In february 2010 NRK`s correspondent to Israel, Sidsel Wold, reported at length on how Israel was planning to construct a museum on top of an an ancient Muslim graveyard. It has now become clear that the graveyard was just a Palestinian hoax designed to make Israel look bad.

The NRK article “Bickering over Tolerance musuem“, by Sidsel Wold and Laila Bakken, was published on February 11th 2010. Excerpt:

The site where the centre is to be built, lies on the well known Mamilla graveyard in Western Jerusalem… Families of those who lie buried here have long protested against the building of the museum… “I have an entire list over ancestors who lie buried in the Mamilla graveyard, says Diana Husseini, who belongs to an 800 year old family, to NRK. “The museum will be a monument over intolerance” Husseini believes. “With the destruction of the graveyard the Israelis are deleting traces of Jerusalem`s Arab and Muslim history” she says.

Indeed. One of Diana Husseini`s ancestors, the well known nazi, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al Husseini, ran sewage through the site and intended to build a centre on top if it as well.

The Jerusalem Post writes: The Simon Wiesenthal Center on Tuesday accused opponents of its plans to build a museum near a historic Muslim cemetery in central Jerusalem of “sheer hypocrisy” after the center obtained information showing that the Supreme Muslim Council of British Mandate Palestine had planned to build a large commercial center directly on top of the cemetery in 1945.

Haaretz writes: The cemetery at issue contains graves up to 400 years old. However, it has not been used since Israel’s independence, and much of it and the surrounding area has become part of Independence Park, in the heart of Jewish West Jerusalem.

Swedish blogger Ilya Meyer (translation from FIM) has done a great job in discovering how the Swedish News Agency TT has done what NRK`s Sidsel Wold has done – disseminated a Palestinian propaganda story as the truth. Ilya Meyer/FiM writes: The new fake “graves” that suddenly sprouted from the ground in recent days and that formed the centrepiece of TT’s report are an attempt to steal more land and they were located outside the site of the parking lot.

Norwegian daily VG has now run an NTB story on the hoax, writing: Authorities destroyed around 300 gravestone imitations which had been place illegally in the Independence Park, authorities claim. At present VG is the only newspaper to run this story, while several ran the original story on how the graveyard was real.