Read my interview with Gilbert Achcar- a professor of Development Studies at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies- on Arabs, the Holocaust and Palestine.
Gilbert Achcar: Most people in the Arab world would agree that the Holocaust was an awful crime perpetrated by the Nazis. The best illustration of this is the fact that Zionism is widely compared to Nazism — of course, this comparison is over the top but it shows that people see Nazism as an insult. People should also know other stories, like that of the West Bank villagers of Bilin who dressed in striped pajamas similar to those of concentration camp inmates in order to protest against the Israeli army in January 2009, during the onslaught on Gaza. Again, the comparison is certainly over-exaggerated but the demonstrators’ intent was clear. This was a way of identifying with the Jewish victims and saying: “We are the Jews of the Middle East who are oppressed by the Israeli state in the same way that European Jews were oppressed by the Nazis.”
Read the full article here.
Image via simone.onofri on Flickr.
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