'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

What's wrong with Jews being buried in the Mount of Olives cemetery? It's been used as a Jewish cemetery since the 16th Century. It was only between 1948 and 1967 that it was off-limits to Jews. Link:
http://www.trekker.co.il/english/mount-of-olives.htm

Diana-- I'm very happy with Jewish people having the right to bury their loved ones in the cemetery of their choice in the occupied Palestinian territories-- provided Palestinians have reciprocal rights inside Israel. Once there is a decent, respectful peace between the two peoples that could certainly happen, don't you think?

But unless and until this kind of reciprocity is observed, the process of Israel taking advantage of its position as military occupier of the OPTs to fill portions of the land there with its own dead while denying the Palestinians any recpirocal right looks incredibly one-sided and might-makes-right-ish, don't you think?

(It would also be nice for Jewish people to acknowledge that they are not the only ones with religious claims to and feelings about the Mount of Olives.)

Interesting book review of 'Death and the Nation' (Freud would have enjoyed analysis of such a rich 'subject'):

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050110/kimmerling

Helena,

I think that you have reached a new level of plain meanness here.

You very sarcastically (in my opinion) state that you are "very happy with Jewish people having the right to bury their loved ones in the cemetery of their choice in the occupied Palestinian territories". Yet I think that you ignore the main reason why many felt it necessary for the exhumation (a very painful, I imagine, experience for the families) to take place in the first place: a fear of desecration.

As Diana has pointed out, Jews have been burying their dead in the Jewish cemetary on the Mount of Olives for centuries. Between 1948 and 1967, that cemetary was repeatedly desecrated by Arab people (mostly Muslim people), who used the gravestones for building materials and, in one case that I recall, to line a urinal in a military barracks in, what was also at the time occupied East Jerusalem.

You then make the particularly nasty assertion that:

"It would also be nice for Jewish people to acknowledge that they are not the only ones with religious claims to and feelings about the Mount of Olives."

I do not think that "Jewish people" have ever maintained any such thing. There has been no desecration or removal of any of the shrines or sanctuaries of the Christian people, and there is open access to the Mount of Olives for all Arab people, including Muslim people.

Finally, you get back to your obsession with the media covering this story. Irrespective of what you imply, I don't think that Israel, Zionism or "Jewish people" are to blame for this. It just happens to be newsworthy.

This is crap and disinformation in equal doses. The facts are that the Palestinian lands have to be clean of Jews, alive or dead. That is the ultimate expression of ethnic cleansing and tops the cemetery desecrations that the pathological xenophobes of Germany and France have to offer.

At the same time Arab cemeteries inside Israel stayed right in place through the years. On my travels I even ran across a cemetery in Israel where dead Palestinian terrorists are buried, properly maintained and labeled.

There is no symmetry in this conflict, none. And Helena's attempts to turn the tables even beyond symmetry are mind boggling. My only consolation is that when she dishes similar poison towards America I know I am in good company.

David

The logical conclusion is that Helena feels that it is also inappropriate for Jews to worship at the Wall until the Palestinians have their state as well. And even then it would have to be at the pleasure of the Palestinians. Because for Helena, anything that Jordan grabbed in 1948 is "Palestinian" land.

As for Helena's complaints about the article, they are just silly. When the subject of death of a loved one comes up in English, it is a common expression to talk about burying their parent, or their child. They usually do not say "I am going to bury the remains of my parent/child" unless they are involved in a technical discussion over whether they plan to bury or cremate the body. Even then, word usage may differ.

I suspect Helena knows this. But it must have been a slow news day for her since the most recent act of violence just involved the suicide bombing that killed and wounded Jews, not worthy of her condemnation. So she has to complain about something.

The other possibility is that Helena is far too used to the "Pallywood" productions where they stage funerals and the like to play upon the sympathies of the media and highlight the "brutal Israeli occupation." So perhaps she thought this was a staged funeral, just like she thought that the grief of the settlers was staged.

Joshua,

Spot on. There was of course the news item here (in Israel) of the 14 year-old Palestinian child caught trying to smuggle pipe bombs. She could have picked up on that!

David wrote:

"There is no symmetry in this conflict, none."

