It took me a few times to make sure I was reading this headline correctly, but yes, both Jewish and Muslim organizations are uniting on religious grounds to the construction of the Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance being built by the Wiesenthal Center.

What is not obvious from the title of the article is that each side is contesting a different issue. The museum is being built on the grounds of the Mamilla cemetery, a former Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem. Now before you get all huffy about building on a cemetery, the cemetery was turned into a parking lot years ago with virtually no backlash from the Muslim community. However, now that the construction requires the unearthing of the skeletons, Muslim groups want to declare it a holy site.

As for the Jewish objection, they do not care about the treatment of the dead in this case. Rather, they argue that by building a museum on the grounds of a cemetery, they would make the building ritually impure under Jewish laws. This would mean religious Jews, especially those of the Kohanim (priest) family would be unable to enter.

Now, through trades of promises to keep holy sites unmarred (such as Josef’s tomb in Nablus) Jewish and Muslim leaders are supporting the cooalition to stop the construction.

This article (which I must say if poorly written) poses a lot of unanswered questions. Who is going to “win” this negotiation? Why build a museum that would be considered ritually impure, especially when it is a museum of tolerance? And at what point will this united front, held together by strings, eventually fall apart as neither side has the same goals.

Summer sweepstakes run by Cheapflights and Studentuniverse.com.

Free to enter. Just thought I’d share.