Zohir Andreous
Don’t go to Auschwitz
Arab MK should not be traveling to death camp with members of racist Knesset
We are seeing a tempest amongst Arab Palestinians in Israel these days in the face of Knesset Member Mohammad Barakeh’s trip to the Auschwitz death camp in the framework of an official Israeli delegation. The participation of an Arab MK in an official delegation to Auschwitz is needless and will not bring Jews and Palestinians in Israel and beyond closer, even though this is a humane move with great symbolic significance.
Barakeh is a public official that represents tens of thousands of his people, yet not all of them agree on his decision to join the delegation. His trip would have been received more openly had it been held in the framework of an Arab Palestinian delegation aiming to show the world that members of the Arab and Palestinian people sympathize with what the Jews went through in the Holocaust.
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This would also be an opportunity to make it clear that, as all other nations, we want peace and equality, as well as the right to realize our national dream through the establishment of a Palestinian state with al-Quds as its capital. We also wish to work towards implementing UN Resolution 194, which rules that Palestinian refugees expelled in the Nakba must return to their homeland.
The Arab Palestinians in the Jewish state and beyond have already grasped and internalized the lessons of the Shoah, and they do not need to a kosher certificate from anyone. The Palestinian people also know the meaning of suppression, murder, and siege in the face of the Israeli occupation, which corrupted the whole of Palestinian society.
The above should not be seen as an attempt to compare what the Jews went through in the Holocaust to what the Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line are going through as result of the occupation. There is clearly no room for comparison between the Jewish Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis to the Palestinian Nakba carried out by the Jews.
Barakeh himself a refugee
However, we should be asking MK Barakeh why he needs to take part in an official Israeli Knesset delegation to the death camp, while other MKs in the delegation prevent us, Arab Palestinians, from mentioning the 1948 Nakba? After all, MK Barakeh is himself a refugee expelled along with his family from his village to the town of Shfaram. Today, about 400,000 refugees such as MK Barakeh live in their homeland.
Attempts by members of the Hadash party to display their humanity and solidarity with Israeli bereavement have failed in the past: Knesset members of this Arab-Jewish party traveled south ahead of the operation of aggression in Gaza, Cast Lead, in order to participate in the funeral of a Sderot resident killed by a Qassam rocket; however, funeral attendants received them with curses and drove them away.
A few years ago, Jews and Arabs organized visits to the Auschwitz death camp, yet arguments emerged among participants during the visits and this blessed initiative is part of history by now. The failure of these delegations stemmed from the fact that both sides did not undergo proper preparation, and the visits therefore turned into a platform for political bickering.
Meanwhile, MK Barakeh’s desire to join the visit to the camp provoked resistance among Israel’s Zionist Right as well. Two Jewish Knesset members, Danny Danon and Yariv Levin, submitted a bill that would prevent Barakeh from joining the tour, on the grounds that he slanders Israel and slams the IDF. This bill shows that the Israeli Right is rushing to turn Israel into an apartheid state, as if the racist laws being legislated recently in the Zionist parliament at an accelerated rate are insufficient.
Hence, it would be wise for Barakeh, who found himself between a rock and a hard place, to terminate this situation by canceling his participation in the parliamentary delegation to the death camp.
Zuhair Andraos is the editor-in-chieff of Arab newspaper Ma-Alhadath
