Thursday, November 18, 2010

More protesting over Jaffa graves

MORE PROTESTING over the excavation of Jaffa graves for a hotel:
Jewish group threatens to picket Core Club, Gramercy Park Hotel over hotel construction in Israel

Gatecrasher (NY Daily News)

Wednesday, November 17th 2010, 4:00 AM

A group called Save the Graves wants to bury real estate developer Aby Rosen in protests.

After staging demonstrations outside the Lever House headquarters of Rosen's RFR Holding and, last week, outside his upper East Side home, the Central Rabbinical Congress of the USA and Canada has announced it will turn up the heat on the Quaker-maned magnate by picketing two of his investments: VIP hangouts the Core Club and the Gramercy Park Hotel.

As we reported this summer, the CRC's beef with Rosen and RFR involves the company's project to build an ultraluxe $600 million hotel in Jaffa, Israel. Construction crews there have unearthed an ancient grave site, and the protesters allege RFR has ignored their pleas to deal with the remains in a proper manner.

[...]

A spokeswoman for Rosen responded with a cryptic release that does not name Save the Graves or the CRC, but rather states, "Israel's High Court of Justice has rejected the claims of "an anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist religious extremist group to obtain a temporary injunction" against RFR.

The release also contends the remains were "definitively determined" to be of "pagan origin" and concludes: "The project continues to move forward without delay."
Background here.