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Reading Shoah in Gaza
By Tom Segev
Tags: Israel News, UNRWA, Holocaust 

Pupils at some of the high schools in the Gaza Strip may soon be studying a new curriculum, which includes, for the first time, a section on the Holocaust. This story was swallowed up in the recent hysteria over the Goldstone report, but it is of interest, among other things because the schools that might institute Holocaust education in Gaza belong to the United Nations.

The man trying to promote this idea is none other than John Ging, director of the UN Relief and Works Agency in the Strip. Ging, formerly an officer in the Irish army, is a frequent critic of Israel's siege on Gaza and the harm inflicted on its civilians. He wants to introduce into UN high schools a program for human-rights studies based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948. He says that such a program cannot be taught without including the basic facts about the Holocaust.

In 2005 the UN General Assembly called for every country in the world to include the Holocaust in their history curricula. This topic is meant to be studied alongside other "stains" on the 20th century, including the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, apartheid in South Africa, the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda, and the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. Special emphasis will be placed on the Palestinian Nakba ("catastrophe"), the Palestinian term for what happened to them as a result of Israel's founding in 1948. The curriculum is intended to encourage pupils to identify with the campaigns waged by Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela.
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The new program is now in the process of being finalized, and is already arousing opposition from Hamas, but Ging says he is determined to institute it.

This could prove an interesting battle. Most Arabs tend to view the Holocaust as a Zionist invention, and do not deal with it in school curricula, books or movies. Many deny the Holocaust; only a handful of Palestinian intellectuals condemn such denial. This struggle is to a large extent over the question of who is the real victim, but the Arab difficulty in "recognizing" the Holocaust also stems from Israel's frequent allusions to it as a justification not only for the country's existence, but also for the continued occupation and oppression of the Palestinians.

Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al-Quds University, described in his memoirs how his sister Saida broke down and wept bitterly after reading the diary of Anne Frank. Saida, who was 13 at the time, saw in Anne Frank's suffering a parallel to the suffering the Zionists had caused her mother, Nusseibeh wrote. It is entirely possible that Gaza's pupils will interpret likewise what they learn about the Holocaust.

At this point it is not certain UNRWA will manage to overcome Hamas' objection to instituting Holocaust studies in Gaza worthy of the name, but the attempt should be encouraged, because it is impossible to understand Israel without understanding the place of the Holocaust in the Israelis' universe, and one who does not understand his enemy will not be able to make peace with him either.
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