First Holocaust museum geared to Arabs opens

By Reuters NAZARETH – An Arab Israeli has opened what he calls the first Holocaust museum geared to an Arab audience, saying the prospect of peace would improve if Arabs knew more about the Nazi genocide against Jews. Khaled Mahameed said he created his gallery to educate fellow Arabs about the World War Two Holocaust, which seemed far removed from their lives but had a major impact on them. The Holocaust led to Israel’s founding as a Jewish homeland in 1948. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs fled or were driven out as a result. Decades of Israeli-Arab conflict ensued, including two Palestinian uprisings. Mahameed, 42, a lawyer, said he got interested in the Holocaust as a boy after his father, furious over losing farmland to the young Jewish state, told him: „See what we have to suffer because of the Nazis?” Israel has dedicated many museums and memorials that teach succeeding Jewish generations about the murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany. But the message has scarcely reached minority Arabs living mainly in separate communities. „Few Arabs have ever seen such images,” Mahameed said, pointing to a photo of a Nazi soldier executing a Jewish prisoner, one of 70 posters bought from Israel’s flagship Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and displayed with captions in Arabic. Many in the Arab world „are aware there was a Holocaust but choose to deny it because they don’t know exactly what happened”, he told Reuters. „Surely they would change their minds if they saw these pictures.” In turn, he hopes Israel will acknowledge how Palestinians were hurt by its founding. „We are trying to break this cycle of denial by both sides. We want each to recognize that the other has suffered,” Mahameed said.^ Museum images stun first visitors Several recent visitors to the museum in Nazareth, Israel’s largest mainly Arab city, seemed stunned by the graphic images of Nazi atrocities so familiar to Jews in Israel and abroad. „I have heard about the Holocaust but never saw the pictures. This proves to me that it really happened,” said Samer Ahmed, a contractor from an Arab Israeli village. The museum, where visitors may also peruse booklets on the Holocaust in Arabic, has not drawn many visitors since its March opening in an alley behind a street lined by a clothing bazaar. But Mahameed believes his project could foster understanding between Israel and Arab neighbours and improve the status of Arab Israelis who comprise about 20 percent of the 6.8 million population. „My goal is to teach how the Holocaust influences Jewish and Arab policies and contribute to (future) peace.” While they have full citizenship rights by law, many Arab Israelis complain of discrimination in the job market and of underfunding for their municipalities by the central government. Israeli Jews question the loyalties of Arab citizens who are related to or empathize with the 3.6 million Palestinians seeking statehood in the West Bank and Gaza, lands Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East War. Israel and organisatiozs dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust complain of a resurgence in anti-Semitism. They see a trend in Europe and Arab states to accuse Jews of exaggerating the Holocaust’s scope or deny that it ever happened. The Anti-Defamation League, which aims to combat anti-Semitism, criticized Mahameed for suggesting Palestinians paid a price for Europe’s Holocaust guilt — that is, the creation of Israel. Such a claim would „merely propagate the classic anti-Israel use of the Holocaust and promote anti-Semitism,” a League statement said, referring to a remark on the museum’s Web site. Mahameed denies comparing Israeli tactics in the occupied West Bank and Gaza to those of the Nazis. „But if someone doesn’t see that Palestinians suffer as a result of the suffering of the Jews, that is blindness. The one who set the stage for Israeli-Arab relations was Hitler,” he said. Israeli Jews welcome museum Some Israelis welcome the unusual museum in Nazareth. „It sounds to me like a tremendous step forward and a positive development,” said Efraim Zuroff, head of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Jewish human rights group that educates on the Holocaust and tracks fugitive Nazis. „There has been an incredibly strong resistance in the Arab world to accept the Holocaust narrative … and separate it from the conflict in the Middle East conflict.” Israeli Holocaust researcher Irit Abramsky said the museum was part of a trend among Arab Israelis to show interest in the subject, spurred in part by new Middle East peace moves. An Arab Israeli group first visited the site of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland in 2003, and Yad Vashem has launched special tours for Arab schoolchildren. „Some Arabs understand that the time has come to learn this was not just some genocide but a tragedy with universal meaning … that to feel empathy doesn’t mean you agree with everything the victim does. You can criticize the Israelis but understand that they were victims,” Abramsky said.