THE United Nations should not have to retreat from plans to teach Palestinian children in UN schools in the Gaza Strip about the Holocaust, starting this September.
The very ferocity of the outraged response from both Hamas and Fatah officials to the plan — terming the well-documented murder of six millions Jews by the Nazis during the Second World War “lies” that would “poison” the minds of Palestinian children — reinforces its importance.
Rumours that the UN, through its Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, had been contemplating teaching the Holocaust have been around since at least 2009. Late last month, however, a UN official was quoted in a Jordanian paper as saying a short study on the Holocaust would go forward this September as part of UNRWA schools’ curriculum on human rights.
UNRWA teaches 200,000 students in Gaza.
Denying the Holocaust is, depending on the circumstances, often seen as a hate crime in Canada. In much of Europe, Holocaust denial — a deeply antisemitic act — is illegal. The UN calls Holocaust denial “unacceptable.”
Yet the authorities in Gaza want to claim teaching young Palestinians the truth about the horrific massacre of Jews in Europe in the 1940s, as a way to better understand their neighbours, would be a “cultural crime” that violates “unchangeable values.”
Critics rightly charge that Hamas seems more interested in inoculating hatred of Israelis into Palestinian children, which teaching them about the Holocaust might undermine.
Given the UN’s stand on Holocaust denial, and the importance of the Holocaust in the steps that led to the first universal declaration of human rights in 1947, UNRWA’s plans to teach the subject are commendable.
It’s hardly surprising, of course, that Hamas, a terrorist organization, has pledged to stop UNRWA’s plan, “regardless of the price.”
Sadly, members of the Palestinian Authority, on which the West has pinned hopes of a peaceful resolution to the Middle East crisis, also reject teaching the Holocaust to Palestinian
