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The United Arab Emirates plans to teach students about the Holocaust, a sign of warming ties with Israel, which has been widely condemned in the Arab world over the Palestinian conflict.
After years of forging ties between Egypt and Jordan, the wealthy Gulf state agreed to normalize ties with Bahrain and Morocco with Israel under the US-brokered 2020 Abraham Accords.
At Dubai’s Holocaust Gallery – the only permanent exhibition in Arab lands on Nazi Germany’s genocide of European Jews – visitor Andreas Doon praised the educational initiative, the first of its kind outside Israel indivual.
“It’s good that the UAE is leading this hugely 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.”
Dunn visited the exhibit after hearing that the UAE would become the first Arab country to include the Holocaust, the systematic murder of millions of Jews and other groups by the Nazis, in its public school curriculum.
Given that Nazi Germany’s mass murder of Jews in gas chambers and death marches was a key factor leading to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Arab states were generally reluctant to address the issue.
Israel’s founding as a safe haven for Jews led to mass deportations of Palestinians and the occupation and later annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Solidarity with the Palestinian cause has made the Holocaust a taboo subject in many Arab countries, and school textbooks and world maps routinely deny the existence of Israel, often referred to as the “Zionist entity.”
– ‘High Denial’ –
Given this highly tense backdrop, the UAE’s landmark decision has not been unanimously received, with some experts predicting that major changes in public perception will be slow to come.
Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a professor of political science in the United Arab Emirates, accused: “The Holocaust is a historical fact, but I think that Israel is politicizing it, and Israel abuses it from time to time to achieve its own political goals.”
The UAE embassy in Washington said on Twitter this month that it “will now include the Holocaust in primary and secondary school curricula,” without providing further details.
“It’s important to introduce Holocaust education in the region because the level of denial is so high,” said Ahmed Obaid Almansoori, founder of the Museum at the Crossroads of Civilizations, which houses the Holocaust gallery. “.
“If we want people to sympathize with us, we have to sympathize with other people,” he told AFP at the permanent exhibition, which features weapons, pictures of the dead and religious scrolls.
However, a visitor’s brochure for the Holocaust Gallery reveals something different. While the comments were overwhelmingly positive, some were openly hostile to Israel.
“Those who have been wronged should protect those who have been wronged – not act unjustly,” said a message written in Arabic, while other tourists wrote “Down with the Zionist Reich doctrine” and more inflammatory comments.
– ‘The Holy Cause of Palestine’ –
In the oil-rich Gulf state, where 90 percent of the population is expatriate, some private schools have begun teaching the Holocaust, and the UAE has held lectures on Jewish survivors since normalizing relations with Israel.
In developing the new curriculum, the Ministry of Education consulted the Institute for Monitoring Peace in School Education and Cultural Tolerance (IMPACT-se) and the Yad Vashem and Education Center in Israel.
“The Holocaust element is only a small part of the overall curriculum, but it’s being studied now,” said Markus Scheff, chief executive of IMPACT-se, an Israeli-British research group that promotes UNESCO education standards and policy agencies.
Yad Vashem said “the initiative is still being developed”, noting that it was “too early” to elaborate.
Alex Peterfreund, a Jewish community leader who has lived in the UAE since 2014, said he was “proud” of the planned changes.
“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, whose grandparents were killed in the Holocaust.
But Hind Al Ansari, a public policy fellow at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington, predicts that perceptions will be hard to change.
Holocaust teachings are “unlikely to lead to tolerance of Israel in the near future,” she said, noting “the sanctity of the Palestinian cause in the Arab world, including the vast majority of Emiratis.”
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