Trip was for education

ABDULLAH H. ERAKAT THE MEDIA LINE

Despite the frequency with which students from high schools and colleges worldwide visit Holocaust death camps, it was no simple matter for Issa Jameel when he was asked whether he wanted to visit Auschwitz. For Jameel, a Palestinian master’s student from Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, the opportunity was laced with political and nationalistic issues his peers don’t often consider. According to Jameel, it was only when he realized it would be an important educational experience to learn about the Jews in the Holocaust during the Second World War that he was convinced and signed on as student coordinator for the trip.

“Until when will we keep hearing the Israeli narrative of what happened?” Jameel asked this reporter in the library of the American studies department on the Al-Quds campus in the Abu Dis neighborhood of Jerusalem. “Why don’t we find out for ourselves?” he asked.

The result was the first delegation of its kind: a March trip by 27 students to Poland’s Auschwitz and Birkenau camps led by Prof. Mohammad Dajani Daoudi, dean of the American studies program.

“I was not shy to admit that I was going, and I was not afraid to say so because I was going to learn. As a Palestinian, I feel for others because we are suffering,” Jameel said.

“The idea is to study empathy in order to affect feelings of reconciliation,” Dajani explained. “We are exposing Palestinian students to what happened during World War II – in particular, the Holocaust concentration camps. At the same time, we are taking 30 Israeli students to visit Palestinians who suffered as a result of the 1948 Nakba.”

The visit was funded by the German Research Foundation and sponsored jointly by a program called Hearts of Flesh, Not Stone, a project of Wasatia (Moderation) of the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Israel.

Jameel said he was not taught about the Holocaust in school, and that all he had heard were general comments that “what the Nazis did was ‘heinous.’” He said, “Relative to us as Palestinians, the Holocaust is seen as a catastrophe on the humanitarian level.”

As a second-year graduate student, Jameel had prepared by reading a book about the Holocaust authored by Dajani, but the reality, he said, was greater than his expectations. “The picture of the horrible event is not complete until you see the place in front of you,” he said.

Asked about those, like the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas that denies the existence of the Holocaust, Jameel said, “No, it did happen, because to deny a reality is to deny its existence.

“This trip confirmed my perceptions that the deprecating value of a human being, the torture of a human being, the killing of a human being and punishment of a human being because of religion or roots, is a textbook definition of a crime,” he said.

On the Hearts of Flesh Facebook page, trip participant Nasser Al-Qaddi wrote, “My impression at this place is I felt disgusted and real dehumanization; and how Nazis acted mercilessly with illegal inhuman decision to exterminate Jews and other prisoners.”

Dajani explained that the purpose of the trip was to hear both sides, and by listening to the suffering on both sides, to help create empathy. “Empathy brings reconciliation,” he explained.

Angry feedback against Dajani and his students did not wait for their return home. Palestinians immediately used social media including Facebook to lash out against the trip, and new vitriol continues to appear on the sites.

“My brother called me from Palestine and asked, ‘Don’t you know, you and your delegation are spies?’” Jameel said. His brother went on to explain that an article written in the Israeli daily Haaretz about the trip to Auschwitz was released by an influential Arab news agency but translated incorrectly. Jameel admonished his brother to ignore the rumors.

“I told my brother to tell everyone he knows that we visited the Auschwitz camp and we saw the tremendous suffering of what happened during the Holocaust,” he said. “And we, as Palestinians, know the meaning of what it means to suffer,” Jameel added.

Asked whether the visit was a gesture in opposition to the “normalization” campaign in which any cultural or educational contact with Israeli institutions is severely discouraged, Jameel replied that the journey was “purely an educational trip,” and that “visiting the Holocaust is something and normalizing is something else.”

Jameel also said he was not afraid to share his feelings about Israelis with Dajani. “I told Mr. Dajani that we don’t want Israelis to come with us, as that would seem to show them we are trying to satisfy them. And so we won’t be case studies. I did not want Israelis to look at me and say he is sympathizing [with me when] he is not.”

Jameel said that at one point during the trip he felt he was being manipulated into feeling guilty for what happened to the Holocaust victims. “On the trip, there were Jews whose grandparents witnessed the Holocaust. They were talking from an educational standpoint and then suddenly switched to an emotional perspective. When we saw that they were personalizing the Holocaust, we decided we did not want to listen anymore and asked for another guide at the Holocaust museum to tell us – factually – what had happened: different than the emotional and personal narrative, because we were coming to learn,” he said. “My emotions should come from within me, without force, and not having had someone direct my emotions.”

The contingent included 12 Palestinian women. Shahd Swaid, a 22-year-old English literature major told this reporter that the pressure not to be part of the group began before their departure. Swaid said she was told, “There will be much dialogue against you [and accusations] that you are going to normalize,” she said. “I was asked, ‘Why are you going?’ My response to them was to ask, ‘How are you comparing something you did not see and something you did not live?’ I wanted to go to imagine what happened so I can answer not just [my friends] but the other people.”

Swaid said that she went in order “to see the torture that took place and the suffering.” She said the extent of her knowledge about the Holocaust was what she read in headlines and what she had seen in movies. For her, the trip was also a reminder. As did other Palestinian students, she related feelings of identification with life under an occupying power.

To those who criticized the delegation, Swaid said the opposition stems from ignorance. “Those people do not read to understand. They react without listening.”

Those opposed to the trip “are mixing politics with education,” said Dajani. “It’s an education-only experience; a learning process.” At press time, his Facebook profile picture was that of a candle with the words “Holocaust Memorial Day.”

“We are studying the Holocaust. People are trying to impose politics on this experience. We are not asking them to normalize or not to normalize. Not to be with or against. Just learn the facts,” he said. “They [the critics] are politicizing education in the hope of making more of indoctrination. We are against that. We believe in advancing the knowledge of students, breaking taboos and putting a crack into ignorance,” Dajani insisted.

Students who went on the trip had praise for Dajani and admiration for his “courage” to organize the experience. Dajani said despite the criticism he has received, he is planning a second trip if funding can be arranged.

^top