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Why an Arab nation chose to teach about the Holocaust in its schools

2023-01-13T17:56:43.820Z


The United Arab Emirates will soon become the first Arab nation to teach about the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust in its schools.


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Amman, Jordan (CNN) -- 

The United Arab Emirates will soon become the first Arab nation to teach about the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust in its schools, a landmark move that has been praised in some quarters but criticized in others as well.


The UAE plans to include Holocaust education in the primary and secondary school curriculum, the country's embassy in the United States tweeted last week.

The country says they will work with the Tel Aviv and London-based Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, to help craft a new curriculum, according to a report in the Times of Israel newspaper.

"Now we have the opportunity to reach new audiences and Yad Vashem is working to pave the way to bring Holocaust awareness to the Arabic-speaking world," the organization's spokesman Simmy Allen told CNN.

"In most of the Arabic-speaking world, until recently, there was little or no dialogue with Yad Vashem about the events and atrocities of the Holocaust," he added.

Holocaust education has been largely absent from the curricula of governments in Arab countries, but the UAE has been redoubling its efforts to raise awareness of the Holocaust since it normalized relations with Israel in 2020 in a pact known as the Abraham Accords.

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UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah Bin Zayed visited Berlin's main Holocaust memorial in late 2020 with his Israeli counterpart.

In 2021, the first Holocaust memorial exhibition in the Arab region opened in Dubai, and last year, the foreign minister paid a highly publicized visit to Yad Vashem, where he laid a wreath.

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In an article published in Israel's Jerusalem Post newspaper in 2021, Ali Al Nuaimi, chairman of the Defense, Interior and Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federal National Council of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, wrote that the Arab world's school curricula " have left out key parts of Western history for too long," including the Holocaust.

Muslims, he argued, "must free themselves from the burdens of history to move into the future."

The move is "a natural outgrowth of the Abraham Accords," Kristin Smith Diwan, a resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told CNN.

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"The UAE leadership has been engineering a cultural shift to support their strategic objectives," he said.

"The acceptance of ethnic diversity has accompanied the expansion of a global workforce, and interfaith dialogue has helped counter pan-Islamism and religious extremism."

It is not clear if the UAE measure will apply only to public schools or to the hundreds of private schools in the country.

The UAE Ministry of Education did not respond to CNN's request for comment at press time.

About 90% of the UAE's population of some 10 million is made up of expatriates, according to World Bank data, many of whom send their children to private schools that deliver international curricula that often include Holocaust education.

voices against

On social media, Emiratis were silent about the decision to teach the Holocaust, but Abdul Khaleq Abdulla, a prominent UAE political science professor and commentator, commented on the announcement in a tweet, saying it was not necessary.

"There has been repeated talk of adding the theme of the Holocaust to our school curricula, despite the absence of any national value, educational (benefit) and need to know," he tweeted.

Much of the reaction from Arabs outside the UAE was critical: some accused the country of ceding control of its curriculum to Israel, while others wondered if it would come at the expense of teaching UAE history. Palestinians, particularly the Nakba.

The Nakba, which means catastrophe in Arabic, refers to the creation of Israel in 1948, which forced some 700,000 Palestinians to flee their homes.

"We do not deny the Holocaust and stand in solidarity with its victims," ​​tweeted Dareen, a Twitter commenter who identifies as Palestinian.

"But including it in the curriculum of young students makes it easier for the occupation (Israel) to infiltrate the Arab people."

The UAE, which has a large Palestinian community, has stated in local media that its normalization with Israel would not affect its commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Yasser Abu Hilala, former director general of Al Jazeera, tweeted that teaching the Holocaust in the UAE was "helpful to learn about the history and brutality of the West", adding that "it is the same West from which Zionism arose", referring to to the movement to create a Jewish state in the Middle East.

The involvement of an Israeli organization in writing the country's curriculum adds a layer of complexity.

Polls have shown that the public in Arab nations that have normalized their relations do not share the opinion of their governments in their acceptance of Israel.

A survey conducted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in July 2022 shows that more than 70% in the UAE and Bahrain have a negative view of normalization.

The Abraham Accords are also unpopular in other Arab nations.

An opinion poll by the Qatar-based Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies released last week showed just 7.5% of Arabs supported normalization, with 84% seeing Israel as the biggest threat. for the Arab region, followed by the United States and Iran, respectively.

The survey, which included more than 33,000 people from 14 Arab countries, did not include the UAE.

Analysts say that despite the difference between official and popular views on Israel, the UAE is likely to press ahead with strengthening ties with Israel.

"Emirati public opinion may not fully agree, but the leadership has decided that this is the path they are going to follow and that is the way they will continue," Dina Esfandiary, senior adviser for the Middle East and North Africa at the International, told CNN. CrisisGroup.

"They believe they have more influence over Israel and Israeli action by maintaining these good ties."

Some Emiratis will be uncomfortable with coordinating with an Israeli institution "in a sensitive area like education" as there is popular sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians, said Diwan of the Gulf Arab States Institute.

"But this should not negate the value and importance of understanding the historical facts and context of the Holocaust," he added.

"Misinformation is a problem and it doesn't help anyone."

-- With additional reporting by Michael Schwartz in Jerusalem

United Arab Emirates Holocaust

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2023-01-13

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