Moderate professor expelled from Al-Quds teacher's union

(ByALGEMEINER)—Al-Quds University Professor Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi, who was maligned for bringing Palestinian Arab students to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp, was expelled from the school’s teacher’s union last week, according to a copy of the letter posted to the Facebook page of a colleague.

Rima Najjar, an assistant professor of English Literature at Al Quds, headlined her Facebook post: “Dr. Mohammad Dajani’s union membership at Al-Quds University has been suspended because of his visit to Auschwitz.”

She wrote, “The attached text is a letter published on the Facebook page of Al-Quds University Union of Professors and Employees, in which it is announced that Dr. Mohammad Dajani’s membership in the association has been suspended because of ‘behavior that contravenes the policies and norms’ of the association (meaning the academic and cultural boycott of Israeli universities that the association had voted on). The letter does not state this, but the discussion prior to the announcement refers to the trip he took with some students to visit Auschwitz.”

Blogger Elder of Ziyon, who flagged her Facebook post on Tuesday, wrote that Najjar “goes on to say that there is no comparison between Arab students visiting Auschwitz and Jewish students visiting an UNRWA camp because visiting Auschwitz is unforgivable. She also quotes another prominent Arab academic, Mazin Qumsiyeh, as saying that Dajanis’ visit to Auschwitz is anti-Semitic!”

Najjar quoted Qumsiyeh as saying, “[Dajani] adopted the Zionist perspective that Judaism and Zionism are the same thing and in our opinion this is an anti-Semitic attitude to equate Zionism and Judaism and somehow link making peace and Zionism with the issues of Jewish suffering around the world.”

Elder of Ziyon commented on the news: “The fact is that at least 99 percent of intellectual Palestinian Arabs cannot stomach the idea that Jews have ever been victims of any sort. They viciously attack the extraordinarily few Palestinian Arabs who truly want to live in peace and coexistence. If anyone can seriously believe that true peace is possible in such a toxic and hateful environment when a simple admission that Jews were slaughtered is controversial and insulted, I’d love to see their logic.”

The controversial professor, as well as another leader of the Auschwitz trip who co-founded with him the Palestinian centrist movement Wasatia, also made waves by meeting former Israeli MK Dr. Einat Wilf, and gaining the dubious notoriety of being the only Palestinian Arab she could find to agree and sign on to her formulation of “two states for two people.”

Wilf’s text was: “The Jewish people around the world and Palestinian people around the world are both indigenous to the Land of Israel/Palestine and therefore have an equal and legitimate right to settle and live anywhere in the Land of Israel/Palestine, but given the desire of both peoples to a sovereign state that would reflect their unique culture and history, we believe in sharing the land between a Jewish state, Israel, and an Arab state, Palestine, that would allow them each to enjoy dignity and sovereignty in their own national home. Neither Israel nor Palestine should be exclusively for the Jewish and Palestinian people respectively and both should accommodate minorities of the other people.”