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MIDEAST: Palestinians Honour Holocaust Victims
By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, May 29 (IPS) - On a cool and overcast day, a procession of grim-faced people filed silently
past pictures of heaps of skeletons piled high, of emaciated survivors with
blank stares corralled behind barbed wire, barely clinging to life.
The memorial and museum commemorating the six million Jews killed by the
Nazis during World War II could have been in any of the many international
capitals where the Holocaust is remembered.
But this time the memorial was taking place in a quite unexpected place; the
Palestinian village Ni'ilin, west of Ramallah in the central West Bank, has
established the first ever Holocaust museum in the Palestinian territories.
Ni'ilin's Hamas mayor Ayman Nafaa later led a group on a Palestinian version
of March of the Living through the village's narrow and winding streets.
March of the Living is an international educational programme, involving
Jewish youngsters spending two weeks in Poland where they march silently
from Auschwitz to Birkenau, which was one of the largest Nazi concentration
camps.
Establishment of the Ni'ilin museum was the brainchild of Israeli-Arab lawyer
Khaled Mehamid from the Israeli town Umm Al-Fahm. Four years ago he
established a Holocaust museum in his hometown.
Mehamid approached Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum,
which provided the museum with pictures and materials in Arabic. Its
directors now plan to start holding educational tours for students to the
museum.
Mehamid had originally visited Ni'ilin to comfort the Palestinian family of a
young boy who was shot dead by Israeli soldiers during a protest.
"I met the mayor and explained to him that the Jews have their own pain and
that this is inextricably linked with the suffering of Palestinians today under
Israeli occupation," Mehamid told IPS.
Ni'ilin has lost four of its youths to Israeli bullets. Hundreds of the village's
population of 5,000 have been arrested, wounded and beaten up during
protests against Israel's illegal separation barrier which cuts through the
village, separating farmers from their land.
The building of this wall, which the International Court at The Hague deemed
illegal, has meant the confiscation of thousands of acres of West Bank land
by the Israeli authorities for the benefit of the illegal settlements.
"Most of the village is dependent on agriculture for a living," Hassan Moussa,
a member of Ni'ilin's Popular Committee told IPS. "Sixty farmers have lost
land, 40 of them all of their agricultural fields.
"If you take into account their dependents and their employees, we are
talking about 600 people directly affected by the land confiscation," said
Moussa.
In an effort to fight the continued expropriation of village land, Ni'ilin
villagers, together with Israeli activists and international supporters, have
been holding weekly anti-wall protests which have often ended up violently.
Moussa lost his 10-year-old nephew Ahmed Moussa after he was shot in the
head with live ammunition by an Israeli sniper. The boy was not involved in
any stone-throwing.
The following day Yousef Amira, 17, was left brain-dead and died a week
later after he was shot in the head with rubber-coated steel bullets.
Arafat Rateb Khawaje, 22, was shot in the back with live ammunition last
December. The same day Mohammed Khawaje, 20, was shot in the head with
live ammunition. He died three days later.
Moussa was arrested last year while escorting the foreign media at a
demonstration. No charges were brought against him, and he was eventually
granted bail for 800 dollars, which has not been returned.
Moussa agrees with Mehamid that it is important for Palestinians to
understand the tragedy that befell the Jews in Europe but which also created
added impetus for establishment of the State of Israel.
Over 500 Palestinian villages were razed and hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians were made refugees by the Israelis following the establishment
of the Jewish state in 1948.
This followed the UN's 1947 partition of British Mandate Palestine into Jewish
and Palestinian states.
The reaction of the villagers to the museum has been largely positive. "But
we have different attitudes here, and some of the people have questioned
why we focus on the suffering of the Jews when that is over," said Moussa.
"They say we should instead focus on our suffering which is current and
unresolved, especially as we are being persecuted by the very same people
who were themselves were persecuted."
But both Mehamid and Moussa have been quick to explain to dissenters that
establishment of the museum is not purely for altruistic reasons but serves
the Palestinian cause.
"We believe the Israelis have used the Holocaust for political reasons, to
garner the sympathy of the international community," Mehamid told IPS.
"This has been done for both the establishment of the state and for the
continued building of settlements and illegal expropriation of Palestinian
land and other natural resources," he added.
It is only through understanding the genuine suffering of the Jews, and how
this suffering was used politically, can Palestinians fight back on an even
playing ground, said Moussa.
"We acknowledge Hitler's massacre and in return we would like the Israelis to
acknowledge our rights," said Mehamid. (END/2009)
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