How very true, David! On the one hand you have the population of a tiny piece of land, occupied by one of the strongest armies in the world, an army that has set up innumerable chequepoints and other obstacles, as a result of which the population of that tiny piece of land is more or less locked up in their cities and villages;

and on the other hand you have the local nuclear superpower, which uses it's strong army to occupy that tiny piece of land, and to set up fences, walls and chequepoints, and to keep the "Palestinians-not-allowed" roads that connect the illegal Jewish settlements with each other and with Israel free from Palestinians.

Indeed, there is no symmetry in this conflict. Not at all.

Amazing. Such pathos. Those people in that "tiny piece of land" (which, incidentally, the "local nuclear superpower" will cease to occupy by the end of next month) have just been sitting there minding their own business. The "neighborhood bully" simply decided, out of plain meaness, to go to all the expense and trouble of building "walls" [sic] and checkpoints, and to put its young men and women in harms way for the hell of it.

I can just picture Menno and Saeb Erekat standing their, wide eyed, saying "Honest, it was already broken when I got there...." I bet they even believe it!

Maybe y'all should just cut the crap.

I just feel really sad that so many of you commenters here are so cut off from any connection with the humanity you share with all others of G-d's children, and are so self-referential and self-bounded that, for example, you express not one iota of empathy with the sense of loss that I described many Palestinians as having, not being able to bury their loved ones in family plots and ancestral cemeteries... and that you want to come here to to my place and attack me in the third person and impute completely fictitious motives ("sarcasm") to me. Very sad.

Reconnect with the human race, guys!

Some of you-- David in particular-- also engage here in really pathetic and hostile hasbara (Zionist agitprop)... At the same time Arab cemeteries inside Israel stayed right in place through the years. Indeed, David? What is your source for that?

This excellently documented Israeli source states:

"A special committee was established in accordance with a government decision from February 2000, with the task of investigating the condition of Arab holy sites. The committee, which finished its work in mid-2000, found that there are 53 Muslim holy sites and 58 abandoned Muslim cemeteries in Israel. The Ministry of Religious Affairs, however, did not implement the recommendations of the committee."

Actually, I was not even writing about the existence or state of the Muslim cemeteries in Israel (though of course that is an interesting situation.) What I was writing about was the sense of pain most Palestinian families have that their elders and other family members cannot be buried in those traditional family resting-places.

The rest of that lengthy web-page is also very informative about the discrimination to which non-Jewish religious institutions have been subjected in Israel since its founding.

As I've written here before: let's all aim at an outcome based on human equality-- whether this is manifested in one state west of the River Jordan, or two. The perpetuation of the present situation of Israeli domination of the whole area is, as Menno noted, extremely inequitable to the Palestinians; and it causes great harm to the Palestinians-- and also to many Israelis. How can anyone feel happy about that?

Helena, your entry was one of the nastiest, most mocking, sarcastic, arrogant, and unempathetic pieces yet. That's a tough standard to meet, considering your previous entries, including what can only be called a reprehensible and disgusting hatchet job on Steven Vincent. You regularly make outlandish accusations, sneering remarks, and then of course are shocked, shocked if anyone calls you on it.

The article was about deceased Israeli settlers in Gaza whose remains had to be removed and transplanted. And after your vitriol, you now have the gall to say that it is your commenters who are "lacking in empathy."

Another thing to remember, someone who does not follow the Palestinian propaganda line is not necessarily engaging in "Zionist Agitprop." David's remarks were based on his first hand travel and observations. Try reading what someone says before resorting to your usual canned attacks on people who don't think Israel is an evil country.

There was only one proper follow up to this disgraceful entry of yours, and that was for you to say "I'm sorry, I won't do it again." At the very least, quit while you're behind.

It's your house, and your rules, Helena. So you can enforce whatever you like. If you want to say "only Israel and America haters allowed" go ahead. But spare us the tripe about certain people not being "courteous." You and your amen corner trashed that standard some time ago.

So Joshua, are quite happy that some of these reburials are being done in occupied Palestinian land? And that there is no possibility of any "reciprocity" for Palestinians who want to be buried in ancestral plots in Israel? If you are, just say so.

I realize I was dealing with two issues in the main post: both the fact of these reburials (not all of them, though, as I noted) being done in occupied territory; and the whole way the "story" was chosen and covered by Gavin R. His piece was written in an incredibly sloppy and biased way in my professional estimation.

