Moderate Islam meets Auschwitz | +972 Magazine

Interesting piece on Mohammed Dajani Daoudi, a Palestinian academic who came under considerable controversy for his taking a group of Palestinian students to Auschwitz and whose partnership with Ben Gurion University includes exposing Israeli students to the nakba or catastrophe.

His thoughts on the narratives and identity are pertinent and interesting:

Among Palestinians, his advocacy of Holocaust education for Palestinians is deeply fraught. It is pointless to dismiss this as stalwart Arab anti-Semitism. Jews and Jewish Israelis, too, are almost totally incapable of considering the Palestinian Nakba, because they fear it is primarily a justification for right of return. Similarly, Palestinians encounter the Holocaust first and foremost as the justification for their modern-day oppression – and only secondarily as a matter of history and human suffering….

Indeed, between the evolving bear-hug of Israel-conservative circles and the anger he is causing among many Palestinians, his influence is unpredictable. Dajani’s language has a naivete that is out of fashion in the post-second Intifada, post nth negotiation-breakdown environment: he talks of building bridges instead of walls, and praises the Oslo accords as a psychological breakthrough. He blithely supports two states, because both societies need national and identity realization, he says, as if realities on the ground have not changed over the last 20 years.

Moderate Islam meets Auschwitz | +972 Magazine.