Mohammed Dajani and his Reflections of the Holocaust

Video Of The Week - Medical Volunteers to Care for Holocaust Survivors - https://tinyurl.com/2mh8pbah

By Craig Brandhorst, 10-2-2021. For the full article go to https://tinyurl.com/2hu4fj6

In 2014, Mohammed Dajani, longtime professor at Jerusalem’s al-Quds University, took 27 Palestinian college students to Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp near Krakow, Poland. He wanted them to confront the Holocaust, which he believes is downplayed in Palestinian schools, and to consider the complicated history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from multiple perspectives. The backlash, however, would cost him his job and endanger his life. It would also embolden his commitment to reconciliation.

Mohammed Dajani is a man without a country. Born in Jerusalem in 1946 but driven to Egypt in the Nakba, or Palestinian exodus, during the Palestinian-Israeli War of 1948. Educated in Quaker schools in Jordanian-controlled east Jerusalem and at the American University of Beirut. Banished from Lebanon for radical activity but welcomed by the United States. Graduate of not one but two Ph.D. programs, the first at the University of South Carolina. 

Dajani is also a complicated man. Secular Muslim well-versed in the Quran. Founder of the political science program at Jordan’s Applied Science Private University and of the Institute for American Studies at al-Quds University. Adjunct fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Co-director of the Wasatia Graduate School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Flensburg in Germany. Scholar. Philosopher. Activist. 

At heart, though, Dajani is a teacher. That’s evident from the start of our conversation, which occurs over two days in September via video chat — him at his Jerusalem apartment, me at home in Columbia, quarantining during the pandemic. I’m intrigued by the Auschwitz trip, which prompted a backlash in the Palestinian press and threats to his safety, but three minutes into the call he is delivering an erudite minilecture on the need for cultural education in a civil society.

“If we look at history, when Plato was disappointed with Greek democracy, he did not reject it but started the Academy,” he says. “When John Dewey felt that democracy in America was faltering, he wrote Democracy and Education. I believe that is what we need here for reconciliation between Israel and Palestine.” 

Dajani is emphatic but polite, soft-spoken, professorial. He tents his fingers, smiles ever-so-slightly at the webcam. He’s not guarded but chooses his words carefully. “Part of our conflict is ignorance,” he explains. “Ignorance of ‘the other,’ lack of empathy for ‘the other,’ lack of knowledge of ‘the other’ — their culture, their history, their literature. I feel that education can play a significant role here.”

But first, he says, Palestinian and Israeli schools need reform. He describes the current education model as “conflict education disguised as national education” and suggests, instead, a curriculum based on conflict resolution, negotiation, tolerance, dialogue — the basic tenets of Wasatia, an initiative he and his brother, Munther Dajani, started in 2007 to promote reconciliation. The word comes from the Quran, he explains, and means “middle path.”

“ ‘Wasatia’ is moderation,” he says. “We would like to raise children within a moderate culture, within a democratic culture, for them to understand the elements of conflict, to understand ‘who is the other,’ ‘why is the other,’ and to appreciate the legitimacy of ‘the other.’ We want to change the mentality from ‘us or them,’ to ‘us and them.’ This is crucial to the existence and welfare of both peoples.”

NEW ,VIEW OUR WEBSITE WWW.BRITISHISRAELGROUP.WEEBLY.COM