But let's leave aside media criticism and get to the substance... as expressed in my question above.

"David's remarks were based on his first hand travel and observations."

David's remarks were downright contrafactual. In the early years of statehood, along with hundreds of Palestinian villages the Israelis destroyed tens, perhaps hundreds, of Palestinian cemeteries, ploughing up the ground, defacing, crushing, or stealing headstones, and in many cases exposing the bones of the dead, some of which could still be seen sticking out of the ground decades later. Those are the facts. The claim that Palestinian cemeteries were left intact is, quite simply, a lie.

"So Joshua, are quite happy that some of these reburials are being done in occupied Palestinian land?"

I don't get "quite happy" about burials or re-burials. I think that it is sad that the settlers had to have their loved ones pulled out of the ground.

I do think it is APPROPRIATE that these individuals (or "remains") are buried in what Dianna quite correctly noted was a Jewish cemetery for centuries. I am uncertain as to why a brief Jordanian conquest of the area somehow turns that into "Palestinian land."

"And that there is no possibility of any "reciprocity" for Palestinians who want to be buried in ancestral plots in Israel?"

There's a possibility, I never suggested otherwise.

Shirin, David mentioned that on his travels, he saw intact Arab cemeteries in Israel. Are you claiming he is lying?

By the way. I was always curious. Where in Iraq were you born? Where in Iraq do you now live?

When a news item is written about the annual Islamic pilgrimage, the Haj, it generally not considered necessary to flesh out the story with "equal-time" mentions of Christmas, Hannukah, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. And vica-versa.

Yet an ordinary article about a reburial of Jews is not acceptable to Helena. She wants equal time for Palestinian burials. I read her article three times before I figured it out. Helena is offended by Jews. Just that they're Jews. That they bury their dead.

you express not one iota of empathy with the sense of loss that I described many Palestinians as having

Projection, pure and simple. Helena has not one iota of sympathy with Israeli suffering, and sensing some modicum of empathy in recent coverage of Israeli suffering must drive her nuts.

let's all aim at an outcome based on human equality-- whether this is manifested in one state west of the River Jordan, or two.

Well, that's really what Helena's agenda is about, isn't it? One state west of the Jordan.

My better judgment says not to get involved, but:

1. Helena, it sometimes seems like you have a bit of a tin ear. The reason many people got angry at this post was not so much at what you said as at the timing, and at the fact that you seized upon the reburial of an exhumed corpse as an occasion for political commentary. Your points about the "political geography of mortal remains" may well be a good topic of discussion - but at some other time, when the dead are safely (re)buried and the subject can be discussed more dispassionately. Funerals aren't the right time for politics.
2. The tone of the main post did sound a bit mocking in places - for instance, your digression on whether a living settler or his remains were being buried. It is your right, in a country with free speech, to make light-hearted critiques of malapropisms in an article about a funeral. Others, however, might consider that disrespectful of the dead and/or the solemnity of the occasion.
3. I also think it was below the belt to accuse your critics of lacking empathy for the Palestinian dead. I don't see anything in their comments that can be so construed. Not to mention that it's quite possible to sympathize with the Palestinians cut off from their family plots and still think your main post was ill-timed. That's more or less my position, to be frank.

On other issues concerning cemeteries: They were millet property under Ottoman law, weren't they? As such, the Mount of Olives cemetery is Jewish land - possibly one of the few places east of the Green Line to which Jews as a corporate entity have an indisputable claim. Describing it as "occupied Palestinian territory" is only half the story - in this case, political sovereignty and right of ownership are different.

I also did an admittedly brief and unscientific search for information about Arab cemeteries in Israel. The accusations of cemeteries being plowed up seem to arise, for the most part, from a speech of Edward Said's. On the other hand, I also found quite a few memorials to Palestinian villages stating that "nothing's left today except the cemetery," suggesting that many cemeteries were left alone. Your link to Adalah, which does fine work enforcing civil rights in Israel, concerns the upkeep of existing and abandoned cemeteries, again indicating that at least 58 abandoned cemeteries are intact. (Incidentally, Adalah was successful in obtaining a court order mandating equal budgeting for the upkeep of Jewish and non-Jewish cemeteries.) And finally, there was a 2001 incident where a building permit was granted on the site of an abandoned cemetery but rescinded when Arabs protested and the local council stepped in.

