EDITOR: Warmonger Continues to Stir Trouble
After more than six decades of warmongering – he was the man behind the 1956 tri-partite invasion of Egypt, the Israeli H Bomb, numerous big and small wars – the famous ‘peacenik’ Shimon Peres is trying to start a new war with Syria, whose territory his government occupied, settled, and refuses to return. What is frightening is that it seems he might even succeed this time in starting a new war.
Peres: Syria says it wants peace but keeps aiming missiles at Israel: Haaretz
Speaking at Israel Military Industries factory, president says Israel is interested only in peace, poses not threat to Lebanon or Syria.
President Shimon Peres on Thursday declared that Israel seeks peace and that it poses no threat to Lebanon or Syria, but lamented the fact that Syria keeps arming itself while making claims it is interested in peace with Israel.
Peres, visiting Israel Military Industries factories, was asked about recent remarks made by Syrian President Bashar Assad, who said that Israel wasn’t really interested in peace. In response, Peres replied that “Syria is taking simultaneous opposing actions. They talk peace while simultaneously manufacturing a huge store of 70,000 missiles on [Israel’s] northern border, aimed at Israel.”
The president added that “Israel is not threatening Lebanon, and is not threatening Syria. Our goal is only peace and I regret the fact that since the reign of [former Syrian President Hafez] Assad senior, who declined [Former Egyptian President Anwar] Sadat’s invitation to join him at Camp David, Syria has adopted a hesitant policy and is not taking any real steps toward peace with Israel.”
On Tuesday, Bashar Assad said that Peres had relayed a message announcing that Israel would relinquish the Golan Heights if Syria were to sever its ties to Iran and to known terror organizations.
According to a report in the Lebanese daily Al Safir, Peres relayed the message via Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who was visiting Damascus last week.
Peres’ office denied the report and stressed that the content of the message was taken out of context. The president’s office explained that the intent of the message was to make clear that Israel did not intend to attack Syria or make any moves that could lead to escalation of tension along Israel’s shared border with Syria.
Who’s Who of Banned Israeli Visitors: TheOnlyDemocracy?
May 19th, 2010
At this point, you could have quite the dinner party with the folks Israel leaves out! How do I get on that guest list?
UPDATE: Eitan Bronner has an article on the dustup inside Israel over whether it was such a great idea to ban Noam Chomsky, after doing likewise to Jewish American journalist Jared Maslin, Falk, and Goldstone as well as my personal favorite, Spain’s most famous clown Ivan Prado. Maybe if Israel didn’t need to hide what it was doing to Palestinians, Elvis Costello wouldn’t need to stay away as well!
The decision Sunday to bar [Chomsky]from entering the West Bank to speak at Birzeit, a Palestinian university, ‘is a foolish act in a frequent series of recent follies,’ remarked Boaz Okun, the legal commentator of the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, in his Monday column. ‘Put together, they may mark the end of Israel as a law-abiding and freedom-loving state, or at least place a large question mark over this notion.’”
Democracy according to Reichman: Haaretz
As Israel closes its gates to anyone who doesn’t fall in line with our official positions, we are becoming more and more like North Korea.
By Gideon Levy
In the end, we will only be left with Prof. Uriel Reichman. After we sent Prof. Noam Chomsky away, and there was no sharp rebuke by Israeli academics (who in their silence support a boycott of Bir Zeit University ), we will be left with a narrow and frightening intellectual world. It will be the kind of intellectual world shaped by the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya – an institution of army officers and the rich, headed by its president, Reichman.
A law professor, certainly enlightened in his own eyes, a former candidate to become education minister, Reichman says he doesn’t support the human rights group B’Tselem. That’s his right, of course; our right is to state that at the head of an important Israeli college stands a man who doesn’t understand a thing about democracy.
After all, what does B’Tselem do? It gathers reliable testimonies on the sins of the Israel Defense Forces, very few of which, if any, have been proved wrong. Reichman doesn’t support this? In the world according to Reichman, we are left only with statements by the IDF Spokesman’s Office. We will believe that no white phosphorus was used in Gaza, that the “neighbor procedure” is something that tenants’ committees do, and that if they call a family and give them five minutes to leave before their home is bombed, that’s an action by the most ethical army in the world.
Students at the Interdisciplinary Center say they heard their president declare that B’Tselem is “a fifth column” and that it’s “shameful” this group received a place at the school’s Democracy Day. Reichman denies this, and we respect his word. In any case, the spokeswoman for the college said: “B’Tselem’s modus operandi is not acceptable to Reichman.” What, then, is acceptable to Reichman? A society without self-criticism. This then, is Israel’s intellectual elite; these are our intellectuals – without B’Tselem.
A college president and law professor who preaches changing the electoral system and favors an Israeli constitution – one who doesn’t explain to his students the importance of human rights groups – is no more enlightened than the yeshiva heads who don’t teach the core subjects. He is even more dangerous.
But the man of intellect from Herzliya did rally against the yeshiva heads. “All the statistics show we’re on the brink of a catastrophe and on our way to becoming a third-world country if there’s no change in the Haredi community,” Reichman said in backing a petition on teaching core subjects. But the heart of the matter must be the lessons of democracy, well before mathematics and English.
