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ACTION ALERT - Museum of Tolerance: Respect Muslim Cemetery in Jerusalem

Tell Rabbi Marvin Hier the Simon Wiesenthal Center should find a different location in Jerusalem to build a Museum of Tolerance

 

Take Action NOW!

Write Rabbi Marvin Hier.

Tell him that the Simon Wiesenthal Center should find a different location in Jerusalem to build a Museum of Tolerance.

Click here to edit and send your letter using APN's easy-to-use online Action Center.


Click here to read the letter sent to Hier by leading Israeli and American Jewish figures.

Click here to read an op-ed on this subject co-authored by Lara Friedman, APN's Director of Policy and Government Relations.



 

In Jerusalem, the Simon Wiesenthal Center is building its Museum of Tolerance and Center for Human Dignity on top of an ancient Muslim cemetery.

For a human rights organization that draws its moral authority from the absolute collapse of morality that was the Holocaust, and does its work in the name of Simon Wiesenthal, who worked tirelessly to bring the guilty to justice - for the Simon Wiesenthal Center to build over graves is appalling.

Moreover, it is disturbing, foolish, and divisive. It is dangerously wrong.

The opening of a tunnel in Jerusalem's Old City a decade ago inflamed passions that led to unrest in which nearly 100 people died, including 16 Israeli soldiers. This planned museum has already sparked riots. Now is the time to stop.

Recently, a collection of Israeli and Jewish American political, cultural, and security leaders sent a letter making these points and imploring Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean of the Wiesenthal Center, to choose a new site in Jerusalem for the planned museum.

Click here to read the letter signed by retired Israeli General Shlomo Gazit; Knesset Member Colette Avital (Labor); former Knesset Members Mossi Raz (Meretz), Naomi Chazan (Meretz), and Tzaly Reshef (Labor); former Mossad official Yossi Alpher; Israeli political scientists Galia Golan and Menachem Klein; ethicist Michael Walzer, prominent attorneys Victor A. Kovner, Martin Bresler, and Ambassador David Birenbaum; writers Michael Chabon, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Ayelet Waldman; and APN leaders Franklin M. Fisher, Gerald Bubis and Debra DeLee.

Click here to read an op-ed on this subject co-authored by Lara Friedman, APN's Director of Policy and Government Relations.

Please write to Rabbi Hier. Ask him to do the right thing and find a new location for the Museum of Tolerance.

Take Action NOW!

Click here to edit and send your letter using APN's easy-to-use online Action Center.

Please note that many activists who have sent emails have gotten a reply purporting (in a document entitled "Important Facts on the Israeli Supreme Court Ruling in Favor of the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem") to refute our concerns and criticisms of the project.

APN agrees that the facts are important, and unfortunately they are not fully presented in the SWC document.  To clear up any confusion about these facts, once and for all, Jerusalem expert Daniel Seideman (founder and legal advisor to the Israeli NGO Ir Amim) and APN's Lara Friedman have produced a Q & A primer entitled "Setting the Facts Straight Regarding the Museum of Tolerance."  In this document, we review all of the facts (and claims) in detail, and also provide a compendium of articles (analysis, opinion, and reporting) that may be of use to people who care as much as we do about this subject.