President Joe Biden’s scheduled visit to the Augusta Victoria Hospital on Har Hazeisim has prompted the International Committee for Har Hazeitim (ICHH) to issue a special open letter to the US President. In his open letter, Jeff Daube, chairman of the Israeli chapter of the ICHH, reminded the President that the Palestinian operated hospital is within several hundred feet of the international historic cemetery of the Jewish people.
Mr. Daube in his letter referred to the 150,000 Jews who are buried on Har Hazeisim for the past three thousand years and Jews around the world continue to yearn for burial on this hallowed site. “Indeed Mr. President, more than 10,000 U.S. citizens are buried there.” We hope that you will be given the factual, historic, and true picture of this holy site. Buried here are three biblical prophets, a prophetess, a prime minister, an abundance of sages and luminaries, the first chief rabbi of the contemporary Yishuv, the leading commentator on the Mishna, a lexicographer of modern Hebrew, a Nobel Prize laureate, numerous rabbinical scholars and revered heads of yeshivot, community leaders, the founder of a world-famous hospital in Jerusalem, and orphaned Holocaust survivors who fought as lone soldiers to defend Jerusalem.”
Mr. Daube reminded the President that “the Har Hazeisim is an international cemetery where Jews from 84 nations are buried including more than 10,000 American citizens. After all, you were among the 93 senators who had voted for the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, which put into law recognition of undivided Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel.”
The ICHH said it hoped that the President would also see fit to pay tribute to the saints, sages, and heads of the Jewish nation who are buried on Har Hazeisim. “In addition, it would be fitting to pay tribute to the thousands of American citizens who are buried there including deans of major seminaries, Chasidic leaders of major dynasties, survivors of the Holocaust, authors and philanthropic leaders.”
The ICHH was founded more than a dozen years ago by community activists and is credited with reversing the “shame” on Har Hazeisim that included many destroyed graves, strewn garbage, dead animals, and a general fear by visitors of being stoned or vandalized. Working with the national and municipal governments, the ICHH was instrumental in the restoration of graves, the installation of 174 surveillance cameras as well as a monitoring command center, regular sanitation services, lighting, new gating and fencing, the establishment of a police station and the stationing of a garrison of border police.
The ICHH is partnering with the national and municipal governments in building a Visitor Education Center on Har Hazeisim.