And these things, it turns out, they do not teach at Reichman’s yeshiva, where even Democracy Day is a day of silencing others. If math is not taught at yeshivas, we will lose little. Without genuine civics lessons at the Interdisciplinary Center, which purports to raise the next generation of our leaders, we will receive a generation ignorant of democracy – in the spirit of Reichman. This is the real catastrophe on our doorstep.
Universities around the world serve as a power source for democracy, and lecturers, not only renowned ones like Chomsky, are often prime examples of liberalism for their students. It’s not by chance that at “Reichman’s College,” as it is called, the voice of political involvement has never been heard. Now it’s possible to know why. The school may claim to be interdisciplinary, but one field is missing there. If Reichman takes a look at his history books, he can read about people and movements that fought for human rights. B’Tselem’s founders will certainly be on that list. Maybe someday this will also be taught at the Interdisciplinary Center, after Reichman’s time.
When Otniel Schneller proposes that an intellectual giant like Chomsky “try one of the tunnels connecting Gaza and Egypt,” we can only chuckle. No one expects Schneller to know who or what this is about. But the prime minister, as opposed to Schneller, knows very well who the admired lecturer from MIT is – where he studied. He knows that the crux of Chomsky’s criticism is directed at the United States, not Israel.
When the prime minister doesn’t immediately apologize and invite Chomsky back to the country, we can be sad. When Israel closes its gates to anyone who doesn’t fall in line with our official positions, we are quickly becoming similar to North Korea. When right-wing parties increase their number of anti-democratic bills, and from all sides there are calls to make certain groups illegal, we must worry, of course. But when all this is engulfed in silence, and when even academia is increasingly falling in line with dangerous and dark views like those of Reichman, the situation is apparently far beyond desperate.
What’s So Funny ‘Bout Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: Elvis Costello’s Beautiful Message: The Only Democracy?
May 18th, 2010, by Jesse Bacon
I was a little young to get Elvis Costello, as opposed to the Pixies. He was well on his way to the iconic status, vaguely sterotypical rabbi look, dorky glasses and angst that made him a kind of hipster patriarch and unfortuantely led to a cameo in the hideous would-be 80’s epic 200 Cigarettes. But I was always amazed at how much yearning he worked into pop songs, made them carry an emotional weight more akin to the classical music he also recorded.
Well, now he has perfectly demonstrated how one can use eloquence to illuminate, instead of to obscure. In a refreshingly straightforward piece, he has described why he answered the call not to play in Israel. While other musicians such as Gil Scott-Heron, Roger Waters, and Carlos Santana have also honored the boycott I don’t believe anyone has said why so directly or effectively. Here it is.
It is after considerable contemplation that I have lately arrived at the decision that I must withdraw from the two performances scheduled in Israel on the 30th of June and the 1st of July.
One lives in hope that music is more than mere noise, filling up idle time, whether intending to elate or lament.
Then there are occasions when merely having your name added to a concert schedule may be interpreted as a political act that resonates more than anything that might be sung and it may be assumed that one has no mind for the suffering of the innocent.
I must believe that the audience for the coming concerts would have contained many people who question the policies of their government on settlement and deplore conditions that visit intimidation, humiliation or much worse on Palestinian civilians in the name of national security.
I am also keenly aware of the sensitivity of these themes in the wake of so many despicable acts of violence perpetrated in the name of liberation.
Some will regard all of this an unknowable without personal experience but if these subjects are actually too grave and complex to be addressed in a concert, then it is also quite impossible to simply look the other way.
I offer my sincere apologies for any disappointment to the advance ticket holders as well as to the organizers.
My thanks also go to the members of the Israeli media with whom I had most rewarding and illuminating conversations. They may regard these exchanges as a waste of their time but they were of great value and help to me in gaining an appreciation of the cultural scene.
I hope it is possible to understand that I am not taking this decision lightly or so I may stand beneath any banner, nor is it one in which I imagine myself to possess any unique or eternal truth.
It is a matter of instinct and conscience.
It has been necessary to dial out the falsehoods of propaganda, the double game and hysterical language of politics, the vanity and self-righteousness of public communiqués from cranks in order to eventually sift through my own conflicted thoughts.
I have come to the following conclusions.
One must at least consider any rational argument that comes before the appeal of more desperate means.
Sometimes a silence in music is better than adding to the static and so an end to it.
I cannot imagine receiving another invitation to perform in Israel, which is a matter of regret but I can imagine a better time when I would not be writing this.
With the hope for peace and understanding. Elvis Costello
Hamas official detained hours after release from Israeli jail: Haaretz
Mohammed Abu Tir, who was one of 65 Hamas lawmakers and senior militants detained by Israel in 2006 raids, urges Israel to expedite Shalit deal.
Hours after being released from Israeli prison on Thursday, Hamas official Mohammed Abu Tir was taken into custody by Israeli police. Abu Tir has been jailed for the last four years, since his arrest along with 65 other senior Hamas men in response to the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006.
Though the reason for the arrest Thursday is not yet known, it is possible that Abu Tir was summoned for questioning over remarks he had made during a press conference immediately following his release.
Israel also issued an order banning the Hamas official from Jerusalem, to go into effect June 16, Palestinian sources reported.
Extreme right wing Israeli activist Itamar Ben-Gvir waited for Abu Tir outside the police station in Jerusalem, and yelled out derogatory remarks when the Hamas man exited the station.