I'm not sure what to make of all that. I suppose the bottom line is that none of the modern political entities that have controlled the former Mandate have a particularly good track record at protecting minorities' holy places. This is, I agree, a shame.

I suppose the bottom line is that none of the modern political entities that have controlled the former Mandate have a particularly good track record at protecting minorities' holy places. This is, I agree, a shame.

Indeed.

Maybe I have a tin ear for some nuance and sense of timing; and if so I'm sorry. I confess I don't have any particular reverence for people's mortal remains. I washed the body of the aunt who raised me dressed it/her lovingly in a clean nightie; kissed her goodbye; wrapped her in her shroud; and was very happy to let her go for cremation. All the elders in our family have been cremated, and their ashes interred or scattered.

I feel very vividly that what is important about those loved ones gone before is the legacy of values, feelings, stories, etc that they left to us. I understand that other people feel differently about these things, but perhaps I didn't understand how differently. For example, I didn't understand the degree to which some people apparently think a reburial, several years after the death and the original burial, is akin to the first burial...

Jes wrote:

"Those people in that "tiny piece of land" (which, incidentally, the "local nuclear superpower" will cease to occupy by the end of next month) have just been sitting there minding their own business"

It won't "ceased to be occupied". The local nuclear superpower plans to keep it (parts of it) till the Day of Judgement, and has even built Huge Apartheidswalls to ensure that it's illegal settlementsblocks, though on occupied, Palesinian land, are on the Israeli side of the wall, which isn't the Israeli side at all, but just part of occupied Palestinian land, in this way de facto annexed to Israel, with the blessing of George W. Bush, that other great Peace Maker in the Middle East.

By the way: the Gaza strip won't cease to be occupied as well. Israel will control the borders, the coastline and the airspace, it will control who and what is going in and out, it will keep the responsibility for its infrastucture, and though they reject any responsbility for it's inhabitants, according to international law they still will be the occupyers of the Gaza strip, with all the responsibilities that that includes (which they won't accept of course, as they never did)._

"The accusations of cemeteries being plowed up seem to arise, for the most part, from a speech of Edward Said's."

That is certainly not where I got it.

"On the other hand, I also found quite a few memorials to Palestinian villages stating that "nothing's left today except the cemetery," suggesting that many cemeteries were left alone."

And in a number of cases they were not.

As for Menno's retort, shouting it doesn't make it true.

What "huge apartheid wall". If seen the (very short) portions of actual wall. They are not particularly huge, neither are they particularly imposing. As a matter of fact, they are more or less identical to the accoustic walls that separate Israel communities within the Green Line from highways.

But that argument is, indeed, begging the point (a practice that Menno has apparently mastered). Israel did not want to build those barriers. There were no stronger opponents than Sharon and the Likud party. (In case you don't remember, the last Knesset elections pretty much hinged on that point, and the side opposing separation, including an explicit call for a barrier, won.)

Further, Menno ignores the responsibilities that the Palestinian leadership, and to the extent that they have avidly supported it, the Palestinian people have for their own situation - going all the way back to the first explicit calls for terrorizing Jewish immigrants issued by Muhammed Tahir al-Husayni, and the first ethnic cleansings instigated by his son Amin.

BTW, the border with Egypt, as well as access by sea will be the responsibility of Egypt by the end of this year. And you're right Menno, we're going to do everything possible to make certain that there are no more Karin A's.

Jonathan, Joshua and David all made very valid points here. While I certainly can't account for every single Muslim burial site within Israel, there is certainly ample evidence that the vast majority were neither desecrated or destroyed. Some, as David has pointed out, have been scrupulously protected. These include the Muslim cemetary next to the Hilton Hotel in the heart of Tel Aviv, which has been protected and maintained, as well as the burial sites of numerous sheikhs throughout the country, including that of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam (who, BTW, was neither a Palestian nor a nationalist).

As Jonathan has pointed out, even when villages were razed, the local cemetaries were left intact, as in the case of Ikrit and Bir'am and numerous other locations.

I have seen no credible evidence to the contrary, and certainly none of systematic desecration.

