Palestinian students see Jews had ‘nowhere else to go’

Growing up in the West Bank, Mujahid Sarsur knew next to nothing about the Holocaust, and saw little ground to sympathize with a people he saw as his occupier.

By ARON HELLER
palestinians yad vashem 311 (photo credit: AP)
palestinians yad vashem 311
(photo credit: AP)
Growing up in the West Bank, Mujahid Sarsur knew next to nothing about the Holocaust, and saw little ground to sympathize with a people he saw as his occupier.
But thanks to an Israeli roommate overseas, the 21-year-old Palestinian, now a student in New York, learned about the murder of six million Jews during World War II and gained a new understanding.
Now Sarsur heads one of a handful of Palestinian grass-roots groups seeking knowledge about the Holocaust. Last month he led a delegation of 22 students to Yad Vashem. The students, most of whom live in the West Bank town of Mas’ha, listened closely to their Arabic-speaking guide, and were left wide-eyed by the gruesome images.
Girls in Muslim head scarves turned away in horror at the sight of Jewish corpses being shoveled into pits. They huddled together as they watched film from Auschwitz, where about 1 million Jews were put to death.
“The Holocaust is a huge part of Israeli society. We live so close to them and we need to understand them better if we are ever to live in peace,” said Sarsur, a junior at Bard College in New York. “If we change the way we think about the Holocaust, we can create bridges.”
Arab sentiment toward the Holocaust ranges from ignorance to outright denial. Some hold a more complex belief, acknowledging that the Holocaust did happen, but that they are paying the price by the loss of their land with the creation of the State of Israel after WWII.
Last year, a Palestinian youth orchestra performed a concert for Holocaust survivors in Israel and caused such uproar among Palestinians that it was shut down.
Its conductor was banished and blocked from entering any West Bank refugee camp.
Two years ago, Yad Vashem launched an Arabic version of its Web site to combat Holocaust denial in the Arab world. A similar version in Farsi was aimed at Iran, whose president has called the Holocaust “a myth.”
Noor Amer, a 15-year-old Palestinian who attends high school in Jordan, said the Yad Vashem visit helped him understand that “the Jews had nowhere else to go” after the Holocaust. He said Palestinians have trouble seeing their enemies as victims to be sympathized with.
“If we say that the Holocaust happened, then we accept that Israelis are human just like us, and I think that here is the twist – we do not want to consider Jews as humans,” he said.
Aumamah Sarsur, 22, an Israeli Arab and cousin of Mujahid Sarsur, said the Yad Vashem visit taught her that Jews were tortured and killed by the Nazis.
“I am not giving them legitimacy to come here and make their own country, but I get their point of view,” she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.