Hamas condemns Holocaust lessons

[The Grim Squeaker]

Hamas condemns Holocaust lessons


Gaza's ruling Islamist movement Hamas has resisted suggestions that Palestinian children should be taught about the Holocaust in UN-run schools.

The head of its education committee in Gaza, Abdul Rahman el-Jamal, told the BBC that the Holocaust was a "big lie".

He said that to teach it would be to "grant a big favour" to Israel, which has been fighting Hamas for years.

The UN, which runs most Gazan schools, recently asked local groups whether the Holocaust should be taught.

It uses local textbooks and, in Gaza, that means using material from neighbouring Egypt, the BBC's Tim Franks reports.

But over the past seven years the UN has added its own coursework about human rights.

Mr Jamal told the BBC that the UN should, instead, teach about the Naqba, the term Palestinians use to describe the establishment of the state of Israel and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees.

A spokesman for the UN said that no final decision on this year's curriculum had yet been made. Some 200,000 children are taught in schools run through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

During the Holocaust, Nazi Germany murdered some six million Jews.

However, the event's significance is often disputed in parts of the Middle East where Israel is seen as the enemy and the Holocaust is seen as a tool used by Israel to justify its actions.

I'll go on a branch and hope this doesn't violate IVP.
One of the stupidest things done by Israel was leaving the education system in the Gaza strip and the West bank in the hands of the extremist organizations back when we were present in the areas. The opportunity to actually give a balanced education (as opposed to the propaganda used by Hammas) was a rare one. Instead, Israel just showed the world "Here, look at the propaganda they teach" as PR without doing anything about it.

[Alyeska]

I've always wondered why the groups that would most likely support the Holocaust are the ones to claim it is a lie.

[MKSheppard]

I've always wondered why the groups that would most likely support the Holocaust are the ones to claim it is a lie.

It's part of their overall platform to delegimitize Israel.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Shep's right. If there was never a holocaust, then it isn't necessary for Israel to exist and we don't 'owe' them anything.

[Darth Wong]

I've always wondered why the groups that would most likely support the Holocaust are the ones to claim it is a lie.

Because the Jews say it happened, therefore these people must say it didn't. It's not unusual for hard-liners to reflexively attack anything which is important to an enemy.

[Fire Fly]

I've always wondered why the groups that would most likely support the Holocaust are the ones to claim it is a lie.

Some possible reasons:

1. The formation of Israel was only possible because people felt bad for Jews after the Holocaust. Undermining the Holocaust undermines the entire existence of the state of Israel.

2. The Holocaust is a very politically potent weapon. Undermining the Holocaust undermines potential political cover/pretexts.

[Simon_Jester]

I'll go on a branch and hope this doesn't violate IVP.
One of the stupidest things done by Israel was leaving the education system in the Gaza strip and the West bank in the hands of the extremist organizations back when we were present in the areas. The opportunity to actually give a balanced education (as opposed to the propaganda used by Hammas) was a rare one. Instead, Israel just showed the world "Here, look at the propaganda they teach" as PR without doing anything about it.

Since Islamic fundamentalists have recently taken to protesting curricula they don't like by blowing up the school, I can also see why the Israelis didn't want to be responsible for making Muslim children go to balanced-curriculum schools in those areas.

I've always wondered why the groups that would most likely support the Holocaust are the ones to claim it is a lie.

Because they don't want to look like the guys who would gleefully build a murder factory if they got the chance. That kind of thing tends to give people pause, even when you're proposing to do it to someone they don't like.

"Wait... if you were in charge you'd do what? Ick."

Now, a lot of those people aren't principled enough to stop you themselves, so they may go along with it once you've got momentum on your side. But you need to have momentum first. You're not going to be able to build up a strong political base while clomping around saying "let's build concentration camps!"

EDIT: OK, you might be able to; almost anything is possible. But it's easier if you hide the full scope of the atrocities you're prepared to commit until you're actually in position to commit them.

[Darth Wong]

It's also possible that some of these people sincerely believe these arguments. Take someone who is disinclined to take Jewish sources at face value, educate him poorly, feed him a bunch of Holocaust conspiracy theorist websites, and the result of this toxic brew could easily be a person who honestly thinks the Holocaust never happened.

Around half of the American population is YEC, which means that they think every scientist in the world is involved in a giant conspiracy to produce fraudulent results in the fields of nuclear physics, geology, paleontology, and biology in order to convince people of a false theory of evolution even though the actual hushed-up evidence proves that God created the world in six days. Compared to that insane level of self-delusion, an honest Holocaust denier is not hard to imagine at all.

[Elfdart]

I've always wondered why the groups that would most likely support the Holocaust are the ones to claim it is a lie.

Because the Jews say it happened, therefore these people must say it didn't. It's not unusual for hard-liners to reflexively attack anything which is important to an enemy.

It's also a case of tit-for-tat since Israel denies (or has denied) the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948 and the Deir Yassin Massacre ever happened. In fact, quite a few claim there were never any Palestinians in the first place (though this is more common among Israel's American fanwhores). Apparently, Hamas thinks shitting on Jewish corpses makes up for Israel's atrocities.

[Alyeska]

It's also possible that some of these people sincerely believe these arguments. Take someone who is disinclined to take Jewish sources at face value, educate him poorly, feed him a bunch of Holocaust conspiracy theorist websites, and the result of this toxic brew could easily be a person who honestly thinks the Holocaust never happened.

Around half of the American population is YEC, which means that they think every scientist in the world is involved in a giant conspiracy to produce fraudulent results in the fields of nuclear physics, geology, paleontology, and biology in order to convince people of a false theory of evolution even though the actual hushed-up evidence proves that God created the world in six days. Compared to that insane level of self-delusion, an honest Holocaust denier is not hard to imagine at all.

The funny thing is most YECs are so poorly educated they think Evolution covers every area of science you described and spend the majority of their effort only trying to debunk that one scientific theory.