csua.org/u/cx5 -> sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/08/03/MNGFOE24TN1.DTL
DISENGAGEMENT DIARY: Photos, encounters and opinions Nazareth, Israel -- This is one in a Chronicle series on Israel's planned evacuation this month of approximately 9,000 Jewish settlers from the G aza Strip and parts of the West Bank. The stories are told through the l ives and voices of individuals touched by the conflict. Today: An Israeli Arab who says anger at Jews is misplaced.. Like so many Palestinians, Khaled Kasab Mahameed grew up with a feeling o f loss -- the loss of his family's home in Al Lajjoun in 1948, when his parents fled the war between Jews and Arabs and resettled in Um Al-Fahm in what is now the state of Israel. Although most Palestinians blame their loss d uring the period they call the nakba (catastrophe) on Jewish troops they say drove them from their homes -- or on Arab radio stations they say o rdered them to flee while claiming the Jews were being vanquished -- Mah ameed's father blamed one man. The seed planted by the father in the son has borne fruit in the form of posters, photocopies and brochures that form a mini-museum about the Naz i Holocaust in the waiting room of Mahameed's law office in Nazareth. His office is in a nondescript white limestone bui lding on one of the many twisted streets that curl up Nazareth's hills p ast the holy shrines of three religions. Children play in front, watchin g their ball bounce down the hill, then chasing it to a stop. Neither hi s office nor the museum has a sign out front. The collection is modest, to be sure, but one that Mahameed believes is i mportant for the Arab world -- even if the only visitors so far have bee n his legal clients strolling to his office, and his message is one that relatively few in the Arab world have wanted to hear. "This is not a gimmick," said Mahameed, an Israeli Arab, whose business c ards bear a stylized scale of justice with Hebrew lettering on one side, Arabic on the other. In a land where many are pessimists, Mahameed is an unabashed optimist. I srael's plan to disengage from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank, fo r example -- viewed by many Palestinians with skepticism and faint hope at best -- is embraced by Mahameed, who hopes it "will create the mass e motions and ideas needed for both people to understand that the peace ef fort is worthy. "The experience of getting out of Gaza will create a sense within both pe ople that it is possible to do things where both sides can get benefit o f it, " he said. Mahameed's museum has left some Jewish groups apprehensive and Arab criti cs unconvinced. But he believes the museum is the logical outgrowth of h is observation of the war of narratives between Jews and Arabs and of th e memory of his father's words. In his school history book at the Arab Orthodox College in Haifa, Mahamee d said, the Holocaust was dealt with in just half a page. At Hebrew Univ ersity, in 1983, when he proposed writing an essay about the Holocaust, his Jewish teacher pulled him aside and urged him to write about somethi ng else -- anything else. And as an adult, he said, he saw the effect th at lack of knowledge was having on his people's political discourse. Avoiding details "All of the Arab leaders, every one ... "(Yet) I read every day in the Israeli papers that the Holocaust is the main thing shaping Israeli society and Israeli policy." Mahameed's decision to try to bridge that gap wasn't immediate -- he left Hebrew University in 1984 and went to Sweden to study business administ ration, then returned to Israel in 1992 to study law. But last October, with materials from Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remem brance Authority established by the Israeli Knesset, he opened his own m ini-museum. Mahameed spent $5,000 of his own money, translating poster captions into Arabic himself and publishing 2,000 copies of his o wn Arabic brochures about the Holocaust, illustrated with graphic photos of Jews being murdered and their emaciated bodies stacked like cordwood in the Nazi death camps. Stack of brochures A stack of brochures sit in the corner of Mahameed's waiting room atop a table covered with a keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian headdress, an d near a large Palestinian flag. He keeps a stack in the trunk of his sh iny new Volvo, leaving them in public areas -- waiting rooms, libraries -- and handing out copies to people he meets, like the car salesman whom he forced to take a copy before he would discuss buying a car. "He wanted to sell the car, so he had to listen," Mahameed said with a sm ile. Others are less willing to listen or read what he has to say. Stupid, Mahameed continued, because the Arab world needs to learn about t he Holocaust -- not for the benefit of the Jews, but for Arabs, and espe cially Palestinians opposed to the Israeli occupation. Fighting is also understanding the basis of power of your enemy," he said. "It's the only way to bring peace to the Palestinians -- not the Jewish p eople, the Palestinians." For one, he says, ignorance and denial of the Holocaust -- still widespre ad in the Arab world -- is both irrational and self-defeating. Holocaust denial, in particular, can only serve to discredit the Palestinian caus e in the rest of the world's eyes, he believes. In May, a Gaza imam was severely criticized for his remarks on Palestinia n television accusing Jews of grossly inflating the number killed in the Holocaust. To Mahameed, who believes 6 million -- or more -- Jews died in the death camps, such statements serve no purpose. What difference does it make, he asks, if the number is true or false? So long as the rest of the world accepts it -- and supports Israel, in par t, out of guilt and revulsion over the Holocaust -- the Arab world harms its interests by denying it. In the same vein, Mahameed has little patience for Palestinians who insis t he put up pictures from the nakba -- the catastrophe, which is how the majority of Palestinians regard the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the estab lishment of the state of Israel -- or who compare Israel's actions in th e occupied territories to the Nazis' acts in World War II. The nakba is not the Holocaust," he said firml y "It's not fair to make the comparison, because it hurts the Palestini an cause." Mahameed's proposed alternative -- one he has made in public and in print -- has startled both Jews and Arabs. Mahameed explains that the Arab world must not only accept that the Holoc aust happened but integrate the Holocaust into the Arab narrative. Only then, he said, can the Arab world negotiate with Israel with a shared un derstanding of their mutual wants and needs. "If I understand the Holocaust, it strengthens my rights in this land," h e said. "If the Arabs come to the Jewish people and say, 'We have to sec ure your existence so another Holocaust doesn't happen,' the Jewish peop le will say we don't have to worry about this land." Mahameed's concept takes him beyond the realm of politics, into a scenari o where he imagines 42 million Arabs sitting shiva -- the traditional Je wish seven-day mourning period when a close relative has died -- for the 6 million Jewish victims of Hitler. He does not worry that the Arab sch ools he has approached have so far declined to visit his museum, saying his true intended audience is the leaders of the Arab world. Don Quixote was a skinny old man at the end of his adventure , he said, while Mahameed is still young, stocky, energetic -- and just beginning his quest. Nevertheless, his passion is comparable, according to his wife, Ezdehar, the mother of their two children. Ezdehar said she questioned the value of the museum when Mahameed came up with it about four years ago, but he r husband wore her down. "He began to talk to me, every night, 10 o'clock," she said. "He began to tell us -- the children and me -- and we felt we had to learn more abou t the Holocaust." After a family visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, an d many more conversations, Ezdehar said, she became a believer -- even t hough the idea has caused screaming fights with her brother and caused M ahameed's own brother to stop talking to him. You can get freedom without killing, without blood on the ...
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