The Washington Times reports on the admirable effort by an Israeli-Arab man to set up the Arab World's first and only (as far as I know) Holocaust education center.

Washington Times: Muslim in Nazareth takes on Holocaust

NAZARETH, Israel -- No one talked to him at a recent family wedding, Khaled Mahameed says. Neighbors curse him at the supermarket. A relative accuses him of unwittingly playing into Israel's hands.

I first posted about Mr. Mahameed's efforts back in March, here. It appears to be a promising, though potentially flawed (no one need have taken, or "settled" anyone else's land as a result of the Holocaust) effort.

The same cannot be said of the AP's report (reprinted by the Times) which is an example of moral equivalency and Holocaust minimization rolled into one. The report goes on:

The inclusion of the words "to some extent" accomplishes little here. Although it indicates some amount of self-consciousness in the comparison, the author, Kristen Stevens, is drawing a clear equivalence between the Holocaust and the "nakba" -- demonstrating a horrible, though not unexpected from the AP, moral blindness. That would be understandable from an Arab reporter, where knowledge of what the Holocaust really was is low -- hence the need for Mr. Mahameed's project and the fact that it's a story in the first place -- but coming from a Western reporter the comparison is inexcusable.

Stevens stretches to make the well-known and wide-spread phenomenon of Arab Holocaust denial equivalent to Israeli insensitivity to the "nakba" including an all-too-obvious and supremely odious comparison of the murder of millions of Jews to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza -- lands it only occupies as the result of winning a defensive war against an avowedly genocidal enemy and continues to occupy only as a defense against one of the most blood-thirsty and savage campaigns witnessed in the modern era.

Someone may also wish to point out to the author that the supposed events of the nakba and the occupation are some two decades separate and have little to do with one another in any case. The only connection is in some sort of vague stew of 'Arab grievance' which only continues to have appeal because Western reporters like Stevens continue to humor it. She implies that this documentary she mentions is the beginning of a fracturing of the Israeli inability to self-examine and self-criticize, but anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Israel's free society should know that one thing the Israelis don't lack for is internal critics. Free, even condemnatory voices come from both Left and Right, and the Israeli Left is and has been for many, many years particularly vociferous in its questioning of everything - up to and including the State's right to exist. Where are the equivalent voices among the region's non-Israeli Arabs? Hanging with their throats cut in Ramallah, or sitting on Abbas's death row as collaborators.

To compare the murder of millions with the displacement of hundreds of thousands is bad enough, and again, we might expect it from the Palestinian Arabs who have made great efforts to co-opt the Jewish narrative and make it their own, but this equivalency also leaves out the agency of the event.

There was no catastrophe because of the Holocaust or because of Israel's creation, at least there need not have been. The catastrophe occurred because of Arab rejectionism, the inability to compromise, the inability for Muslims to accept a non-Muslim state in the Middle East and the resulting failed attempt at an avowed war of genocide by the armies of every one of the new state's neighbors. They wouldn't accept the state they were given, wouldn't accept the state given to someone else (in which they had every right of citizenship), lost the resulting war they started and still blame others for their problems.

There's a very good reason that Israelis are less sympathetic to the nakba than they expect others to be about the Holocaust - they're not the same thing.

I will point out one more thing, particularly to those who think that elevating and respecting the nakba does some good, that somehow by honoring this we show our humanity to the Other and can expect some reciprocation in return - this "catastrophe" is not the result of an earthquake, or a tsunami, or a volcanic eruption. This catastrophe is a product of human agency, and the presence of a human agency means that there's someone to blame. And who do they blame, you Israelis, you friends of Israel (however tangential)? They blame you. They...blame...you.

And having someone to blame means having someone to place guilt upon, it means having someone to place your own guilt upon -- a highly effective way of relieving a burden -- and it means someone to go to to demand restitution...and justice. Justice is a harsh word, and one that means many things to many people. Best get to know the person wielding the word if you want to know its meaning, and most people in the Arab Middle East who talk about Justice don't generally mean a conciliatory, peaceful style of resolution -- they mean by this type of Justice that people deserve to be punished for their transgressions. The worse the sin, the harsher the comeuppance. Beware justice in human hands.

How harsh a comeuppance does the perpetrator of the equivalent of a Holocaust deserve? Certainly one tougher than a little understanding, a furrowed brow and statements of "I feel your pain" can buy off.

As I write this, I am sensitive to the fact that Mr. Mahameed's project is an important one, and that he is a special person for starting it -- whatever nits I have to pick with it, and they are nits in this context. His project appears to be a start (I can't read the Arabic to know or analyse what's really going on), and a worthy one, but that doesn't excuse the AP their moral and historical blindness, nor me from saying what I believe is important to be said about it.