Israeli Arab opens Holocaust Museum in Nazareth

http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=11076

(07/01/2005)
Israeli Arab’s Peace Plan: Holocaust Images
Uphill battle for West Bank lawyer with office 'museum.'

Joshua Mitnick - Israel Correspondent

Nazareth, West Bank

Perched on a steep hill overlooking the rotunda of the Church of the Annunciation, the nondescript door at the entrance to Khaled Mahameed’s law office belies the provocative exhibit on display in his waiting room.

Mounted on two empty walls and a bamboo curtain are 40 familiar Holocaust-era images, such as the infamous scene of a frightened young boy holding up his arms in surrender at gunpoint of German soldiers.

But it is the context rather than content of the exhibit that makes it startling. In one corner is a Palestinian flag and in another a kaffiyeh draped on a stool with Holocaust literature.

Welcome to Mahameed’s Arab Institute for Holocaust Research and Education, a one-man operation the Nazareth lawyer calls the first “museum” of its kind in the Arab or Muslim world.

Yet the only visitors since the museum opened three months ago have been Mahameed’s clients and intrigued journalists.

“People don’t want to find it; they refused to listen for 60 years,” he said. “And now I tell them this thing and they curse me: ‘This is a crazy man who has lost his mind.’ ”

Amid a culture in which the universality of the Holocaust is obscured by a more personal trauma of land dispossession, Mahameed’s display represents a daring, if crude, attempt to relocate the Jewish genocide in the Arab conscience.

Consisting entirely of posters purchased from Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial, and Arabic translations of accompanying text, the exhibit comes with an unabashedly political motivation. Peace between Jews and Arabs, Mahameed argues, will be possible only after Palestinians immerse themselves in the history of the Holocaust and the impact it continues to have on Israeli society.

“We don’t understand the Jewish personality. We don’t understand how the Holocaust has affected the decision-making process in the Jewish state,” he said. “My mission is to defeat anti-Semitism in the world, to defeat Hitler. If I help them to defeat Hitler and his effect, I bring back the conflict to its normal basis.”

That means combating Holocaust denial in the Arab and Muslim world, as well as the tendency to hold up the Palestinian “Naqba,” or “catastrophe” of 1948 — the founding of the State of Israel — as a disaster comparable to the Nazi Holocaust.

“Arabs refuse to deal with the Holocaust. They refuse to read about it,” Mahameed said. “They refuse to deal with it as an element that affects the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Dressed in the black-tie, white-shirt uniform of Israeli barristers, Mahameed is keenly aware of the taboos he faces. When Mahameed informed his family of his plans to open the exhibit, some relatives insisted he renounce his family name. Instead of questions, some Arab journalists lectured him about the impropriety of the exhibit.

But not everyone has dismissed him. Bernard Tannous, an Arab-Israeli radio broadcaster, acknowledged that the marginal impact in the local community since the museum opened was to be expected.

“Any revolutionary idea initially meets misunderstanding,” he said. “It’s something in history … it’s not current events.

Palestinian Labor Minister Ghassan Khattib said encouraging Holocaust education among Arabs is important, though he took exception to Mahameed’s argument that better knowledge of the genocide would help Palestinians make peace with Israelis.

“I think it’s the Jewish people who should learn from the Holocaust, not to be a cause of tragedy to other people,' Khattib said. 'Palestinians should be sensitive to this tragedy, but I don’t think we should overplay this thing.”

On the streets and in the offices of Nazareth there is more pointed criticism.

In one falafel restaurant, proprietor Sharbini Sharbini said he had heard of the exhibit, but argued that the Holocaust initiative had little hope of succeeding because the daily violence of the Israel-Palestinian conflict made it impossible for Arabs to sympathize with Jews.

“Ninety percent of my relatives are in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan,” Sharbini said. “I can’t go to see them and they can’t see me. So let’s start from that Holocaust.”

Mahameed is the child of Palestinian refugees who were not allowed to return to land owned near what today is the Israeli community of Megiddo. As a young boy he recalls his father lamenting that the Jews were making them pay for the crimes of the Nazis.

As a student of international relations at Hebrew University, teaching assistants were incredulous when Mahameed said he wanted to study about the Holocaust and its impact on Israeli policy, asking why an Arab student would take an interest. Mahameed faults Israeli leaders for not trying hard enough to educate Arabs about the Holocaust.

“This is a big strategic mistake of the Jewish state that they didn’t explain to the Arabs about the Holocaust,” he said. “If they did it 60 years ago, peace would come to the two peoples.”

The exhibit has raised the eyebrows of Jewish Holocaust experts. Representatives of the Anti-Defamation League paid a visit to Nazareth this week, and educators from Yad Vashem also have examined the display.

Irit Abramski, who oversees Arabic educational programs at Yad Vashem, said the Holocaust became “explosive material” after the outbreak of the most recent Palestinian uprising. While she lauds Mahameed’s interest as “impressive,” his display is “messy” because the presentation lacks chronological or thematic coherence.

Initially the ADL thought Mahameed’s linkage of the Holocaust to Israeli policy toward the Palestinians smacked of propaganda, but the visit reassured them.

“The bottom line is a very positive thing without overstating the impact,” said Ken Jacobsen, a senior associate national director for ADL.

Back at Mahameed’s office, the only visitor for the day is a neighbor. Arab politicians won’t touch the exhibit, but the Nazareth lawyer already is dreaming about plans to open up a branch in Umm el-Fahem, the second largest Arab city inside of Israel, and even teaching Palestinian militants in the West Bank town of Jenin.

Like a true revolutionary, he isn’t concerned about a hostile reception by his Palestinian brethren. But after investing so much time away from his law practice, Mahameed admits he has to focus more on his own living before taking his show on the road.

“This,” he said, “is only a matter of time.”