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Why Palestinians Should Learn About the Holocaust

(New York Times) Mohammed Dajani Daoudi and Robert Satloff - Should Palestinians (and other Arabs) learn about the Holocaust? We - a Muslim-Palestinian social scientist and a Jewish-American historian - believe it is essential that Arabs learn about the Holocaust. Entire chapters of history have been expunged from the curricula that Arab governments teach their students. This is particularly true of the Holocaust. A world that has known terrible atrocities has seen none greater than the effort by Nazi Germany and its allies to exterminate the Jewish people. So methodical, so vicious and so exhaustive was the Nazi effort that a new word was coined to describe it - "genocide." If Arabs knew more about the Holocaust in particular and genocide in general, perhaps Arab voices would be more forceful in trying to stop similar atrocities. With all the suffering Palestinians have endured, their struggle with Israel is still, at its core, a political conflict, one that can end through diplomacy and agreements. The Holocaust was not a political conflict: the very idea of a "Nazi-Jewish peace process" is absurd. Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi is the founder of the Wasatia movement, which promotes moderation in Islam, and the director of the American Studies department at Al-Quds University. Robert Satloff is executive director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
2014-03-28 00:00:00
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