Ashkelon fallout, continued

FALLOUT from the removal of the Ashkelon graves may be spreading to the United States:

Satmar (Williamsburg) To Protest Outside White House Tuesday

(Tuesday, July 6th, 2010) (Asra Kaddisha press release at Yeshiva World)

Thousands of Orthodox Jews are targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Washington, DC, demanding Netanyahu to stop Archaeological excavations and construction in the Holy Land that is desecrating ancient Jewish cemeteries in gross violation of Jewish law. The leaders also denounced the Israeli police’s beatings of peaceful demonstrators protesting the clearing of five ancient cemeteries and continued action to empty a cemetery in Jaffa in order to construct a hotel.

Rabbi Lazar Stern, a spokesman for Asra Kadisha, a worldwide group dedicated to protecting the integrity of Jewish cemeteries, said the leaders plan to protest outside the White House, and to deliver petitions to the Israeli embassy, during Netanyahu’s July 6th visit

The Central Rabbinical Congress, which represents Orthodox Jewry, helped organize the day of protest in Washington in support of Asra Kadisha.

“We believe that the desecration of the dead could bring grave danger to the living,” said Rabbi Stern.

Asra Kadisha has brought international pressure to bear in their efforts to stop the desecration of cemeteries throughout Europe – most recently in Spain, the Czech Republic and the Ukraine – and finds it unbearable painful that similar desecration’s are taking place in the Holy Land.

Dr. Bernard Fryshman, of the Conference of Academicians for the Protection of Jewish Cemeteries, reported that suitable engineering alternative had been provided to all of the burial sites recently excavated in Ashkalon, Nazareth and now in Jaffo.

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Background on the removal of the graves, which do not seem to have been Jewish, is here (and follow the links).