Fixing Israel’s oldest cemetery

Seven years of campaigning by the 54-member International Committee for Har Hazeitim appeard to have reversed years of desecration at the Mount of Olives Cemetery — Israel’s oldest burial ground, on the eastern border of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Formed seven years ago after two reports noted the destruction and dereliction of the 3,000-year-old burial ground, called Har Hazeitim in Hebrew, the committee has members from Canada, Europe and the United States, including Woodmere resident Charles Miller.

Miller and the committee were in Israel in early December, the same week that President Trump made his historic announcement that the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Trump’s declaration came long after the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which ordered the U.S. Embassy to move to the city by May 31, 1999. Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama signed waivers that allowed the law to remain unimplemented. Trump did so in June.

The committee met with several Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Reuven Rivlin, Jerusalem Mayor Nik Barkat and Yuli Edelstein, the speaker of the Knesset.

“A Knesset caucus of 70 members, the largest caucus in the history of the Knesset, was formed to advocate for our efforts,” said Miller, an attorney. “Since our committee formed, there have been vast improvements at the site, including a permanent police station, new fencing and lighting, hundreds of security cameras were installed, and there was a toughening of the laws on cemetery vandalism.”

There are 150,000 known graves in Har Hazeitim, which is also Israel’s largest Jewish cemetery and dates to the time of the prophets. Menachem Begin, Israel’s sixth prime minister, is buried there, as is Henrietta Szold, one of six women who founded Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, in 1909, according to Hadassah.

The Mount Of Olives Committee was formed after a May 2010 report by Micha Lindenstrauss, who was then Israel’s state comptroller, criticized previous Israel governments for the “neglect” of the cemetery. He reported that there were many desecrated graves, recurring incidents of rock throwing at mourners and visitors, and garbage strewn throughout the grounds. There were games of soccer in which graves were used as goal posts, donkeys crisscrossed the cemetery, and the mountain became the drug capital of East Jerusalem.

Later that year, a report by One Jerusalem confirmed that since 1948, the year of Israel’s founding, there had been widespread defilement of graves because of poor security and no investment in infrastructure that could increase mourner and tourist access.

“In order to allow for the Jewish residents of the area and the Mount’s visitors to lead a normal life … only increased security presence and visible deterrence will regain the necessary security,” the group wrote in its report. One Jerusalem is considered a right-leaning organization dedicated to maintaining a united Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Menachem Lubinsky, the chief executive officer and president of Lubicom Marketing Consulting, in Brooklyn, and the Mount of Olives Committee chairman, said that much has been done since that report, including the installation of 173 surveillance cameras. Now, a visitors’ center has been planned.

“It’s the focal point of Jewish history,” Lubinsky said of the cemetery. His involvement is personal, because his parents are buried there. “The visitors’ center is already well advanced, and construction should start in the first of 2018. It will highlight prominent people and provide a sense of pride and history in one place.”