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Hamas report calls Israeli "Museum of Tolerance" on historic Muslim cemetery "theft"

February 20, 2014 at 3:34 pm

The Islamic Resistance Movement has issued a detailed report on the historic Ma’man Allah cemetery in East Jerusalem, calling the Israeli plans to build a supposed “Museum of Tolerance” thereon “part of the Zionist state’s ongoing theft of religious endowment land”. The cemetery, says Hamas, is “part of the monuments and endowments that have been targeted by the Zionist onslaught for decades” as the Israelis, “seek to distort Jerusalem’s history and change the reality in the city to reflect an alleged predominantly Jewish heritage”.

The report emphasised that the Ma’man Allah Cemetery is one of the oldest Islamic cemeteries in Palestine and, in fact the world; it contains the remains of some of the Companions of Prophet Mohammed and other pious Muslims from the time that the Caliph Umar captured the city in the 7th century until 1948.


According to the report’s preface, it has been prepared in order “to expose the Zionist policies which threaten this Islamic endowment”. Despite the Israelis’ destruction of the cemetery, the report adds, it remains an Islamic endowment. Recommendations include “preserving the sanctity of those who are buried in the cemetery”; graves have been disturbed by Israel’s actions and human bones have been found scattered around the site.

Hamas has called for moral and financial support to be provided for humanitarian, charitable and cultural institutions working in Jerusalem to preserve the rights of the indigenous Palestinian people.