Should Palestinians Visit Nazi Concentration Camps?

A Palestinian professor takes his students to visit Auschwitz to learn about the roots of their conflict with the Israelis.


“We are breaking a big taboo. We are challenging the collective narrative of the Palestinians regarding the Holocaust.” Dr. Mohammed Dajani has become known worldwide as the Palestinian professor who led a group of students to visit the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. But he began life with a very different point of view. “We grew up in an environment that was totally anti-Jewish,” Dajani – a native of Jerusalem – explains. “People harbored a lot of anger towards the Jews for causing the Nakba (Catastrophe). They lost their property, they lost their home, they lost their identity. I grew up on the idea that the Holocaust was a conspiracy.” But something happened during Dajani's early adulthood that helped change his black-and-white view of Israelis. And recently, he organized a trip that caused a firestorm. The plan was to take thirty Palestinian students to visit Auschwitz. At the same time, thirty Israeli students planned to visit a Palestinian refugee camp, where they would hear from refugees of the Nakba. Dajani strongly believes that reconciliation between the two communities will never happen without each community understanding the historical, and current, trauma of the other.

“Palestinians should not compare the Nakba with the Holocaust,” he says. “While the Holocaust was the Final Solution for the Jewish people, the Nakba was not the Final Solution for the Palestinian people. It wouldn't have been possible for Jews to sit with Nazis and reach an agreement. Within the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, it is possible for Palestinians and Israelis to reach a comprehensive, just settlement that will accommodate both peoples. That's why I think that teaching about the Holocaust is important. For Palestinians to realize that there is hope, and that in negotiation the path to peace lies.” At the same time, he is deeply uncomfortable with Jews using the Holocaust “to rationalize, for us [Palestinians], why they had to deport us from our homes in order for them to come and live in them. It doesn't mean,” he insists, “that if we learn about the Holocaust we will not demand our rights, or [will] lose our national identity.”

But this nuanced message was lost on those who stirred up controversy following the trip. Students at Al Quds University – where Dajani was the head of the American Studies Department and library director – boycotted him, claiming that he was “trying to sell Palestinians the Zionist story,” or was “collaborating with the Israelis to undermine Palestinian nationalism.” Dajani knew to take things seriously when he started receiving threatening letters at his office. His students also faced negative responses to the trip, as well. However, “many of them were courageous,” Dajani says proudly, “to stand up and say, 'We went to learn, and we learned a lot.'” See why Dajani persists with his work, how one student was affected by the trip and, most surprising, who else wants to go:






http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/27/should-palestinians-visit-nazi-concentration-camps.html#



A man that gave up  violence to help bring about peace.
Something I greatly admire.

If it's educational, and the school pays for it...why not?

I think they should, and that Jews should visit refugee camps. Humanizing the enemy always leads to a decrease in violence.

I don't think it is needed or will help.
they are comparable events and there has been no just solution for decades now, Palestine didn't commit the Nazis crimes yet they are the one the WEST made pay for the Crimes the WEST committed.

I'm sorry But having a wrong done to you in the past does not entitle you to be an ass hole and do wrong to others in the present. Plus it is 70 years ago.
Nicko and other Brits don't want to have to pay for crimes their people were still committing into the 1970's.

in my 32 years of life the nation that there is the most videos of committing war crimes is Israel hands down not even close they have been doing this my entire life time on the justification of the Nazis.

Gazans don't need to, they are living in a very large one on a permanent basis.

People need to move on for the events of WW2
it is history now.
and a lot has happened since then.

in fact it is events that happened in a World that DOESN'T EXIST ANYMORE, and entire generation has past since that world existed.
It may as well be knights and horses for all the relevance it has today, they didn't even have computers let alone Drones the internet the ability to communicate instantly across the planet access to more information than even existed at the time.

people currently in their 40's do not know of a world where man cannot reach the moon.

using it is a direct reason for anything today is invalid.

Absolutely agree, I was born at the end of WWII. It was a totally different world with the empathis on Europe. Just read European history books, you would think the rest of the world was just there to serve Europe.

