Hasta La Ideas

The controversy continues in Jerusalem over the planned Museum of Tolerance there. After years of a variety of groups fighting the project because the land it’s being built on was previously a Muslim cemetery (it was most recently a parking lot), construction had begun to move forward. While the project’s managers had promised from the start that they would being careful not to disturb any human remains they found, a particularly damning report published by Haaretz was released, detailing quite the opposite, finding that the developers had changed their tune and didn’t care what they uncovered and demolished en route. Now there’s news of another twist for the project, with Israeli officials saying that many of the graves were faked. Claiming that activists against the building secretly added hundreds of new grave markers to make the project appear as if it were destroying far more vast burial grounds. Officials even went so far as to get the new grave markers analyzed and confirmed that they weren’t real. The opposition has denied the allegations, saying the graves were there from the start. Here’s a bit:

The new gravestones, typically constructed with old stones set in fresh concrete, also scrambled the physical record at an important historical site, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority, which termed the graves “fictitious.”

The Islamic Movement‘s Abu Atta said all of the markers were constructed atop genuine graves, though in some cases nearly nothing was left of the original. He also indicated that the precise location of the graves was beside the point.

“If you dig a few meters down anywhere here you’ll find bones,” he said. “We just want to guard the cemetery.”

Once again, faced with all this continuing controversy, we’re sure Frank Gehry is plenty pleased that he removed himself from the project earlier this year.

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