Perceptions of the Holocaust in Palestinian Public Discourse

Abstract

Th e connection of the Arabs to the history of the Holocaust is indirect. Th e scene of the disaster was Europe, and the perpetrators of the extermination acts were European, but the Palestinians paid the reparations fi rst and foremost in the Middle East. Th is is probably the reason that the discussion of the Holocaust in the Arab context always evolves around its political implications, and circumvents the event itself. Th e basic Arab anti-Zionist stance determined their attitude toward the Holocaust, as towards antiSemitism in general. Th is stance is not the cause of the Arab-Israeli confl ict, but its outcome. Anti-Jewish texts were engaged in the justifi cation of the Holocaust and with its denial as a Zionist hoax—a rhetoric which, among other things, was an attempt to deal with the Zionist instrumentalization of the Holocaust.1