Palestinian Girls Ignore Israeli Memorial Siren at Hebrew University last week for Holocaust Memorial Day (picture taken by the author)
It is difficult to word this correctly, but for all the patience I have in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the rejection and denial of the Holocaust irritates more than anything. Palestinian leaders repeatedly reject major events in Jewish history which are indisputably historical for scholars (the Jewish exile by Rome, the two Temples in Jerusalem, etc.). The Holocaust is the most baffling. Even for those who will concede it happened, they couple it with Israel’s existence as if one predicated the other.
As I heard the traditional air siren go off at 10:00 AM last week the morning of National Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel (observed a week before National Memorial Day and Independence Day), I watched in stunned observation the Israelis of all backgrounds freeze in place – silent – for two consecutive minutes. Only my head’s turning broke the image – until a group of Palestinian girls literally walked through us in full conversation doing their best to ignore the deafening, eerie alarm being sounded throughout the country. I had to photograph it, in case anyone refused to believe there was such a lack of sensitivity.
The mentality that recognizing the Holocaust justifies Israel doing whatever it wants is a plague on Palestinian consciousness. The Holocaust is not what justifies Israeli military action – terrorism is. The Holocaust did not predicate nor justify the establishment of Israel – 60 years of purchasing land by dedicated socialist and religious movements and their subsequent, voluntary settlement did.
The Palestinian president infamously wrote in his 1982 thesis that Zionists had an interest in exaggerating the number of the dead to “six million.” Hamas goes unabashedly further, calling it an “invention” and teaching it a “war crime.”
The Holocaust, plus other genocides (especially of recent history) are a matter of human history. I have yet to decide if Palestinians are more afraid of the idea recognizing the Holocaust would dilute their own causes or standing as victims in international eyes, or if they are equally afraid to admit some of their major leaders not only have projected the views of the Holocaust’s perpetrators, but they actually supported the Germans’ plans (Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the one-time Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestinian nationalist who not only instigated pogroms in the late 1930s, but personally met Adolf Hitler and found refuge in Nazi Germany during WWII, broadcasting against Jews on German radio).
Holocaust education IS NOT negotiable in peace negotiations. The continued denial of the Holocaust in Palestinian circles should be just as much an issue as Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide. But, even though parliaments like that of France have officially recognized the Armenian Genocide (and ignored Turkish anger that followed), the US, Europe and the rest of the world must force this issue. If it is not challenged, the next generation will also dehumanize the suffering of Jews, instigating the next generation to unconditional hatred and conflict.
Hajj Amin al-Husseini, an early leader of Palestinian nationalism, meeting with Adolf Hitler
