In 2004, construction began in Jerusalem on the local branch of the Los Angeles-based Museum of Tolerance, designed by the leading American architect, Frank Gehry. The museum is now being built over the remains of what had been the largest and most important Muslim cemetery in Palestine, which had been in continual use from the time of the Crusades up until 1948.
The clash between the two competing claims to the same site offers a paradigmatic case to explore and rethink the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, since all of the elements of the larger conflict are also in play in the struggle over this specific site.
Bio
Antony Loewenstein
Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney-based freelance journalist, author and blogger. He has written for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Guardian, Washington Post, Haaretz, The Nation, Sydney's Sun-Herald, Melbourne's Age, Brisbane's Courier Mail,ABC Unleashed, Amnesty International Australia, Adelaide's Advertiser, The Bulletin, Znet, The Big Issue, Counterpunch and many others.
Loewenstein contributed a major chapter to 2004's best-seller, Not Happy, John! on the Hanan Ashrawi affair. His best-selling book on the Israel/Palestine conflict, My Israel Question, was released by Melbourne University Publishing in 2006. A new, updated edition was released in 2007 (and reprinted again in 2008). The book was short-listed for the 2007 NSW Premier's Literary Award.
He was a contributor to the 2008 Verso Books release, A Time to Speak Out: On Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity.
His second book, The Blogging Revolution, on the Internet in repressive regimes, was released in 2008 by Melbourne University Publishing.
He writes regularly for online magazines New Matilda and Crikey and is a board member of Macquarie University's Centre for Middle East and North African Studies. He is an Honorary Associate at Macquarie University's Department of Politics and International Relations.
He is the co-founder of advocacy group Independent Australian Jewish Voices and contributed to Amnesty International Australia's 2008 campaign about Chinese Internet repression and the Beijing Olympic Games. Loewenstein appears regularly on radio, TV, in public and at universities discussing current affairs and politics.
Saree Makdisi
Professor Saree Makdisi is a professor of English Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of several books on British Romanticism, his area of expertise. He also writes on contemporary Arab politics and culture.
Saree Makdisi is the nephew of the late Edward Said and the grandson of Anis Makdisi, a distinguished professor of Arabic at the American University of Beirut.
Widely published in his academic area, Makdisi has also written many commentaries on Palestine for publications such as the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, London Review of Books and the San Francisco Chronicle.
In 2008, Makdisi published his book Palestine Inside Out: Everyday Occupation. The book combines the personal experiences of daily life under occupation with an analysis of how the occupation functions as a whole.
The refusal of the speakers to even recognize the determination of the Arabs to destroy the state of Israel if it's the last thing they do illustrates the bias and lack of balance in this small hate-fest. It's classic blame-shifting: Why is it that everyone is afraid to address the reason 1967 war happened in the first place? Now it's about Israeli building on the disputed (misnamed "occupied") territories, as if there was no history before '67?
Because Israeli building is the convenient explanation for the whole problem. Were any of these speakers to look at history beyond their agenda, the whole debate would take on a whole different character, and cause them to ask some equally hard questions of the Arabs.
Why does Allah and Mohammad want the people to fight the Jews until the end of time until the Jews hide behind the rocks and trees, and Allah will cause the rocks and trees to speak, and they will cry out, "Here is a Jew!", Here is a Jew!", "Come and kill the Jew!"???
Whatever. Equality for you and equality for those who want to wipe you from the face of the earth. Yes, so sensible, why hasn't it worked sooner.
Sorry but either you have a selective understanding or you got the wrong translation. Mohammad never said I WANT you to fight the Jews he said Before the end of times you will fight the Jews.. It is a prophecy not a religious obligation. If it was an obligation, I wonder why Muslims have waited that long to comply with their religious duties. Jews have lived for centuries in the Middle East under different Muslim Cilaphas and kingdoms with no power worth mentioning, why they have not been exterminated then?
Likely you miss interpreted Mohammad's saying because you were comparing it to the time when God ordered the Jews to commit genocide and wipe out all the Canaanites...which they did according the old testament.
“ They completely destroyed everything in it with their swords—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep, goats, and donkeys” Joshua 6:21
There is no true place for unconditional love and tolerance in any religion, let’s not fool ourselves and pretended one is better than the other.
You say: “Equality for you and equality for those who want to wipe you from the face of the earth” Paranoia of being wiped out!! Isn’t that what the whites used to say to excuse their inhuman policies towards the Negros?
Isn’t it what the Nazis used to tell themselves to ease their conscience when they killed the Jews ? It was wise to lunch “a pre-emptive attack” and exterminate 8 million of them before they destroy Germany. Hitler’s speeches were full of this paranoia: "He has never founded any civilization, though he has destroyed civilizations by the hundred...”.
I congratulate the speaker on an incredibly sophisticated piece of anti-Israel propaganda. Each step along the argument he presents, makes it progressively harder to refute the overall direction of dissertation.
However the entire argument carefully avoids the huge body of evidence refuting almost every part of what has been said and the emotion it is designed to foster.
Let's look at just a few scant areas:
1. The "wall" is made to look like a wall on the Palestinian side and a fence on the Israeli side. Ignoring the speaker's contention that this is a ploy to alienate the Palestinians, a far more reasonable assumption would be that the Israelis want the wall to look inconspicuous while the Palestinians want it to look evil and conspicuous! Makes sense to me!
