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Teaching the Holocaust to the Palestinians

[TIME] Tim McGirk - Israeli-Arab lawyer Khaled Kasab Mahameed's mission is to educate Palestinians about the Jewish Holocaust. Many Palestinians have never heard that the Nazis killed 6 million Jews during World War II - it doesn't rate a mention in their school history books. Yet the key to the Palestinians achieving their own goals, Mahameed says, is to understand the Holocaust. In Edna village in the Hebron Hills, where seven middle-aged men sit beside me drinking tea, Mahameed passes around a death-camp photo of a Jewish inmate standing over a mass grave full of naked corpses. The room of Palestinians falls silent. "That man, that survivor, in the photograph came to Israel. Can you imagine the nightmares, the horrors that he brought with him? It's a suffering that nobody, even us Palestinians, can begin to comprehend," he says. Finally, a retired Palestinian general, Abdul Latah Solimia, says: "As a militant, I know the cost of war and hatred. For 60 years, we have tried to eliminate each other, and neither has won. Israelis and Palestinians should share this land."
2008-11-07 01:00:00
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