Earlier Thursday, Abu Tir urged Israel’s leaders to reach an agreement with his organization that would see the release of Shalit, who was captured in a cross border raid in June 2006 and has been held in Gaza by Hamas ever since.
Abu Tir told reporters that if it were “in his hands” he would expedite the prisoner swap deal.
“All Israeli leaders are against the deal to release Gilad Shalit,” Abu Tir told reporters following his release. “They reached a deal a number of times, but never followed through. Just like I have a family, a father, mother and children, Gilad Shalit also has a mother and father who want him.
“If only there was a deal, but it’s not in my hands, it is in the hands of the leaders,” said Abu Tir. “Israel’s leaders must think about this. I don’t like that Shalit is being held hostage, just as I didn’t like being held hostage.”
When asked how he felt having been released from prison, Abu Tir said: “I feel good, thank God. I paid a heavy price.”
Israel has so far released nine of the Hamas officials who were jailed after Shalit’s abduction convicted of belonging to an illegal organization. Israeli defense officials said those ministers had just completed their prison terms and their release was not connected to a prisoner swap deal for Shalit’s release.
Hamas won control of the Palestinian parliament in 2006 elections and then seized the Gaza Strip in 2007, leading to rival governments in the West Bank and Gaza.
Iran sanctions ‘holding up nuclear treaty negotiations’: The Independent
By David Usborne in New York
Thursday, 20 May 2010
Efforts to achieve agreement among 189 nations on reinforcing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) face collapse because of the fall-out from a new UN sanctions resolution against Iran and an impasse on creating a nuclear weapons-free zone for the Middle East, participants warned.
Egypt, backed by most of its Arab neighbours, is threatening to hold the so-called review conference in New York hostage to its demand that firm steps be taken towards establishing a nuclear-free zone for the Middle East, as promised in a special resolution at the end of the 1995 review. Unless some deal can be reached on moving forward on the plan, there is a “strong likelihood” the whole review conference will unravel, a senior Western diplomat said last night.
The zone, which would seek to outlaw all weapons of mass destruction including chemical and biological arms, has won US support. The stumbling blocks are many and high, however. Israel, which is not a signatory to the NPT and which by most reckonings has between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads, would be expected to participate. So would Iran, which, following the tabling of the new sanctions resolution, is more isolated than ever.
The unveiling of the Iran sanctions resolution “has changed the atmosphere here”, noted Anne Penketh, programme director with BASIC, the British American Security Information Council, who is monitoring the view. The conference, she noted, “has been on a knife-edge from the get-go and I think it still is”.
The Iranian leadership blasted the new text, negotiated over the last several weeks by the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany. Its provisions are stronger than some had expected, envisioning a range of steps to punish Iran for refusing to heed calls to end uranium enrichment and open its nuclear industry to full inspection. They include freezing assets of Iranian officials and entities, imposing a partial weapons embargo and instituting measures for the inspection of ships or cargo planes that may be carrying materials linked to its nuclear industry.
“The draft being discussed at the UN Security Council has no legitimacy at all,” Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s senior adviser Mojtaba Samareh-Hashemi as saying.
Because it has the support of all five veto-wielding nations on the Council, the resolution seems bound for passage though perhaps not before next month with many details still to be worked out. The last NPT review conference five years ago ended in deadlock and should this review fail the impact will be far-reaching.
US nuclear talks risk collapse over Middle East plan: The Guardian
Wrangling over goal of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East threatens to bring month-long conference to halt
A month-long conference in New York to shore up the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and prevent the global spread of atomic weapons is faced with possible collapse owing to wrangling over the goal of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.
Senior western diplomats are warning that unless agreement can be reached over the next few days on a way forward for Middle East talks, the NPT review conference could grind to a halt without anything to show for it. Failure to achieve any positive outcome would be a serious blow to the credibility of the international community’s efforts to deal with pressing nuclear problems, particularly in regards to Iran.
At the centre of the crisis are highly sensitive ongoing negotiations on plans for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. The idea is being championed by Egypt and the Arab nations as a way of forcing Israel to admit publicly that it is in possession of nuclear arms as a first step towards eradicating those weapons.
Under a long-standing policy of ambiguity, Israel has never admitted possessing atomic weapons, though it is universally believed to do so. Israel is one of four countries that has refused to sign up to the NPT, and persuading Tel Aviv to attend any discussion on nuclear arms in the Middle East is proving difficult.
So far there is no sign that the Israeli government is prepared to budge, as it says it will only sign the treaty once a full Arab-Israel peace deal is achieved. A senior western diplomat said that without Israel there could be no meeting on the nuclear-free zone, while Iran would also have to show up if the talks were to be credible given the current confrontation over Tehran’s nuclear enrichment programme.
Israel is under pressure from allies to conform on the issue, and talks are understood to be continuing with the US administration, which backs a nuclear-free zone. The diplomat added: “Israel will attend if it thinks the cost of not attending will be higher than if it does.”
Parties close to the negotiations now fear that if the Middle East plan fails to get off the ground then the Arab nations will act as a bloc at the New York conference – forcing it to end in failure, which has serious consequences. “Two major crashes of the NPT review conference in 10 years, what would that say about our ability to take forward multilateral diplomacy?” a western diplomat said, referring to the collapse of the last conference in 2005.
The concern is that another collapse would send the wrong signals to Iran at a time when the international community is trying to present an united front against Tehran over uranium enrichment.