For Israeli students in Ramallah, Abbas was a rock star.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Eight buses packed with Israeli students and activists traveled the winding roads of the West Bank, wet with rain, to the presidential compound in Ramallah on Sunday.
The excitement of the youngsters — who disembarked at the Beit El checkpoint for packaged sandwiches before entering Ramallah with a local police escort — was palpable. The driver of this reporter’s bus, reserved entirely for the media, chose hit song “Salam” by Israeli singer Mosh Ben Ari as the wishful soundtrack for the short trip from Jerusalem.

Peace activists organised by One Voice.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/for-israeli-students-in-ramallah-abbas-was-a-rock-star/

sassy wrote:Gazans don't need to, they are living in a very large one on a permanent basis.

They more than any Palestinians need to understand the holocasut being as they are some of the biggest holocasut deniers.
I guess the message he was promoting was lost on you as as per usual Sassy

veya_victaous wrote:I don't think it is needed or will help.
they are comparable events and there has been no just solution for decades now, Palestine didn't commit the Nazis crimes yet they are the one the WEST made pay for the Crimes the WEST committed.

I'm sorry But having a wrong done to you in the past does not entitle you to be an ass hole and do wrong to others in the present. Plus it is 70 years ago.
Nicko and other Brits don't want to have to pay for crimes their people were still committing into the 1970's.

in my 32 years of life the nation that there is the most videos of committing war crimes is Israel hands down not even close they have been doing this my entire life time on the justification of the Nazis.

Which shows you miss the point as per usual. You also know nothing about the involvment of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem I guess and how he instigated attacks on Jews at the time in cooperation with Hitler?
The point is many Arabs are some of the biggest buyers of Mein Kampf, being one of the most popular books in the Arab world and think the holocaust is a myth. You then claim Israel has committed the most war crimes shows how far removed from reality you are to actual war crimes going on around the world since WW2. I mean maybe you were still breastfeeding at the time of the war crimes in Bosnia by any chance? Or how about the Rwanda genocide? The extreme left have a terrible habbit of inventing history and ignoring history as seen if you claim Israel has committed the worst war crimes, you are clearly far removed from reality. This is what I find the most appalling by some of the left how they invent history and then try to down play history and think we should then forget about how a group of people was nearly exterminated from Europe. To the point even after the attrocities carried out many could not even return to their homes afterwards because they had been take by locals who refused to give their properties back. To top this off we see some of the biggest antisemitism found within the Arab world and yet some of the left wish to ignore this. You see some of the left ignore history and then try to use history to deny Israel a right of self determination. Look at how Sassy had a map of land ownership, the only reason to promote that is to deny Israel self determination. You can easily see past the bullshit of some and how they hate Israel and the Jews. Some of the left are the new Nazi's of today and yet try to hide behind this claiming they are against Zionism. Only people who wish to bury the wrongs of the past do so with purpose and that purpose is to attempt to show a people has not suffered and that they are in some way bad, even though this group of people have had to fight for their existance since the creation of Israel.. Peace is brought about by reconcilliation and where many Arabs attempt to deligitimize jews daily, this goes a long way to dispell the hate formulated in the Arab world. Of course some on the left wantg to ignore the barbarism and dsicrmination found in Arab countries, that is exceptable tot hem and they wish to castigate the only real democracy within the region.

veya_victaous wrote:People need to move on for the events of WW2
it is history now.
and a lot has happened since then.

in fact it is events that happened in a World that DOESN'T EXIST ANYMORE, and entire generation has past since that world existed.
It may as well be knights and horses for all the relevance it has today, they didn't even have computers let alone Drones the internet the ability to communicate instantly across the planet access to more information than even existed at the time.

people currently in their 40's do not know of a world where man cannot reach the moon.

using it is a direct reason for anything today is invalid.

A startlingly myopic view, coming from you.

History is the study of cause and effect. To study history is to study the antecedents of the present. To understand history is to avoid past mistakes. To fail to understand history is risk repeating the same mistakes.

'Cause and effect' is one of the most fundamental intellectual tools we have. It organizes. It gives meaning. It builds. It progresses. To state that understanding 'cause and effect' is irrelevant, is to deny the whole age of industry, the age of technology, from a intrinsic content point of view, and the whole growth and development of cultures, languages, and belief systems from the macro point of view.