ANOTHER DEFENSE of the Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance by Rabbi Marvin Hier, "the founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance":

Op-Ed: Museum a beacon of hope in the center of Jerusalem

By Marvin Hier · February 2, 2009 (JTA)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) -- On Oct. 29, 2008, the Israeli Supreme Court rendered a unanimous decision permitting the Simon Wiesenthal Center to resume construction on its Museum of Tolerance project on the site of the municipal parking lot in the heart of western Jerusalem. The court denied the contention of the project’s chief opponent, Sheik Raed Salah, a notorious anti-Semite and Hamas supporter, that the parking lot was a Muslim cemetery and allowed construction to resume even on the small portion where bones were found.

For half a century, hundreds of Jews, Christians and Muslims parked their cars every day on the site, with no protest whatsoever from any Muslim groups, religious leaders, nongovernmental organizations or professors.

As the court noted, “for almost 50 years the compound has not been a part of the cemetery, both in the normative sense and in the practical sense, and it was used for various public purposes." It also said, "During all those years no one raised any claim, on even one occasion, that the planning procedures violated the sanctity of the site, or that they were contrary to law as a result of the historical and religious uniqueness of the site." And, "For decades this area was not regarded as a cemetery by the general public or by the Muslim community."

"No one," the court said, "denied this position."

In 1964, the highest Muslim authority, the Muslim Religious Council, even ruled that the adjacent Independence Park (Mamilla Cemetery) was a "mundras," an abandoned site where building is permissible. Today, mundras is a widely relied-upon categorization and sanctioned throughout the Arab world -- in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian territories.

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