If Iran continues on a course of confrontation with nuclear regulators, it faces new sanctions after the UN security council’s five permanent members plus Germany reach agreement last night. The draft resolution is largely based on the sanctions regime devised for North Korea and removes several loopholes that Tehran had exploited in previous resolutions.
The security council wants to see Iran suspend all enrichment and reprocessing activities which it suspects could be geared towards the making of nuclear bombs. Iran insists it is only interested in developing civilian nuclear power.
Iran today dismissed the draft resolution, saying the measures were unlikely to be approved and would not break its economy if implemented. “The draft being discussed at the United Nations security council has no legitimacy,” Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency quoted, Mojtaba Samareh-Hashemi, a senior adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying.
The draft resolution instructs UN member states, for instance, to repel any attempts by Iran to acquire assets in uranium mining in their countries, a clause believed to relate to some parts of Africa and Latin America where Tehran has shown recent interest. Member states are called upon to inspect any ships going to and from Iran suspected to be carrying prohibited materiel that could be used in the making or ballistic missile delivery systems for nuclear weapons.
Various annexes of the draft resolution relating to travel bans and asset freezes for individuals, groups and banks have yet to be agreed.
EDITOR: Lawmakers are Lawbreakers!
56 MKs petition Netanyahu: Let Gaza evacuees build in West Bank settlement despite freeze: Haaretz
Residents of former Gaza settlement Netzarim had been in the throes of building neighborhood in Ariel when Israel declared a 10-month construction freeze.
The West Bank settlement of Ariel, where evacuees of Netzarim were planning to build a neighborhood.
Fifty-six members of Knesset on Thursday petitioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to allow construction of a neighborhood in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, despite Israel’s promise to freeze building there for 10 months.
The neighborhood in question would be constructed for evacuees of the former Gaza Strip settlement of Netzarim, who have been without permanent housing since Israel’s disengagement in 2005.
The petition was initiated by Likud MK Ze’ev Elkin and National Union MK Aryeh Eldad, and was signed by most Kadima lawmakers and Labor MK Eitan Cabel.
“Despite the many hardships they endured, including temporary housing for almost five years in caravans and trailers, [the evacuees of Netzarim] have built a magnificent community and contributed much to the spiritual life and found a solution to the welfare troubles in the city of Ariel,” the MKs wrote in their petition.
The lawmakers added that the project to see permanent housing for these evacuees has met a number of difficulties, including legal and budget problems.
“About six months ago – when they had already overcome the difficulties, raised the needed funds, and the project seemed to be already in its opening stages – it was stopped once again when the cabinet decided to freeze [settlement construction],” the MKS wrote.
In their petition, the lawmakers claimed that every day permanent housing for these evacuees was delayed was another injustice. They called on Netanyahu and Barak “to intervene personally and immediately, to bring urgently bring an end to the foot-dragging, to approve an exception to the freeze and advance the project of Netzar Groves in Ariel.”
Signatories to the petition included Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Tzachi Hanegbi [Kadima], Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon [Yisrael Beiteinu], deputy minister Gila Gamliel [Likud] and deputy minister Ayoub Kara [Likud].
After banned by Israel, Chomsky to give Bir Zeit lecture by video from Amman
Chomsky will not try to travel through the Allenby Bridge border crossing a second time, after being turned back on Sunday.
What to do with the graves?: Haaretz
Skeletons should not be sanctified – but replacing Muslim graves with an ostentatious building dedicated to tolerance will only serve as a provocation.
By Nir Hasson
Haaretz’s investigative reporting on the eve of Shavuot about the removal of skeletons from the Mamilla Muslim cemetery so the Museum of Tolerance can be built there rightly prompted questions from the people at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which had initiated the museum project. The questions went something like this: “So what now? Let’s assume we drop the project. Will we reestablish the cemetery on a site that served as a parking lot for 40 years? After all, if we start putting back cemeteries that have disappeared, the country will quickly fill up with gravestones and there will be no space for the living. So it’s patently absurd.”
It’s no small wonder, however, that a similar case exists not far from Mamilla. Just as the large, important, ancient Muslim cemetery in Mamilla is in the heart of Jewish-Israeli Jerusalem, the large, important, ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives is in the heart of the Muslim-Palestinian city. The two cemeteries can be seen as mirror images of each other.
Each of them passed into the hands of opposing sides during the War of Independence. In the 1960s, Israel destroyed part of the Mamilla cemetery and built a parking lot on it. During those same years, the Jordanians destroyed part of the Jewish cemetery to build a gas station. Over the past decade, workmen have returned to both sites. On the Mount of Olives, a major project is underway to restore the part of the cemetery that was destroyed. At Mamilla, excavations have been undertaken to remove skeletons to make room for the Museum of Tolerance. Both moves are a mistake.
The gravestones on the Mount of Olives are a fiction. They are actually a theater set of a cemetery because no one really knows where the people are buried; fragments of their headstones lay in piles left by the Jordanian bulldozers. But removing the skeletons from the Mamilla cemetery is also a mistake. The other side in the fight over the cemetery is the Islamic Movement’s northern branch, and we can’t ignore that this organization is not only battling for the dignity of the dead but is also milking the issue for political considerations. As soon as it was clear that the cemetery was crowded and of historical significance, it would have been fitting to give it greater importance than the Wiesenthal Center, and the municipal and national authorities that pushed the project have.
