When archaeological investigations were frustrated by existing tombs, be they Jewish, Muslim or Christians, we used to say that the dead are more powerful than the living. Graves are usually respected by archaeologists. Fake tombs, however, should not be respected. See this report: Fake tombs near the Eastern Wall of the Temple Mount
MK Nisim Ze’ev (Shas) said the matter was a very serious one. “The Jerusalem Municipality is allowing complete abandonment of territory and assets,” he said. “The Arabs are trying to conquer the Land of Israel in every possible way. If we do not wake up to their conniving ways we will find ourselves before a gaping chasm. We need to plow the area and take down all of the fictitious tombs.”
Pictures of the fake tombs near the eastern Wall of the Temple Mount can be viewed in this article [Hebrew].
Hopefully, the un-dead in the fake tombs will not be so powerful when their un-existing remains and their rough stone enclosures will be removed.
More than a little confusion has crept in here, I’m afraid. Please note that the Arutz-7 article you link to is NOT about ‘fake tombs’ (or any tombs) near the Temple Mount at all. It is about new tomb structures — fake or otherwise — being built in the Mamilla Cemetery in West Jerusalem. That article, however, contains a link (misleadingly labeled “a Turkish cemetery”) which leads to another, unrelated article which DOES deal with the Muslim Cemetery in front of the eastern wall of the Old City. And what is that story? That the Islamic waqf in charge of the cemetery is extending upward an existing wall surrounding their existing cemetery, and a Turkish government agency is helping with the project. That’s it. Arutz-7 labels this a “brazen Arab land-grab” and quotes at length the right-wing Jewish settler-activist Aryeh King (to whom they assign the official-sounding but bogus title “Chairman of the Public Complaints Bureau in eastern Jerusalem”). Once again, Arutz-7 tries to whip up a non-story up into a scandal, one that serves their peculiar right-wing agenda. If it sounds like I’m on a crusade, I am: Arutz-7, which seems to have become the darling of so many web-logs, is simply not engaging in responsible journalism, but rather in propaganda. Thinking people deserve to know this, and they deserve better. That’s my rant du jour — I’m better now…
TOM POWERS / Jerusalem
Thanks, Tom, for alerting me to the wrong link. The link to the Fake Tombs near the Temple Mount has been corrected and another link added to pictures of these fake tombs in a Hebrew article. I remember last year seeing fake tombs myself very close to the south end of Eastern Wall. This has, however, nothing to do with the upward extending of the existing wall near the Lions’ Gate, on which I commented in a previous post.