DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AFP) – The United Arab Emirates is planning to teach school students about the Holocaust, in a sign of warming ties with Israel, a country whose focus in the Arab world is on the Palestinian conflict. is widely condemned.
The move by the wealthy Gulf state comes as it agreed to normalize ties with Israel under the US-brokered 2020 Abraham Accords, along with Bahrain and Morocco, years after Egypt and Jordan established ties .
At Dubai’s Holocaust Gallery – the only permanent exhibition on Arab soil about Nazi Germany’s genocide of European Jews – visitor Andreas Duhn praised the education initiative, the first in the region outside Israel.
“It is good that the UAE is leading the Arab world in this very important part of history that everyone should know about,” said the 38-year-old British finance professional who lives in Dubai.
“It shows that things are changing.”
Duhan visited the exhibition after hearing that the UAE would become the first Arab country to include the Holocaust, the Nazis’ systematic killing of millions of Jews and other groups, in its state school curriculum.
Ahmed Al-Mansouri, director of the “Crossroads of Civilizations Museum”, shows visitors around a gallery at the facility in Dubai on January 11, 2023. (KARIM SAHIB / AFP)
Arab nations have generally been reluctant to tackle the subject, given that the mass murder of Jews in the gas chambers by Nazi Germany and the death marches are seen by some in the region as a major factor leading to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. is seen as
The establishment of Israel as a safe haven for Jews led to the mass displacement of Palestinians.
Solidarity with the Palestinian cause has made the Holocaust a taboo subject in many Arab countries, where school lessons and world maps often deny the existence of Israel, commonly labeled a “Zionist entity”.
‘High level of denial’
Given this highly charged context, the UAE’s historic decision has not been greeted with unanimous praise, and some experts predict that a major shift in public perceptions will be slow in coming.
“The Holocaust is a historical fact, but I think it is being politicized by Israel, which misuses it every now and then to serve its own political purposes,” alleged Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, an Emirati political science professor.
A delegation from the US Congress visits Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on January 19, 2023. (Kirsten Gillibrand/Twitter)
The UAE embassy in Washington tweeted this month that it would “now include the Holocaust in the curriculum for primary and secondary schools”, without giving further details.
“It was important to introduce Holocaust education in this region, because the level of denial is very high,” said Ahmed Obaid al-Mansouri, founder of the Crossroads of Civilizations Museum, which houses the Holocaust gallery.
“If we want people to empathize with us, we have to empathize with others,” he told AFP at the permanent exhibition, which includes weapons, photographs of the dead and religious scrolls.
Ahmed Al-Mansouri, director of the “Crossroads of Civilizations Museum”, shows visitors around the Holocaust gallery in Dubai on January 11, 2023. (KARIM SAHIB / AFP)
The Holocaust Gallery’s visitor’s book, however, suggests a somewhat different view. While the comments are overwhelmingly positive, some are openly hostile towards Israel.
One message in Arabic said, “Those who have wronged must protect those who suffer injustice – and not act unjustly”, while other visitors wrote “down with Zionist imperialism” and more inflammatory comments.
Some private schools in the oil-rich Gulf country, where 90 percent are expatriates, already teach about the Holocaust, and the United Arab Emirates has hosted lectures by Jewish survivors since normalizing ties with Israel. .
In designing the new curriculum, the Ministry of Education has consulted with the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) and Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and Education Center.
“The Holocaust element is a very small part of the whole curriculum, but it is being worked on now,” said Marcus Sheff, CEO of Impact-Say, an Israeli-British research and policy institute promoting UNESCO standards in education.
Yad Vashem said “this initiative is still being developed,” noting that it was “too soon” to elaborate.
Cantor and co-founder of the Jewish Community of the Emirates (JCE) Alex Peterfund (right), UAE Chief Rabbi Yehuda Sarna (centre) and JCE President Ross Kriel hold a Torah scroll at the V Hotel Dubai, where the community’s Passover services and meal were. To be held on April 4, 2021 (Miriam Hershlag/TOI)
Jewish community leader Alex Peterfund, who has lived in the UAE since 2014, said he was “proud” of the planned change.
“By teaching what the Holocaust is, the UAE wants to show what can happen if people of different religions and different cultures cannot live together,” said the 56-year-old Belgian.
But the pace of change in perceptions will be slow, predicted Hind Al Ansari, a public policy fellow at the Washington-based Wilson Center think-tank.
Holocaust teaching is “unlikely to result in tolerance towards Israel in the near future,” she said, “pointing to the sanctity of the Palestinian cause in the Arab world, which includes the vast majority of emirates”.
