Rabbi Menachem Lubinsky, Chairman of the International Committee for Defense of the Mount of Olives, called Sunday for Israelis to recognize the importance of the Mount of Olives Cemetery and “to wake up” and realize that "if they don't protect their past, they won't have their future either.”

In the last two weeks, there have been 90 desecrations of graves in the Mount of Olives, he said, 50 of them in one part of the Afghan section. There were 300 incidents of rock throwing in eastern Jerusalem in one month – and no arrests, he added.

On the positive side, the rabbi noted that the new Religious Affairs Minister, David Azoulay (Shas), has allotted half of his budget for protection of the cemetery, and the new Minister of Internal Security, Gilad Erdan (Likud), has toured the cemetery and made a commitment to protect it.

The cemetery is “the Jews' Arlington Cemetery,” Rabbi Lubinsky said, and holds 3,000 years of Jewish history. “We need to tell people that this is Jewish,” he stressed. “Every inch of that cemetery is Jewish.”