Återigen har en arabisk mobb i Jerusalem
förstört delar av de judiska begravnings-
platserna på Oljeberget.
En stor amerikansk delegation med bl a
kongressledamöter och rabbiner som
**
Two US congressman were attacked by rock-throwers on
Friday in front of a mosque in the Ras Al-Amud neighbor-
hood of Jerusalem. Congressmen Eliot Engel and Jerrold
Nadler from New York State were on a tour of the Mount
of Olives Cemetery, along with Executive Vice Chairman
of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations Malcolm Hoenlein, and Rabbis Abraham
and Menachem Lubinsky, founders of the International
Committee for the Preservation of Har HaZeitim.
Their tour, which included some 40 Jewish American
leaders, was guided by JewishPress.com Managing
Editor Yishai Fleisher.
**
**
Earlier, following Friday prayers, hundreds of worshipers
hurled rocks at the Mughrabi Bridge entrance to the
Temple Mount, and dozens gathered inside the Al-Aqsa
mosque. Israeli police forces entered the plaza and
attempted to stop the violent protest. Several policemen
were injured.
Jerusalem District chief Nisso Shaham blamed the
ongoing Friday riots on a poster announcing a
Temple Mount visit by Likud member Moshe
Feiglin, which was originally scheduled for ten
days ago. The poster itself was a fake.
Muslim leaders have been actively inciting their
followers over the past month to “protect Al-Asqa”.
Prior to the attack, Hoenlein announced the launching
of a campaign to “retake the Mount of Olives cemetery
for the Jewish people.”
**
**
The oldest and largest Jewish cemetery in the world,
the Mt. of Olives is subjected to non-stop violence
against visitors, grave desecrations, an unlawful
mosque expansion, illegal building – all part of a
concerted Arab effort to assert control over the
burial site used by Jews for 3,000 years.
The focused aim of the International Committee for
the Preservation of Har Hazeitim
is the sustained improvement of the current conditions
at the Mount of Olives Cemetery. The ICPHH is driven to
react to and ameliorate the rampant and systematic violence,
destruction, and incitement taking place on the Mount of
Olives, as well as the general, widespread neglect and the
current illegal expansion of a mosque situated just meters
away from the grave of Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
JewishPress.com’s Managing Editor Yishai Fleisher, who
led the tour, lives with his wife and children in the community
of Maale HaZetim on the Mount of Olives, a few steps away
from where the attack took place.
Fleisher said, “The attack the congressmen faced is part of
the day-in day-out reality of Jewish communities who live
in proximity to the ancient Jewish cemetery at the Mount
of Olives and that is what we need to fight. However, when
people ask me whether we are scared to live here, I tell
them that while there is danger, it does not have to
translate into fear.
**
**
The enemies of Jewish rights in Jerusalem use terror
as a tactic to keep us away. But we will not bow to the
bullying. One day soon, Maale HaZeitim will be a quiet,
gentrified, normal Jerusalem eighborhood.”
On Saturday night there will be an emergency meeting
***