Jerusalem has enough troubles even without adding skeletons dating from the past thousand years. It would have been appropriate to reach a compromise. It’s true that during the hearings on the subject in front of the High Court of Justice, the Wiesenthal Center suggested restoring the portion of the cemetery that is not part of the museum complex. The Center also made other generous compromise proposals.
The Islamic Movement rejected the proposals, and the Wiesenthal Center took them off the table. The court’s decision was followed by the rapid and secret removal of the skeletons. As an organization that claims to be a standard-bearer of tolerance, it could have devoted another moment of thought, even without the cooperation of the other side.
So what now? What will be carried out in the pit in the middle of Jerusalem? Clearly the graves and skeletons should not be brought back to the site. Just as skeletons at the site for the emergency room at Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon should not be sanctified, this shouldn’t happen in the center of Jerusalem. But it’s also not appropriate to put up an ostentatious building dedicated to tolerance that the city’s Muslims will perceive as a provocation.
One of the proposals was to create a park at the site in memory of the people buried there, serving all the city’s residents. One way or another, the part of the cemetery that remains should be restored and cared for; it should be turned into one of the sites that Jerusalem is proud of. The absence of construction on the excavation site must be part of the healing process that Jerusalem so needs: healing through tolerance.
Following Haaretz report: Arabs to resume Museum of Tolerance battle: Haaretz
Arab groups vow to step up opposition to construction on site of 1,000-year-old Muslim cemetery.
A battle against the construction of the Museum of Tolerance on the site of a Muslim cemetery will be reignited soon, according to sources in the Arab community.
The decision to resume opposition to the project follows a Haaretz investigation into excavation at the site, located in the Mamilla area of Jerusalem, and the damage it has caused to hundreds of graves there. The museum is being built by the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center.
An Islamic organization for the preservation of Islamic trust property, which operates under the auspices of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement and spoke out against the project as soon as excavation work began, released a strong statement of condemnation yesterday. In this statement, the group said that the Haaretz report confirmed the substance of its arguments, including issues it had raised in court.
The statement also said the Haaretz report proves that Israel, with the support of parties from the United States, is committing criminal acts involving damage to Muslim graves, because they are Muslim, in disregard of the law and the Supreme Court. According to the group, the revelations about what was done at the site provide the basis for a petition to stop further
excavation at the museum site.
MK Jamal Zahalka (Balad) sent an urgent letter to UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) demanding that the body intervene immediately to prevent any further work from being done at the site. Zahalka said the cemetery was of historic, archeological and religious significance.
MK Masud Ganaim (United Arab List-Ta’al) of the southern branch of the Islamic Movement said he had also filed an urgent motion for the matter to be placed on the Knesset’s agenda.
Attorney Kais Nasser, who had previously filed two petitions over the plans for the museum site, told Haaretz that the newspaper’s investigation “in retrospect proves everything we argued before the court in the case”.
“The museum plan was promoted without giving realistic weight to site from an archeological and historical perspective, or to the sanctity of the site,” Nasser said.
Museum of Tolerance Special Report Part IV/ An exhibition of Zionism: Haaretz
Marvin Hier built the Wiesenthal Center from nothing, and has forged ties with political leaders and celebrities alike. But with an ambitious plan for Jerusalem, he finds himself mired in controversy.
LOS ANGELES − It isn’t entirely clear how Rabbi Marvin Hier, with his sharp sense for identifying opportunities and his public relations wizardry, got himself into the mess in Jerusalem.
“It was not my idea to build it in Jerusalem,” says Heir, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, regarding the planned Museum of Tolerance, which is now steeped in controversy. “I would have never thought of it, to be perfectly honest. In February of 1993, unannounced, mayor Teddy Kollek went to the Museum of Tolerance [in Los Angeles]. He spent a lot of time here. I was in Washington, D.C. He left me a message to call him immediately.
“It was one month after we opened. I called him and he said: ‘You must replicate this museum in the heart of Jerusalem. Don’t do Holocaust because we have Yad Vashem. But the rest of it − we must have it in Jerusalem.’
“I came, he took me around, showed me properties there and said: ‘They won’t be good enough because they are too small. You have to come back and we’ll work on it.’ And I came back, and he had just lost the election, but he personally took me to [his successor as mayor, Ehud] Olmert and said: ‘Ehud, I was going to do this project, but it didn’t fall into my lap now, but you have to see that this project is done.’
“That was soon after we had built the facility over here for about $55 million − and I wouldn’t have undertaken it. But I am a Zionist, proudly so. So when Teddy Kollek offered it, I said okay, we’ll build it one day.”
Sources close to Kollek say the former mayor, who died in 2007, thought a Museum of Tolerance should be built in Jerusalem, but was not in favor of importing a replica of the Los Angeles museum.
In Israel, Hier’s name carries a lot less weight than that of the famous, late Nazi hunter, after whom the center that Hier founded is named. But Newsweek magazine twice put Hier at the top of its list of the United States’ most influential rabbis − describing him as “one phone call away from almost every world leader, journalist and Hollywood studio head.” When U.S. president George W. Bush visited Israel, Hier was part of the delegation of Jewish leaders accompanying him.
“He’s a giant,” says one Israeli diplomat who knows Hier. “He is a magnet for Hollywood. They are the only ones who could bring Will Smith to their annual event last year and Russell Crowe this year, including all the top people and the studio heads.”
