Contesting Symbolic Landscape in Jerusalem

In 2006 a dispute broke out regarding an initiative by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles (backed by Israeli authorities) to construct a Museum of Tolerance (MoT) in West Jerusalem. The museum was to be built on a plot of land that in the past had been part of the historic Muslim Mamilla Cemetery, which since the 1980s has served as a municipal parking lot. Debate centred on whether construction of a museum dedicated to human dignity on Muslim cemeterial land was justified. The Northern