I should also point out that the settlers in Gaza could have originally buried their dead on the Mount of Olives, had that been what was important to them. They didn't do so because they wanted their dead buried near them.

It is all fine and good for Helena to point out her own loss and the cremation of her family members. That doesn't make the original posting any less tasteless. We are all mortal, and we all part with our loved ones during our lives. And just to clarify a point for Helena, we Jews do not cremate our dead, and there is great sanctity in the internment of the dead (even a second time) and importance in the visiting of graves (something which, I believe families of Palestinian refugees from the West Bank also do regularly within Israel - in cemetaries that were apparently not ploughed up).

Israel's attitude towards Palestinians and their history is well explained by the story of Kafr Bir'im, until 1948 a Maronite Christian Palestinian village. It is now a national park, with a sign that says that the Bar'am ntiquities therein date from the Second Temple Period. It is true that there are some ruins of a Roman-period synagogue in the middle of the Palestinian village, but the sign gives the impression that the remains of the Palestinian homes and stables and wells are all Roman ruins. A large sign at the entrance tells the ancient Jewish history of the site in Hebrew and English, but not in Arabic. No mention is made of the medieval and modern Arab history of the ruins. There is no reference to the bombing of the village in 1953.

As Shulamit Giva said, Israeli archaeology has lost its independence as a scientific discipline and become an executive arm of an ideological movement, a nationalist and political instrument which provided "roots" for the new state.

Now, if newly discovered Byzantinue Christian basilicas and monasteries are routinely reburied and/or vandalized, do we seriously expect the Israelis to maintain the hundreds of Palestinian graveyards from the hundreds of Palestinian villages that were bulldozed and obliterated to form Jewish colonies? Of course not. If it can't be bulldozed, then it gets a Jewish label slapped on it, as happened with Kafr Bir'im.

Helena,

Reciprocity? Sounds like a great idea. Show me a place in the world where it works and I'll move there! :)

I was simply responding to what I thought was, well, a rather ugly crack, to wit:

"Far less happy that the reburial is being done in the Mount of Olives cemetery in occupied East Jerusalem."

That's all. Given the fact that this was a very old Jewish cemetery, I thought it was uncalled for.

Of course, everyone should be able to use it equally. If the Israelis are preventing this, I think that's wrong.

I also think that part of being enlightened is looking after the graves of the conquered, and of course, Arab Palestinian graves should be respected, as should the graves of British soldiers. I saw graves of "Tommies" in somewhere in Jerusalem (I think, near Abu Kabir, but memory may be failing here) that were in bad shape, and I felt bad about that.

Shirin,

The accusations of cemeteries being plowed up seem to arise, for the most part, from a speech of Edward Said's."

That is certainly not where I got it.

Where did you get it?

"On the other hand, I also found quite a few memorials to Palestinian villages stating that "nothing's left today except the cemetery," suggesting that many cemeteries were left alone."

And in a number of cases they were not.

Which cases?

Kassandra,

Charging Israel with producing only official archaeologists is simply false. They do have those, but that's only part of the story.

Actually, Israeli archaeology has become much less ideological since the founding of the state. For example, the world's foremost authority on the Philistines is Trude Dotan. The head of the archaeology department of Tel Aviv U is Prof. Israel Finkelstein, who writes that there was never a united Kingdom, etc., and whose theories, if true, undermine that part of Zionism which takes its justifications from "Biblical history."

Yes, there's a lot of ideologically correct archaeology in Israel, but there's also a lot of intellectually independent, groundbreaking work.

The cemetery I encountered was not far from Tiberiades. As for Shirin's assertions they are another product of a great Iraqi education system that Salah exemplifies. Like the Knesset map showing Israel reaching the Nile on one side and the Euphrates on the other, or the latest one about 5000 year old bricks subrepticiously stolen from Iraq to rebuild the Jerusalem temple.

Helena's obsession with affixing me labels, that's OK, myself I am convinced she is on somebody's payroll, Iran if I had to guess.

David

David,

So, you saw one intact Palestinian cemetery, and based on that you conclude that "Arab cemeteries in Israel stayed right in place".

Does it matter that some nutcases think it is occupied? Cant let people push you around like that. Ms. Cobban not only has major problems with Israel but when jews practice their religion.

Realy good site!