At the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s annual Humanitarian Award dinner on May 5, Crowe spoke about tolerance and humaneness in the heart of the American dream. Also present were other actors, and filmmakers and studio heads, as well as entertainer Jay Leno, who wrote a generous check.
Rabbi Hier speaks gladly about his − and the museum’s − relationships with leaders, about the actors who participate in the center’s productions and about how King Hussein of Jordan visited the museum with his entire family and even kept his museum membership card in his wallet, according to his son King Abdullah.
Hier can’t say that the entertainment community agrees with the center’s positions on Israel, he admits, but with respect to the Museum of Tolerance, the center’s educational arm, they see the influence the museum has on young people, and the center and the museum are fortunate to have their support. Entertainers identified with both the right and the left have expressed their support of the center: Frank Sinatra, who was an admirer of Wiesenthal, was among the first to be a supporter; and Jane Fonda, long outspoken as a leftist, has attended their annual dinners.
Filling a void
Hier was born in 1939, on New York’s Lower East Side, and suggests that even if he wanted to, with his education, no one would ever mistake him for a Harvard professor.
After his ordination as an Orthodox rabbi, he served as rabbi for a congregation in Vancouver and as director of the Hillel House at the University of British Columbia. Until he left for Canada, all the people he knew were Orthodox, he says. In Vancouver, however, he discovered a different world − communication was necessary, anti-Semitism hadn’t disappeared and it will not permanently disappear, he says.
When Hier came to Los Angeles in 1977, he discovered that the United States didn’t have a single site for commemorating the Holocaust − although there were lots of places that commemorated dinosaurs.
First Hier founded Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles in a Jewish neighborhood near Beverly Hills. In August 1977, he thought to establish a Holocaust memorial center in the United States. He and a donor contacted
Wiesenthal, who agreed to let them use his name, and they built a small museum.
No country is immune from anti-Semitism, says the rabbi, not even the United States; no one can swear that a crime like the Holocaust won’t happen there or in Europe. The Jews have been mistaken too many times, so the smartest thing to do is to educate the population and make friends among the non-Jews. For that, he says, you need an idea that will attract not only Jews − which is how the Museum of Tolerance was born.
In 1989, when Hier and his colleagues began to plan the project, they didn’t have the money to see it through, and yet, four years later, the museum opened to the public. At the time the Los Angeles Times predicted that it would attract the “Pico Boulevard public” − which is to say, the city’s Jewish community. Yet today, Hier and his colleagues proudly declare that 90 percent of the 350,000 annual visitors are not Jewish.
Hier has plenty of supporters among the Jewish community: William Daroff, vice president for public policy and director of the Washington office of the Jewish Federations of North America, says one of the keys to Hier’s success is the location of the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. The East Coast, he explains, has many such institutions, but in L.A., though the city has a large, affluent Jewish community, the museum is a source of special pride for Los Angelenos and serves as a center for civic involvement.
Jewish liberals are more measured in their praise. Rabbi Michael Lerner, the outspoken editor of the progressive Jewish magazine Tikkun, says he has visited the museum and thinks it increases understanding among the various ethnic groups in the Los Angeles area. However, he says he regrets that the museum is associated with what he calls Hier’s very right-wing and distorted view of Israel as the innocent victim and the Palestinians as evil terrorists.
It is hard not to be impressed by Rabbi Hier’s energy. As we walk through the corridors of the museum, I nearly have to run to keep up. Employees relate that he works out twice a day.
Museum director Liebe Geft says that over the years Hier has built up a staff of people wholeheartedly committed to the museum’s vision. He does not micro-manage the museum, but rather considers the employees’ many ideas − and in the end, he knows what will work, she says.
He also has a weakness for technology. He proudly shows me a sophisticated movie theater with amazing sound quality: Raindrops sound like they’re falling among the chairs. He tells me that this is the city’s most amazing movie theater − boasting state-of-the-art technology. Two top Hollywood studio executives came here, and they could hardly believe what they saw, he says.
The next expansion
Currently on the museum’s agenda is another expansion − a new conference center, that will also be available for rental for bar mitzvahs and weddings, among other things. Several neighbors protested the plan, which they said would decrease their property values, and cause traffic problems and noise. The neighborhood, whose residents are almost entirely Jewish, is still littered with signs declaring that holding festive events at the museum will desecrate the memory of the Holocaust. Both parties recruited Holocaust survivors to their side in the conflict.
Susan Gans, who organized the neighborhood protest, says she and the others have no objection to the museum, but do not want a hall open until midnight in a residential neighborhood. She says the plans threaten the frail, elderly Jews, including some Holocaust survivors, who live closest to the museum − construction noise and dust just a few meters from their windows will endanger their health and may even kill them, she says.
Another neighbor, an elderly Jewish woman walking her Chihuahua dog on a pink leash on the street behind the museum, says the opponents lost “because Rabbi Hier is so well-connected, and his donors also give to campaigns and all the politicians are in their pocket.”
Another neighbor taking in the garbage cans shrugs: “You can’t fight this. He [Rabbi Hier] is very powerful and we don’t have the money to fight this.”
When confronted with the complaints, Hier responds: “You don’t mean neighbors, you mean Susan Gans. I know they complained − they lost. The city council had a hearing. It was a unanimous decision by the city commission for the expansion. The governor was in favor, the mayor is in favor of the expansion, so they lost.”
