Wiesenthal Center: Museum not built on ancient ruins

Opponents petition UN over construction of Museum of Tolerance.

By ABE SELIG
Museum of Tolerance 311 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski )
Museum of Tolerance 311
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski )
The Simon Wiesenthal Center has rejected demands by Palestinian and international human rights groups that its construction of a planned Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem be halted due to claims that the proposed location is the site of a historic Muslim cemetery.
Opponents of the museum petitioned the United Nations on Thursday, maintaining that construction at the site would disturb centuries-old graves and desecrate the cemetery, although any response from the UN’s top rights official would be symbolic and not legally binding.
Press conferences were also held in Jerusalem, Geneva and Los Angeles on Thursday.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, however, released a statement Wednesday in advance of the petition and press conferences, stating 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,” Rabbi Marvin Hier, the center’s dean and founder, said in the statement.
“Telephone cables, electrical lines, drainage and sewage lines werelaid deep into the ground in the early 1960s, again without anyprotest,” he went on.
“We also want to emphasize that the Israel Antiquities Authority hasconfirmed that there are no bones or remains on the site, which iscurrently undergoing infrastructure work,” Hier said. “Remains found onthe site, which have now been reinterred in a nearby Muslim cemetery,were between 300-400 years old. No remains from the 12th-century erawere found.”
In 2004, Palestinian and Israeli advocacy groups filed a petitionagainst the planned construction. The Supreme Court considered thelegal arguments for nearly four years, finally giving the go-ahead in2009 to the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center.
AP contributed to this report