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Paris Terrorism Funerals Overwhelm Cemetery Where Jim Morrison Is Buried

Paris's Père Lachaise cemetery
Paris's Père Lachaise cemetery

PARIS — With 20 to 25 burials a day on average, the iconic Père Lachaise Cemetery is used to a steady pace of funerals — but these ceremonies are different.

On Monday, the largest cemetery in Paris was partially closed for two hours to allow 19 employees to meet with a psychologist about the trauma left by the funerals they've had to organize for 24 victims of the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks.

As early as Nov. 14, the Père Lachaise staff went into "emergency" mode, Pascal Linier reports for Le Monde. It was a considerable change of pace for the usually peaceful cemetery in eastern Paris, where tourists the world over come to pay their respects to Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, Irish writer Oscar Wilde, Polish composer Frédéric Chopin, Greek opera singer Maria Callas, and French artists such as playwright Molière, singer Édith Piaf and writer Marcel Proust.

Père Lachaise's nine masters of ceremony and their assistants prepared 24 special ceremonies, trying to accomodate everyone who wanted to be present at the funerals.

The funerals weighed on the staff for another reason: The cemetery is just up the road from the Bataclan music venue, where 90 of the victims were killed.

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FOCUS: Israel-Palestine War

Palestinian Olive Trees Are Also Under Israeli Occupation — And That's Not A Joke

In the West Bank, a quieter form of oppression has been plaguing Palestinians for a long time. Their olive groves are surrounded by soldiers, and it's forbidden to harvest the olives – this economic and social violence has gotten far worse since Oct. 7.

A Palestinian woman holds olives in her hands

In a file photo, Um Ahmed, 74, collects olives in the village of Sarra on the southwest of the West Bank city of Nablus.

Mohammed Turabi/ZUMA
Francesca Mannocchi

HEBRON – It was after Friday prayers on October 13th of last year, and Zakaria al-Arda was walking along the road that crosses his property's hillside to return home – but he never made it.

A settler from Havat Ma'on — an outpost bordering Al-Tuwani that the United Nations International Law and Israeli law considers illegal — descended from the hill with his rifle in hand.

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After kicking al-Arda, who tried to defend himself, the settler shot him in the abdomen. The bullet pierced through his stomach, a few centimeters below the lungs. Since then, al-Arda has been in the hospital in intensive care. A video of those moments clearly shows that neither al-Arda nor the other worshippers leaving the mosque were carrying any weapons.

The victim's cousin, Hafez Hureini, still lives in the town of Al-Tuwani. He is a farmer, and their house on the slope of the town is surrounded by olive trees — and Israeli soldiers. On the pine tree at the edge of his property, settlers have planted an Israeli flag. Today, Hafez lives, like everyone else, as an occupied individual.

He cannot work in his greenhouse, cannot sow his fields, and cannot harvest the olives from his precious olive trees.

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