Hier describes the new project as a cultural center, which is intended to host meetings and conferences. He says the organization very much respects the neighbors, and will employ noise experts to ensure neighbors won’t be disturbed.
As for the neighbors who said it is inappropriate to have parties and weddings at a Holocaust museum, Hier calls the claim a public relations gimmick.
Perhaps it is his take-no-prisoners attitude, which pokes out now and then in an interview, from behind the smiles and the openness, which no doubt accounts to a large extent for how his tremendous enterprise grew out of nothing.
When Frank Gehry was appointed architect of the planned Jerusalem museum, officials from the municipality there showed them the current site, near Independence Park, recalls Hier.
“We asked who owns it, and they said they and the Israel Lands Authority. And eventually they gave it to us. However, we never dreamed that underneath … We started construction, and then they found bones.”
You didn’t know about that in advance?
“No. Of course not. No one at the Wiesenthal Center had any idea whatsoever, never.”
So when you first heard about the bones, didn’t you sense any trouble?
“Not at all. What trouble? The city of Jerusalem and the land authority own a piece of land on which there is a municipal parking lot, three levels, without anyone objecting to that. So on what basis? For 50 years, there were no bones found. And we started, and there were bones. If the Supreme Court had ruled against us, we would have moved.
Whose idea was it to take us to the Supreme Court? [Islamic Movement head] Sheikh [Ra’ad] Salah and his few Palestinian friends. Why did they do it? The most logical thing is to assume they thought they were going to win. They lost. Everybody wants to win. And nobody can accuse the Israeli Supreme Court of being a right-wing court.”
The severe recession that has hit California has also affected the Wiesenthal Center. That is also the reason, Hier says, that Gehry resigned from the project.
Still, some Israelis are not so fond of the idea of rich American Jews teaching them tolerance.
“We are talking about Zionism and there’s nothing wrong for an American Jewish organization to have a stake in Jerusalem. Putting your money where your mouth is. We say we are Zionists. Jerusalem means something to us, we want to influence the society there, and that’s why we’re building a Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem. I don’t think it’s a big sin.”
But right now, aren’t you taking the risk that even if you build the museum there, pretty much everyone entering the museum will know it was built on a cemetery?
“What was the history of the Knesset 400 years ago? What was the history of the president’s house 400 years ago? Are we going to undo the society?”He says he wouldn’t be sincere if he were to say he isn’t frustrated, but asks to be permitted to say that the museum in Jerusalem will be built and will be open in “three to three and a half years” − and I can quote him on that.
Museum of Tolerance Special Report Part V / Time to bury the project with the bones: Haaretz
A quick glance at the plans for the Museum of Tolerance makes it clear why the huge area allotted and inconceivable investment in titanium and glass have sparked a protest among people who care deeply about Jerusalem.
By Esther Zandberg
Tags: Israel news Museum of Tolerance Museum of Tolerance special report
The world is full of graves. The world is full of remains. The world is full of skeletons − metaphoric ones, too. If you dig deep enough, there will always be a reasonable chance that beneath every building or park or highway, ghostly memories from the past will be unearthed, which are only waiting for the right moment to arise from their slumber. When they reach the surface, you can depend on them to spur a scandalous affair, to foment an uproar. Power struggles, national conflicts or political interests that have some legitimacy − and are often subsumed under the rubric of “religious sensitivities” − provide endless golden opportunities for memories to emerge from their place of rest and air their grievances.
Without making light of the controversy over the graves beneath the site designated for the emergency room of Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon, and the ruckus resulting from those dry bones found there, the affair of the Muslim cemetery located under the site of the proposed Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem is much juicier. This is due to its location in the capital, a city already besieged by scandals, and also to the critical issues involved. It’s not only a life-and-death matter.
This affair is juicy first of all because the national interests and emotions that have surfaced as a result far exceed the boundaries of the cemetery itself. After all, the peace and quiet of these dry bones was already disturbed during previous construction in the area, early in the 20th century. But this time what is at stake is nothing less than a direct blow to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; it is a fire to which an overdose of fuel has been added. And in Jerusalem! It’s no wonder the flames are reaching the heavens.
The whole debacle is further exacerbated by the fact that what is due to be constructed on the property of the Mamilla cemetery is not a hospital, a highway or even a parking lot (there already was one on part of the area) − but, ironically, a “museum of tolerance.”
When it comes to such an example of Orwellian irony, in a city that is the universal epitome of intolerance, it really is impossible to carry on with business as usual: If ever there were a justified and easily explained uproar, it’s this one. It has a full right to erupt and balloon even beyond all proper dimensions.
World-famous American Jewish architect Frank Gehry, who withdrew in January as designer of the proposed building, made an immodest contribution of his own to fanning the flames. A top-flight master architect, winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, a man who constitutes a school of architecture in and of himself − Gehry is a “brand name” whose works arouse strong feelings even without graves. Of course, the fact that a religious figure from a Jewish institution (the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, which has its own Museum of Tolerance) stands behind the new museum is crucial when it comes to those graves − and also adds a dose of cynicism. But Gehry’s plans have contributed substantially to the commotion: His is an extravagant sculptural structure of huge dimensions, infuriatingly bizarre and curvaceous, a strange-looking edifice that threatens to trample the existing historical municipal fabric for no obvious reason.
