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23 Iyar 5765 - June 1, 2005 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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NEWS
Work on Trans-Israel Highway Resumes Despite Grave Desecration

By Betzalel Kahn

The Trans-Israel Highway Company resumed work on Tuesday at the site where graves were discovered near Binyamina after construction was stopped for several weeks while seeking ways to preserve the burial caves, which are seriously threatened by the road project.

Several weeks ago construction work ceased until a halachic solution was found to prevent the destruction of the graves after the skeletons and bones in two large burial caves located along the route of the planned highway were completely disinterred. During the past few weeks engineering solutions have been found for most of the caves, with the exception of the two large caves that were emptied of their contents.

HaRav Michoh Rothschild, chairman of the Association for the Prevention of Grave Desecration, notes that the senior engineers, including Rami Manor, presented the Trans-Israel Highway Company and the Transportation Ministry with orderly, cost-efficient plans to solve the problem of the two burial caves and to allow the continued paving of the road without harming the caves, but the company is unwilling to make any accommodation.

Last week Northern Police District Commander Dan Ronen decided that if a solution acceptable to all parties is not found by Tuesday morning of this week he would allow construction work to resume. Despite feverish last-minute attempts company heads could not be persuaded to employ an engineering solution even after gedolei haposkim made clear the caves may not be harmed despite the removal of the human remains.

Monday night Rav Rothschild sent an urgent letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Transportation Minister Meir Shetreet demanding they intervene immediately to stop construction work and force the company to find engineering solutions. "The Trans-Israel Highway Company is a firm made up of small-minded haters of religion who took on an important national project that is too much for them, both from a planning and a human standpoint, leaving no alternative other than to replace the project managers with more sensitive, cultured individuals," Rav Rothschild writes.

"It would be a shame for Jewish graves in Eretz Yisroel, a matter of great importance to millions of believing Jews around the world, not to receive the minimal decency accorded to a protected tree or flower or nature reserve or preserved building. Apparently this is part of the trend and policy of anti-religious coercion and attacks on the observant."

 

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