Up until last year, history matriculation exams in Arab and Bedouin school systems in Israel made no mention of the Holocaust. Unlike Jewish schools, where the Holocaust has always been mandatory subject matter for the matriculation exam, in Arab and Bedouin schools the Holocaust was always optional. Many non-Jewish schools throughout the country chose to teach other topics. This summer, however, a mandatory question about the Holocaust was included in the matriculation exams for the non-Jewish schools. Many Arab students had the chance to receive a more in-depth perspective of the Holocaust for the first time. The Palestinian Authority on the other hand does not encourage any instruction about that dark period in history and it remains out of bounds. UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), which provides assistance for Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank, was shocked a few weeks ago when Palestinian school officials categorically rejected a request to have Holocaust studies inserted to the school curriculum as part of the education on human rights. The UNRWA Palestinian Workers Union explained to an embarrassed UNRWA management that "teaching the Holocaust to Palestinian children may confuse them." The prevailing thought among Palestinian children, which teachers fear might be undermined, can be described by the case of an oven built in Gaza by Palestinian children a few years ago. The children placed dolls in the oven, and drew Swastikas and Stars of David on them. The idea was to blame Israel for the burning of children, and to forge an association with ovens of a different time period. That act fit well into the policy of downplay and denial of the Holocaust, which has become an important tenet of the Palestinian ideology. Two years ago, UNRWA tried to introduce Holocaust studies in more than 200 schools throughout Gaza. The resulting reaction was so severe that UNRWA backtracked to the point of avoiding any mention of this effort. Well-known Holocaust denier Yunis al-Astal, a member of the Hamas faction in the Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza, said at that time that UNRWA's decision to include Holocaust studies in Palestinian curriculum would be "marketing a lie, and disseminating it." Abd al-Rahman al-Jamal, chairman of the Education and Social Affairs Committee in the Palestinian Legislative Council, spoke of the "great lie." Researchers at the Office of Strategic Affairs, Palestinian Media Watch, MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), and other research bodies, who are well acquainted with anti-Semitic material, admit that when it comes to Holocaust denial, the Arab world, and particularly the Palestinians, are high up on the list. "We are not only talking about Holocaust denial. Many Palestinians who are convinced that the Jews did suffer a terrible fate during those times believe that Zionists encouraged and even initiated these events in a joint effort with the Germans, both to get Jews to emigrate from Europe to Israel, and to dispose of the weak and elderly Jewish people, so that only the young and able would reach Israel." Director of Palestinian Media Watch, Dr. Itamar Marcus, said, "The word 'Holocaust' has slowly become a word that describes what Israel did to the Palestinians, rather than a description of what happened in the previous century." A steady trend An illustrative example of Holocaust denial is a TV program for Palestinian children that perhaps gave them the idea to build an oven and associate Israel with the burning of children. Against a background of children lying down near ovens, posing as dead, the narrator dramatically announces, "Israel created the Holocaust. Their knives cut across the length and width of our flesh. They opened the ovens to burn people in them. They destroyed villages and burned the cities. And when one oven failed to work, they assembled a hundred others. Their hands are stained with the blood of our children." Dr. Shelly Elkayam and Dr. Eldad Pardo of IMPACT-SE (Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, which conducts research on Arab schools, and Palestinian schools in particular) both point out that Palestinian Authority and Hamas textbooks have no mention of the Holocaust at all. "Students are simply denied that information [about the Holocaust]," Elkayam said. "At best, they mention difficulties and suffering." Pardo said that this is a consistent pattern that has been around for years. "Since 1998, we have been monitoring the books used from the first grade to the 12th grade. Text books used in 2010 and 2011, and even the latest history book used in the 12th grade, which I personally read just a few days ago, lack any mention whatsoever of the Holocaust. It's as if it never happened," Pardo said. According to Pardo, in the book called "History of the Arabs and the World in the Twentieth Century," distributed to Palestinian Authority schools for use by 12th graders, both the Nazi movement and its racist ideology are mentioned. Even the International Court of Justice in Hague is mentioned as the court that tried Nazi leaders for crimes against humanity. But the book does not devote a single word to the nature of those crimes or the victims. Those who have been following the speeches of Palestinian religious leaders for the last few years concerning the Holocaust, are not surprised. For years, the Palestinian media has been portraying the Holocaust as fiction, or as a grand exaggeration used by Zionists to gain the world's sympathy. The daily Al-Hayat al-Jadida, a mouthpiece of the Palestinian National Authority, writes, "The winds blew in their [the Jews'] favor. When Hitler's Nazis began to persecute them, they took advantage of that the best way they could, and the show was on. They distributed photos of mass shooting of Jews and began fabricating stories of ovens, which they said Hitler used to burn them. The photos focused on women, babies, and the elderly. They used those tricks to gain sympathy." Ben-Gurion's show The spirit of al-Jadida is that of its leader, or at least of its current leader, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. As one may recall, in his thesis 17 years ago, Abbas portrayed the Zionists as Nazi allies. "An alliance was forged between Hitler's Nazis and the Zionist leadership. The Zionists permitted racists from all over the world, lead by Hitler and the Nazis, to do as they pleased with the Jews, as long as this forced them to emigrate from Europe to Palestine," Abbas wrote. The Al-Aqsa TV channel, run by Hamas, took it one step further when it