Most Corrupt in the world!

A poll conducted by an anti-Corruption organization has revealed that the majority of Israeli’s believe their government is not seriously fighting against Corruption.

The annual Global Corruption Barometer report released by Transparency International shows that 86 percent of Israelis –the highest level in the world–say the government’s efforts to fight Corruption are ineffective.

Only 13 percent of Israelis believed that the government is taking the necessary measures to fight Corruption, Haaretz reported.

In 2006, 66 percent of those questioned did not believe in their government’s anti-Corruption efforts.

The global public opinion survey represents the views of citizens from 69 countries around the world, including 500 in Israel.

The survey asks people about their attitudes toward local Corruption and their own personal involvement in such corrupt acts as bribery.

Senior Israeli officials including Israel’s incumbent Foreign terrorist-Minister Avigdor Lieberman are charged with being engaged in several cases of financial Corruption.

Many other Israeli former officials including former president Moshe Katsav, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, former Israeli finance minister Avraham Hirshson and Knesset (Parliament) member Shlomo Benizri have been involved in corruption cases.

Doron Navot of the University of Haifa and the Israel Democracy Institute says in Israel “not only do the government and elected officials not fight political Corruption, but in recent years they see politicians and elected officials fighting the guardians – those battling against Corruption – and trying to weaken them and advance reforms that harm the fight against Corruption.”

Thugs and Sluts: “educated” opinions!

A Ritual in Denmark?

Civilized?

 

 

While it may seem incredible, even today this custom continues, in Dantesque – in the Faroe Islands, ( Denmark ). A country supposedly ‘civilized’ and an EU country at that. For many people this attack to life is unknown– a custom to ’show’ entering adulthood. It is absolutely atrocious. No one does anything to prevent this barbarism being committed against the Calderon, an intelligent dolphin that is placid and approaches humans out of friendliness.  

WHAT A SHAME, A SAD DESPICABLE SCENE! THERE IS NO WORSE BEAST THAN CIVILIZED MAN!
This atrocity must be stopped!