Palestinian shunned for selling land to Jews to be buried in Jewish cemetery
Mufti rules East Jerusalem resident Alah Kirsh, killed in Route 90 crash that claimed lives of 5 others last week, is ‘not a member of the Muslim nation’
By JTA Today, 4:31 pm
A chief rabbi of Jerusalem allowed a Palestinian man to be buried in a Jewish cemetery following his body’s exclusion by imams over his sale of real estate to Jews.
Aryeh Stern, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel’s capital, this week ruled that Alah Kirsh may be buried at a Jewish cemetery as an exception because he was a “righteous gentile,” the Ynet new site reported Friday.
Kirsh was killed along with five other people in a traffic accident on November 4. His family sought to bury his body at a Muslim cemetery in East Jerusalem but the imams there turned them away because he had been accused of selling real estate in that part of the capital to Jews several years ago. Family members were not allowed to bring Kirsh’s body to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and were forbidden to pitch a mourner’s tent and receive guests there, as is the Muslim custom.
Ekrima Sa’id Sabri, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, cited a 1935 fatwa, or religious Muslim edict, issued by his predecessor, Amin al-Husseini.
A publicly anti-Semitic leader of Arab Israelis and ally of Nazi Germany, al-Husseini wrote that year that “anyone who sells a home or land to Jews will not receive a Muslim burial.” Basing a new fatwa on the old one, Sabri wrote: “Whoever sells to the Jews in Jerusalem is not a member of the Muslim nation. We will not accept his repentance and he will not be buried in the Muslim cemetery.”
Kirsh’s body was placed temporarily outside a Muslim cemetery in Nabi Salih, a village near Ramallah. Stern ruled that he may be buried at a section of the Jewish cemetery at Har HaMenuchot reserved for people without religion.
“Since the Muslims will not bury him, we must correct the distortion of justice, that results in unjust humiliation of a man whose only sin was being prepared to sell land to Jews,” Stern wrote. “It is incumbent on us to honor a righteous gentile, and in this case a person who showed good will and was willing to take risks for the Jewish settlement.”
The case was brought to Stern’s attention by Im Tirtzu, an Israeli right-wing advocacy group.
