The United Arab Emirates plans to teach school students about theHolocaust, signalling warming ties with Israel, a country that is widelycondemned in the Arab world over the Palestinian conflict.
The wealthy Gulf state’s move comes after it agreed to normalise ties withIsrael under the US-brokered 2020 Abraham Accords along with Bahrain andMorocco, years after Egypt and Jordan had forged relations.
At Dubai’s Holocaust Gallery — the only permanent exhibition on Arab soilabout Nazi Germany’s genocide of European Jews — visitor Andreas Duhnpraised the education initiative, the first in the region outside Israel.
“It’s good that the UAE is taking a lead in the Arab world on this hugelyimportant part of history that everyone should know about,” said the38-year-old British finance professional who lives in Dubai.
“It shows that things are changing.”
Duhn visited the exhibit after hearing that the UAE will become the firstArab country to include the Holocaust, the Nazis’ systematic murder ofmillions of Jews and other groups, in its state school curriculum.
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Arab nations have generally been reluctant to tackle the subject, giventhat Nazi Germany’s mass murder of Jews in gas chambers and on deathmarches was a key factor leading to the 1948 creation of the state ofIsrael.
The founding of Israel as a safe haven for Jews led to the large-scaleexpulsion of Palestinians and the occupation in the 1967 Six-Day War of theWest Bank and east Jerusalem, which was later annexed.
Solidarity with the Palestinian cause has made the Holocaust a taboosubject in many Arab countries, where school texts and world maps oftendeny the very existence of Israel, which is commonly dubbed the “Zionistentity”. -APP/AFP