announced: "The Satanic Jews fabricated the Holocaust to rid themselves of the elderly and infirm in the most criminal way possible. To cover up their intentions, they accused the Nazis of persecuting them, hoping to gain international sympathy for their cause. They were the ones who invented the evil methods of oppression in the world." "The Israeli Holocaust was a joke; part of a show staged by [first Prime Minister] Ben-Gurion to ensure that only the young and fit would reach Israel, while the infirm, the elderly, and those who were mentally and physically challenged were sent to their deaths. They were murdered so that there could be a 'Holocaust' that would generate global empathy towards Israel," Amin Dabur, head of the Palestinian Center for Strategic Research said. A particularly harsh denial of the Holocaust was authored by Dr. Isam Sisalem, an instructor of history at the Islamic University in Gaza. Sisalem appeared on the Palestinian TV program "Pages from our History," and was introduced as an expert on Jews and Judaism. "Lies about Jews being murdered began to surface here and there, and about the Holocaust," Sisalem said. "These were all lies of course, lacking any factual basis. There was no Dachau, and no Auschwitz. Those stations were used only for decontamination. They began disseminating propaganda about Jews being persecuted, murdered, and exterminated. A few committees were established to create the entity of Israel, the foreign, cancerous entity that was transplanted in the midst of our land." In the same spirit, Al-Hayat al-Jadida published a crossword puzzle that included the clue "A Jewish center memorializing the Holocaust lie," referring to Yad Vashem. First Name: Hitler Officials in the Ministry of Strategic Affairs are quick to point out that sometimes even the way the Palestinians list the chronology of events in World War II reveals the difficulty they have in acknowledging the Jewish Holocaust. As an example, take the way they report about high-level visits to Yad Vashem, such as the Pope's visit to the museum two years ago. Palestinian TV called the visit "A visit to Yad Vashem, which memorializes what is said to be the memories of those who died in the Nazi Holocaust." The TV report also mentioned "the alleged memories of the Holocaust victims." Palestinian Media Watch researchers recently said that in Palestinian society the name "Hitler" does not carry with it "the mark of Cain", as it does in the West, and some people even have "Hitler" as their first names. Articles praising Hitler were published in newspapers run by Palestinian movements Fatah and Hamas, which is perhaps not so surprising considering the pact that existed in the 1940s between Hitler and Grand Mufti (spiritual leader) of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, an anti-Semitic Arab nationalist and Muslim leader during the British Mandate in Palestine. Husseini held meetings with Nazi leaders, including Hitler himself, and called on Muslims to fight on Hitler's side. With this background, it is no wonder that Hitler was so warmly regarded and mentioned in a Palestinian radio quiz show, with this clue: "His great year was 1940." Also, in a list of best sellers compiled by Al-Hayat al-Jadida, Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" came in 6th. Several weeks ago, Al-Hayat al-Jadida hit a new low by claiming that Israel was trying to emulate the Nazis by performing experiments on Palestinian prisoners, to assess the effectiveness of their new weapons and drugs. Joseph Mengele was among the more infamous Nazis who performed such experiments on human guinea pigs. The newspaper said that "one can follow the entire process used by the Israeli Mossad, known as "slow death," from the time prisoners are arrested and up to the point when they are taken to stations at which the experiments are performed, which is the most dangerous moment in the prisoner's jail time. Many prisoners who were freed were left with diseases they contracted while serving time in Israeli jails." But there are some exceptions to the rule as well. Two months ago, Professor Mohammed Dajani, founder and director of the American Studies Institute at Al-Quds University, visited Auschwitz, together with 150 Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Perhaps the words said by Dajani at the site can be encouraging, but they can also reveal just how exceptional his views are. "We wanted to disseminate information to Muslims and Christians from this site, to a world in which the Holocaust is denied" Dajani said. "In the Muslim world, for example, the Holocaust is associated with the establishment of Israel and the Nakba (literally, catastrophe, the term used by the Palestinians to refer to Israel's independence). As a result of that association, the Holocaust is rarely mentioned in Palestinian books. There is an educational value in visits to sites like this one. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict shapes the way many of us view historical events," Dajani said to Talia Haezrachi of the Common Ground News Service (CGNews). "I wish my students would be able to differentiate between their views concerning the Holocaust and those of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Holocaust was a tragic period in the history of mankind, and we should never ignore it," he said. The last time a resounding condemnation of Holocaust denial was heard in the Arab world was six years ago, when author George Katan, residing in Syria, denounced Holocaust deniers. Since then, other Arab public figures and intellectuals have joined the struggle, including Ahmad Tibi, Mahmoud Darwish, Mohammad Barakeh, Samich El Kassem, Elias Huri, Edward Said, Elias Sanbar, and others. In a survey conducted in 2008 by University of Haifa Professor Sami Samuchah, 40% of the Israeli Arabs who responded stated that the Holocaust never happened. Samucha claimed that their statement was more a rejection of Israel than an honest belief that the Holocaust never occurred. Dr. Kobi Michael, Deputy Director General of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs at the Prime Minister's Office, believes that it is impossible to divorce Holocaust denial among Palestinians from their delegitimization of Israel. "They are intertwined," Michael said. "Those who omit Israel from their maps, and avoid using the name "Israel" altogether, take out Holocaust studies from their curriculum as well. They make sure to deny it, or sow doubts about its proportions." In an "Incitement Index" maintained by Michael and his team, Holocaust denial contributes heavily.
