Despite intense efforts by activists to avoid it, this past
Monday (12 Shevat) the Antiquities Authority conducted
excavations on Yaffo Road in Haifa, while desecrating human
remains. Starting in the small hours of the morning, many
demonstrators against the desecration of the bones arrived
at the site. The demonstrators said that they saw bones on
the disinterred earth. That earth was collected in bags and
the bones will be brought to burial on the site. Rabbi Moshe
Gafni spoke with the director general of the Antiquities
Authority, Yehoshua Dorfman, and succeeded in preventing
further excavations in the three other burial caves
discovered in the area.
Although Haifa's mayor had originally promised to stop all
digging if bones were found, he did not keep his promise at
the crucial moment.
The rav of the chareidi community of Haifa, HaRav Yechiel
Yosef Halevi Bamberger, also arrived on the scene with a
large group of Haifa's residents, as did HaRav M.
Rauchberger the rav of the Ramat Hadar neighborhood of Haifa
and a member of the Council of the Chief Rabbinate. UTJ's
representatives in the Haifa municipality , Rabbi Aryeh
Blitental and Rabbi Chaim Williger, were also present at the
site from the early hours of the morning. They were later
joined by council member Rabbi Avrohom Weitzman and the
representative of the chief rabbis, Mr. Benny Hesse, the
general director of the Chevra Kadisha and a member of the
city's religious council.
When the archaeologists arrived on the site, they began to
dig, protected by the police and security companies. The
police dispersed the demonstrators brutally. Only the
members of the City Council's Religious Bloc were permitted
to remain on the site and to supervise the digging. The
representatives of the Federation for the Prevention of the
Desecration of Graves said that the earth which was dug up
was full of bones. The earth was collected and placed in
bags which will be buried on the site.
Rabbi Moshe Gafni was very involved and he demanded that the
director general of the Antiquities Authority, Yehoshua
Dorfman, stop the digging and at least guarantee that the
additional burial caves, which are not necessary for the
road work, remain untouched. In the past, the Antiquities
Authority refused such requests and whenever it began
digging it would also dig up and desecrate any additional
places and burial caves discovered in the course of their
excavation. Dorfman promised not to conduct excavations
anywhere else in the area, and also to build a cement wall
to preserve the additional burial caves that were discovered
but not unearthed.
During the demonstration, the police arrested four
demonstrators with much force. Later on they were released.
The representatives of the Religious Bloc as well as deputy
mayor Moshe Shtetman informed mayor Amram Mitzna that they
objected to the conducting of the digs. They also noted that
it was important to stop them, and not to dig needlessly in
the additional burial pits. "This achievement is only the
prevention of what could have been worse. There is no doubt
that without protests, the additional caves would have been
unearthed, desecrating many human bones," the activists
stressed.
The local activists, and especially the representatives of
UTJ in the city, waged the struggle against the desecration
with much mesiras nefesh, stopping all of their other
involvements in order to devote themselves to this
mission.
On Sunday, 11 Shevat, Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna convened the
representatives of the Religious Bloc of the Municipal
Council and told them that he had decided to permit the
excavations. During recent weeks, attempts had been made to
prevent the excavations, out of fear that bones of the
deceased would be desecrated. The project is called the
Yaffo Bypass, and it is located on the approaches to the
city.
The site, part of Haifa's ancient Jewish cemetery, contains
a burial cave where amoraim and rishonim are
buried. Rav Avdimi demin Haifa is buried there. In ancient
sources the site is known as the Cemetery in the foothills
of the Carmel. Many rishonim are buried there, including the
Rash of Shantz, the Ramban and some Baalei Tosafos.
Last week, Mayor Mitzna and local rabbonim appointed
chairman of the Chevra Kadisha and member of the Haifa
Religious Council, Benny Hesse, to negotiate with the
pertinent parties and to reach a suitable solution. At a
joint meeting with all of the parties, it was decided to
implement the Yaffo Bypass project only in a way which would
not damage burial caves. However, the agreement made at the
meeting did not take into consideration the opposition of
the Antiquities Authority, which announced that if bones
were found, they would not stop their excavations in mid-
work.
The representatives of the Religious Bloc of the Municipal
Council asked the UTJ Knesset members and others to ask the
director of the Antiquities Authority to accept the
agreement and stop excavations if burial caves were found.
On Sunday, however, Mitzna announced that he had consulted
all pertinent parties, and that the excavations would take
place Monday morning on the terms of the Antiquities
Authority.