Furthermore, the incredible financial investment in the project’s construction − due to total some NIS 1 billion, according to reports − in a desperately poor city like Jerusalem, was already too much. With different players, and at a bargain price, things would probably not have reached this point and the building would already have been erected in downtown Jerusalem, to our regret.
On second thought, using a sort of reverse logic, in the final analysis, only good can emerge from this story. The bones that have proven their power to fan flames may succeed in putting paid to this entire undertaking, thus rescuing Jerusalem from another grandiose and expensive architectural monstrosity.
Olmert’s scandalous vow
Tolerance has no need of a museum; it needs to be practiced on a daily basis. In order to teach tolerance in the Holy City, it’s enough to join the tours along the separation fence, to visit the checkpoints surrounding the city, to count policemen on holidays and festivals, or to read Gideon Levy’s columns in this newspaper about the injustices and the oppression of the occupation.
In any case, the museum’s entrepreneurs, for their part, are clearly not even dreaming about touching on the essence of intolerance. “The center will promote unity and tolerance among Jews and people of all faiths by means of an environment free of political, theological or ideological viewpoints,” they declared when a model and plans were first presented at an official ceremony at the President’s Residence in 2002. The intolerance in Jerusalem is political. And if only for that reason, every single one of the 48,000 square meters of the museum is a waste, whether they are designed by Frank Gehry, who has since announced his withdrawal, or by another architect.
A parenthetical comment: At the same ceremony at the President’s Residence − which was an embarrassingly over-dramatic event, as though what was at stake was no less than the building of the Third Temple by God’s representative on earth − the mayor of Jerusalem at the time, Ehud Olmert, vowed: “I will do everything, in any position I fill, to ensure that the building is constructed without bureaucracy and without obstacles.”
That was a scandalous promise. The job of a mayor and his primary obligation to his electorate is to safeguard the public interest in municipal projects; not to stand by entrepreneurs, like the Wiesenthal Center people, who have their own interests at heart. The role of the municipal planning system is to keep an eye on even the pettiest bureaucratic detail involved in approval and execution of a project; to place “obstacles,” in other words demands, before it; to ask tough questions; and to guarantee that the project will contribute to the good of the city and all its residents.
In addition, the choice of Frank Gehry, among anyone who knows the nature of his “merchandise,” arouses the suspicion that the promotion of tolerance was not the entrepreneurs’ first priority, but rather a desire to demonstrate a “presence” in the Holy City and to repeat what is known in the world of architecture and tourism as the “Bilbao effect.” The reference is to a marginal city in the Spanish periphery that is now on the map of global tourism thanks to Gehry’s branch of the Guggenheim Museum there, which has wrought an economic miracle. Since Bilbao, every city in the world wants to repeat this story; to become an overnight sensation that draws millions of tourists who will come in droves to see the latest architectural wonder.
But Jerusalem is not just any city, and certainly not a marginal one. It has no shortage of architectural and other attractions, and to be on the map it has no need of Frank Gehry. For thousands of years, and not always to its benefit, this city has not only been on the map but at the “center of the universe.” This doesn’t help the city much, and has not brought about any economic miracles. It’s also not at all certain that tourists would flood the proposed museum’s entrances, because even tourism is politics, and to see Gehry you can go on a pilgrimage to his works in cities that are friendlier to humanity than Jerusalem.
Curves and sheathing
As to the specifics of its design, much as it would be unique on the Israeli and Jerusalem landscape, this project − meant to revitalize Jerusalem’s city center, among other things − is strikingly similar to others by Gehry. Here too he chose to cover substantial parts of the roof and the outside of the building with glass (which has to undergo special treatment against the Jerusalem sun), and others with a sheathing of blue titanium − a special favorite of his. The other walls were to feature the stone facade that is required in Jerusalem’s buildings. The most prominent aspect of the design was its curved lines, for which Gehry is also famous and which were considered trailblazing at the start of his career.
Inside the complex, aside from exhibition areas, there were plans for a theater, lecture halls, an international convention center, a library and various services such as a restaurant and an underground parking lot for 560 cars.
The Jerusalem museum was supposed to be three times as large as its counterpart in Los Angeles, with a maximum height of 30 meters (about 10 stories). It was supposed to be erected on an open public area of 14 dunams (3.5 acres), on both sides of Hillel Street, between Nahalat Shiva and Independence Park. West of that area there are plans for the Jerusalem courthouse complex, which is even larger than the center itself.
In any event, he announced his withdrawal a few months ago, in a much different world from that in which he began the planning, at the beginning of the decade. In light of global economic and environmental crises, a new ecological awareness and the Obama era, architecture like that of Gehry and his ilk arouses unease and hesitation. Meanwhile, the “Bilbao effect” has also become an object of satire.
Gehry is not the only one in his “circle” whose work is now being cut back to some extent, and he may have anticipated the new directions in which the wind is blowing. Even if this was not the reason he bailed, by leaving the project − he marked his escape route. Not only from building according to his plan, but from the initiative altogether.
This is the time to bury the Museum of Tolerance, together with the dry bones, for the sake of tolerance. Olmert is now released from his vow in any case, and in the ensuing peace and quiet, with the money that will be saved, there is a lot to be done to promote human dignity and proper planning in Jerusalem. The list is long − all the authorities have to do is to decide where to begin.