By Leah Goldstein

At the writing of this article, an uneasy ceasefire is holding after an intense, month-long battle was waged between Hizbollah and Israel across the Israel-Lebanon border. The war—which many Jews in Israel and abroad viewed as a threat to the very existence of the State—took many lives, and provided a platform for vehement criticism of Israel’s actions by nations around the world. Closer to home, the entire country was gripped with trepidation and concern for the thousands of troops—including many of our fathers, brothers, sons and friends—and millions of residents who endured weeks of unrelenting missiles and fierce gunfire. For many, the feeling of anxiety and despair was often overwhelming.

The war in Lebanon was also a challenging time for Yad Vashem. On a personal level, many of the staff or members of their immediate families were drafted to the fighting; and sadly some shared in the losses and the casualties. And for those not personally affected, the war’s influence was still felt in their professional work: from cancellations of planned visits and seminars to quickly arranged tours for families from the north of the country. One exceptional visit came from the family of abducted soldier Eldad Regev. In an emotional meeting with Chairman of the Directorate Avner Shalev after many hours in the new Museum complex, Eldad’s parents expressed their gratitude for the strength the visit had given them, as well as the clarity of understanding that their painful situation was part of Jewish history—part of the struggle of every generation against those who determine to destroy our nation.

Not long after, Iran opened the infamous exhibit of cartoons mocking the Holocaust. “The alarming silence of the world indicates that the West has not yet understood that what is taking place is an attack on Western values and civilization,” commented Avner Shalev. “History has demonstrated that silence in the face of evil statements begets evil actions.” Shalev added that the passivity of most of the world’s leaders to the looming Iranian threat illustrates the need to continue and expand Yad Vashem’s work around the world in fostering understanding and educating about the Shoah. “Remembering what happened to us during the Holocaust will only unite and strengthen the Jewish nation in the future,” remarked Shalev.

Ignorance as a weapon
“We all know the saying: ‘a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing,’” wrote Director of Yad Vashem’s Libraries, Dr. Robert Rozett, in his recent op-ed entitled, “Ignorance as a Weapon.” In discussing the perilous threat of Iranian President Ahmadinejad to Israel, the Jewish nation and world democracy as a whole, Rozett points out that Ahmadinejad and his advisors are unwilling to avail themselves of the readily available wealth of knowledge about WWII, the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel. Instead, they twist their “rudimentary and disjointed” information around and “wield their distorted understanding as a weapon against the Jews and the Americans.” This kind of behavior, concludes Rozett, continues to demonstrate that educating about the Holocaust in our day and age is imperative, especially among those nations whose populations have had little or blatantly misleading exposure to such information until now. For its part, Yad Vashem is making initial inroads into certain countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, who have not benefited from any systematic attempts to teach the history of the period (see “Teaching the Holocaust in China” ), alongside its continuous expansion of Holocaust education programs and material in Europe, North America and several other democratic countries.

Holocaust education in an atmosphere of conflict
While there are unique challenges in teaching the Holocaust to any non-Israeli or non-Jewish group, this is magnified greatly when presented with an Arab audience, against the background of a regional conflict that has endured more than half a century. “Although the waves of antisemitism escalate and recede in relation to political events and developments, antisemitism is increasingly becoming a constant in Arab thought and is linked, as in other places in the world, to broader processes that affect Arab societies,” explains Dr. Esther Webman, a leading authority on contemporary Muslim-Jewish Relations and research associate at the Stephen Roth Institute, Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. “There is, in fact, a strong correlation between the growing role of the Holocaust in Israeli and Jewish identity and the frequency of Arab reference to it. The rising international interest in the Holocaust—the establishment of an international task force on Holocaust education, remembrance and research, and the UN decision to designate 27 January as International Holocaust Remembrance Day—has only antagonized Arabs and Muslims. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the usage of the Holocaust as a metaphor for Israeli deeds and the comparison of Zionism to Nazism was the most prominent motif emerging in the Arab discourse on the war in Lebanon.”

At the end of August, Head of the European Department Dr. Doron Avraham participated in a conference in Berlin entitled, “Strategies and Effective Practices for Fighting Antisemitism among People with a Muslim/Arab Background in Europe,” run by the International Study Group for Education and Research on Antisemitism, in cooperation with the American Jewish Committee, Berlin, and Politische Akademie der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, and supported by the Foundation for Remembrance, Responsibility and Future.

Participants in the first seminar for Jordanian educators at Yad Vashem

Lecturing on the topic, “Holocaust in an atmosphere of conflict: Teaching Arab students in Yad Vashem,” Avraham explained: “Although many of the five hundred Arab students and educators who come to Yad Vashem each year are Israeli citizens, the Holocaust is by no means part of their history. It is a Jewish tragedy that seems to have no direct influence on them. Moreover, discussion about the Holocaust usually prompts them to raise the topic of their own tragedy, the Nakba, or ‘catastrophe’ of the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. For some of these Arabs, while the Holocaust has some factual basis, they view it as a tool used by Zionists for manipulation of world sympathy.”

One might get the impression, Avraham suggests, that Arabs share the widespread trend of Holocaust denial. In fact, the majority of the Arab teachers and students who come to Yad Vashem know almost nothing about the Holocaust. Their inaccurate manifestations about the event may appear antisemitic; indeed, when Islamist groups express them as part of their anti-Israeli agenda, they should be treated as such. But for some, the anti-Jewish attitude also derives from a more general Arab narrative of WWII and the history of colonialism.

When faced with these attitudes, said Avraham, it is our duty to find ways to create an open discussion with Arab teachers and students. Yad Vashem has thus created seminars and activities—including the first ever seminar for Jordanian educators recently held at the School—that deliver an historical overview of the events in order to acquaint them with the historical context, and that also discuss other victims of the Nazis, thus stressing the totality of the racist ideology and the dangers that racism creates. Positive aspects are also stressed, such as the role of Muslim Righteous Among the Nations, in order to “neutralize” some of the hostile feelings that these Arab participants bring with them to the seminars. While at the end of the course the participants are hardly adherents of Zionism, they do acquire some insights regarding one of the most formative events in the Jewish history—insights that might facilitate a better understanding not only of the Israeli point of view, but also of the dangers the Jewish nation continues to face.

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