JERUSALEM, April 14 (UPI) -- Professor and theologian Mohammad Dajani is under fire for taking 27 Palestinian college students to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.
A teacher at East Jerusalem’s al-Quds University, Dajani led a trip to Auschwitz that was paid for by the German government. He has been criticized in a land where many anti-Israel residents deny the Holocaust ever occurred, or reduce its historic importance.
“I thought there would be some complaints and then it would be forgotten,” Dajani said. Instead the university distanced itself from the trip and Dajani's fellow Palestinians called him a traitor. He added many Palestinians consider the Holocaust a propaganda tool used by Israelis to justify the seizure of territory in the Middle East and to create sympathy for Israel.
“They said ‘Why go to Poland? Why not teach our young people about the Nakba?’” he said, a reference to the 1948 war in which Arab territory was ceded to become the state of Israel and thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their homes.
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“He is a theologian and a pragmatist and in that regard, he is unique here,” said journalist Matthew Kalman of Dajani. "He is also a proud Palestinian nationalist, but he thinks if you want to engage the Israelis, you have to understand where they’re coming from.”
Dajani, a member of the radical Fatah movement in his youth, says he now considers himself a moderate in his politics, and that his writings emphasize forgiveness and tolerance.
An al-Quds University statement said Dajani and his students were not representatives of the school.
[Washington Post]