2. The "wall" is a ploy to alienate the Palestinians and has no real security value. Yet the total number of large-scale terrorist attacks in Jerusalem and central Israel, arising from the West Bank, has dropped from several per year to ZERO since its erection. Literally hundreds, perhaps thousands of Israeli's saved from terrorist murder or terrible injury.
3. The Palestinians who left or were forced out (both happened) of Israel in Israel's war of liberation (imposed on Israel by the armies of several Arab countries), have an inalienable right to return to their homes, like all other refugees. This, of course, was the right of the 700,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands? Of course not. (I guess you didn't know that more Jews were kicked out of Arab lands than Palestinians who left Israel). How about Armenian, German, Slovak, Slovenian, and dozens of other nationalities displaced after WW2. Entitled to reparations? Maybe. The Jews of Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Morocco, Sudan... never got any. If the Palestinians are entitled to reparations, international law requires those who launched the war to pay. So Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya and Iraq need to pay reparations to them. That is not the same as Israel opening its border to millions of people, some small proportion of whom were legitimate refugees.
4. The state of Israel is an apartheid state - mentioned many times. Goebels said "If you are going to tell a lie, make it a big one!" - Arab propaganda has learnt from a master of the trade. Israel is not a "so-called democratic state" - it is a REAL vibrant democracy with democratic protections as substantial as those in Australia or the U.S.A. It is a Jewish state with an Arab minority which votes in elections and even elects the occasional anti-Israel member to the Israeli parliament! (Imagine the U.S. allowing communists to be elected to the House or Senate!) It is the only middle east country with its minorities PROTECTED by law, instead of being VICTIMISED by the law. It is the only middle east country where the Judiciary is absolutely independent of government! It is the only middle east country where the elected representatives have absolute jurisdiction over the enacting of laws. Perfectly equitable? Of course not. But look at the alternative models!
5. Israel is a Jewish state which includes a substantial minority non-Jewish culture. According to the speaker, the only solution is the disbanding of the state. Let's see. The just solution which replaced apartheid in South Africa was... a democratic state where the culture of the MAJORITY prevails, and the culture of the minorities are protected. Sounds like ...Israel today!
I've been to the West Bank and what he says is a gross misrepresentation if not an out right lie. Both Israeli roads and Palestinian roads go above and below ground the ground. In fact the main road from the Etzion Block to Jerusalem is called "The Tunnel road" Any one who has actually seen the "wall" knows that you can actually walk right around it. Not three miles away but like twenty feet from any where you stand. The "Wall" is a series of barriers set up in certain areas to make patrol easier and shooting into Israel harder, but it is in no way continuous.
Yea!A topic of the day!Have you finished being indignant about Egypt Copt Christians's treatment by their Muslim neighbors?Have you voiced your disgust on Sudan's genocide of 3.5 million native black Christians by THEIR Muslim government?
No? Why not? Jewish Museum over Arab's dead bones is definitely worth a program in your eyes but British Christian cemetery being destroyed to build another mosque is not!I bet most of you are from Europe,poor brainwashed dhimmies - your grandfathers are spinning in their graves, ashamed of you !
Nobody is condoning the violence unleashed by Israel. But what do expect them to do? Turn the other bloody cheek? The word "Aparthied" is being used loosely here. Silly & gross propaganda.
Why does Allah and Mohammad want the people to fight the Jews until the end of time until the Jews hide behind the rocks and trees, and Allah will cause the rocks and trees to speak, and they will cry out, "Here is a Jew!", Here is a Jew!", "Come and kill the Jew!"???
What ever. Equality for you and equality for those who want to wipe you from the face of the earth. Yes, so sensible, why hasn't it worked sooner.
The Muslims (mainly Arab muslims) want Israel wiped off the face of the earth. And then complain that Israel is putting up a wall in defence! What kind of morons!
I think the real question here is how many tons of depleted uranium munition did Israel fire into Gaza family homes , buildings , schools , what is the long term effects on crops , water animals , humans breathing the dust and in contact with the after effects of the Depleted uranium !
we know by their own words they claim they phones 200,000 homes alone and told those people to get out they were about to bomb them , and then when they ran out doors Israel pwnded 200,000 155mm shells of depleted uranium munition down on their heads in 22 days with a 900 ft kill ratio , do the math on that per day ,brutal right , and followed it up with White Phosphorous , dime bombs , cluster bombs but its all good they are brown people so it doesn,t matter anywho aright ,
The clean up according to the IAEA is that if you fing a sliver of Depleted Uranium you dig up the top soil for 900 ft around that spot and you have to physically pick up the structure and remove it to a nuclear waste site , so basically you have to remove every building in Gaza and the min top 4 inches of topsoil in the whole prison i mean country .
Why does Allah and Mohammad want the people to fight the Jews until the end of time until the Jews hide behind the rocks and trees, and Allah will cause the rocks and trees to speak, and they will cry out, "Here is a Jew!", Here is a Jew!", "Come and kill the Jew!"???
Whatever. Equality for you and equality for those who want to wipe you from the face of the earth. Yes, so sensible, why hasn't it worked sooner.
How sick! Musuem of tolerance on a grave? How sick ! yet europeans are mute & americans are silently urging. Anyone who has the courage to say sth is quickly branded anti-semite.
member. 
