Holocaust legacy repeating itself in Arab-Israeli conflict?
Published: 18 May, 2009, 12:05
TAGS: Conflict
An academic in the West Bank has set up an unusual project for the Palestinian territories. In his Holocaust museum, he draws a parallel from the tragedy with the present-day suffering of the Palestinians.
Na’alin village is an unusual location for such an unusual project. After his nephew was killed in a demonstration, Hassan Musa vowed to do everything he could to prevent more deaths. He built something almost unheard of in the Palestinian territories – a Holocaust museum. Its message, however, is as much for Israelis as it is for Palestinians.
“The Holocaust is now over and it has been done in Germany, but its consequences, the results are inflicted upon the Palestinians,” Musa said. “The Palestinians have no connection with that.”
The museum points the finger at the German government and accuses it of giving Israel guilt money that it in turn uses against the Palestinians – a charge Israel denies.
A lot of Israel's transport system was built with German money and in the 1950s and 60s German reparations were used to pave the country’s national roads and build the public transport system.
From 1952 and for the next fifteen years, Germany gave Israel two billion marks as compensation for the murder of Jews during the Holocaust. It was an agreement that benefited both sides.
Israel was a new state finding it difficult to get funding and Germany was looking for a way to reintegrate itself into a world community shocked by its actions during the Second World War, but it wasn’t an easy marriage.
“In the 1950s most Israelis rejected relations with Germany outright,” said Shlomo Shpiro from the Centre for International Communications and Policy. “The feeling was so strong against Germany that Israeli passports were stamped valid for all countries except Germany. People didn’t even want to go to Germany.”
Nearly a lifetime later, Noah Clug is still struggling with the same dilemma. He is a holocaust survivor who lost most of his family during the war. Each month he receives about €200 from the German government to help him make ends meet.
“It is a problem – a moral problem,” he said. “But Germans murdered six million Jews and robbed nine million Jews. I think it is moral that they should pay and that they made their horrible thing and they are responsible.”
It is a dilemma Chen Yurista understands all too well. He negotiates with the German government on behalf of Holocaust survivors, but his grandfather is among those who refuse to take the money it offers.
“He had the right to say no, and I definitely have the moral obligation to go ahead and try to help those people who need the help,” he said. “They are difficult negotiations, but we come back year after year for the last sixty years and we have great achievements.”
Today diplomatic ties between both countries are good. While Germany no longer gives Israel funding, there are close trade and scientific relations.
For as long as this continues, Palestinians in the West bank will continue to blame Germany for aiding a country they say has a lot to account for.
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Unfortunately Palestinian Arabs were involved in the holocaust insofar as it was their then leader, Muhammed Amin al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem, who spent the war years in Berlin as a guest of Adolf Hitler, advocating the extermination of Jews in radio broadcasts back to the Middle East and recruiting Balkan Muslims for the 13th Waffen SS division that tried to wipe out Jewish communities throughout the region. In 1940, al-Husseini requested the Axis powers to acknowledge the Arab right: ... to settle the question of Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries in accordance with the national and racial interests of the Arabs and along the lines similar to those used to solve the Jewish question in Germany and Italy.
Yes, indeed Germany is at fault as well as any of the countries in Europe that contributed in rounding millions of Jews to kill them. The nations of the world have taught the Israelis how to behave for over two thousand years. For thousands of years, Jews have lived in the Arab World, peacefully. Hundreds of thousands have left these countries, both after 1948 and 1967, due to the harsh measures imposed on them by the countries they called their own. In fact, my family had spent over four hundred years in Poland (all documented), yet were not considered citizens of that country until the middle of the 1800's. My great grandparents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins were all killed only sixty years ago. I even lost a cousin in Israel due to a homicide bombing. His grandfather, BTW, fought in the Russian Army as a partisan after they killed his three children and first wife. But the amazing thing is my DNA (documented). I am considered of Middle East origin from my DNA. No matter what the Palestinians think, I am and my family will always be blood related to them. And how about that right of return? It's nonsense. What about me? Where do I go? Israel? Poland? But I am of Middle Eastern origin. I see some signs of wonderful hopeful activities in Palestine. I wish people quite wasting their lives in hate and start getting themselves educated on the truth....good or bad. Get some initative to build the country up and have the self-control to make their part of holy land, fun and profitable..Why continute to be pawns of the other Arab states and people living outside the territories. We all are smart people. Let's show the world to stay out of our own business. My son's room mate his freshman year at Northwestern University was a young man of Palestinian Muslim background who prayed everday in their room No problems. My oldest's best friend is a Pakistani Muslim young man who wants to be a doctor. Again, no problem. What was the answer. American democracy and the virtue of instilling in our children respect and toleration of others. I wish there was a pill we could give everyone to stop hating. . In terms of the "academic," we have those types, too, in the U.S. I know the Holocaust is not a subject taught in the Arab World. Why? Let the Arab world study their role. Let them look at the records....it is not just Germany's fault, it's Frances, etc. Even France is paying money for their role in the Holocaust, did you know this? Check it out. It is online. Stop plaiying the blame game. We all have horrors in our history. We must use our energies to get our lives together to have joy on this planet while we can. Look and work towards a brighter future for our beautiful children. Stop teaching hateful stupidness. CM
One merely has to ask, what is a dhimmi to udnestand that when people in the Arab Muslim world criticize Jews or Israelis or Americans, they speak from the position of hypocrisy. The people who follow Zarathustra have been persecuted in Iran. Christians are persecuted in many Arab-Muslim lands. The Assyrians had their lands taken by Arab invaders. Mandaeans have fled Iraq due to hatred. But, it seems like Arab leaders love to maintain their power by finding demons to distract their exploited populations.