Yad Vashem Fires Employee Who Compares Palestinians To Holocaust Survivors

Ostensible "the only democracy in the Middle East" has a thought police running around. Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum and memorial, has fired a an employee for comparing the trauma of Holocaust survivors to that of Palestinians whom went through the al-Nakba; the ethnic cleansing of 800,000 Palestinians with the violent establishment of Israel over Palestine.

800px yad vashem hall of names by david shankbone

Yad Vashem.

A resident of Jerusalem, Itamar Shapira, 29, was an instructor at Yad Vashem. A tour guide for visitors, Itamar has stated that his goal was not to convey any personal views, but, simply, to present history as it is. "I only tried to expose the visitors to the facts, not to political conclusions," he stated.

A group of Jewish students complained to administrators when they heard the comparison and Shapira was subsequently fired. He has since accused the museum of hypocrisy because it refuses to acknowledge the suffering of the Palestinians.

"Yad Vashem talks about the Holocaust survivors' arrival in Israel and about creating a refuge here for the world's Jews. I said there were people who lived on this land and mentioned that there are other traumas that provide other nations with motivation," he was quoted at saying to Ha'aretz.

He added, "The Holocaust moved us to establish a Jewish state and the Palestinian nation's trauma is moving it to seek self-determination, identity, land and dignity, just as Zionism sought these things."

What Shapira experiences is a great irony: the victims become the victimizers. AS Palestinians laureate Edward Said once noted, the Palestinians are victims of history's greatest victims: the Jews. That often makes it hard for Palestinians to attract sympathy. But just because one has suffered that they not give him permission to inflict suffering on an innocent people.

Many Holocaust museums refuse to draw the parallel between the oppression the Nazis inflicted against Jews and that which the Jewish state of Israel is inflicting against the Palestinians. Of course, parallels have to be appropriate. It would be false to suggest that Israel is committing a genocide akin to the Nazis. The Holocaust was the 20th century's greatest tragedy and supporters of the Palestinians should not politicize it or in anyway insult the dead by making them a prop, the way that Zionists do. But just as some people can go to far in making parallels, others refuse to acknowledge any. Instead, some centers, such as the Simon Wiesenthal center, are not only opposed to any pointing out of similarities but also use the Holocaust to give Israel cover to commit its crimes.

And they attack any referencing of Palestinian history because they fear the consequences of such a debate. As Shapira noted, "If Yad Vashem chooses to ignore the facts, for example the massacre at Dir Yassin, or the Nakba ["The Catastrophe," the Palestinians' term the events of 1948], it means that it's afraid of something and that its historic approach is flawed."

They should end their fear, and embrace a humanistic rather than tribal approach to human suffering and injustice.

People like Shapira prove that there is still good in this world. God bless him.