Trudy Gold
Holocaust Education Today

Trudy Gold and Sa'ad Khaldi - Holocaust Education Today

- All right. Well, good evening, everyone. And it’s my very, very great pleasure to introduce my friend, Sa'ad Khaldi. Now, Sa'ad has a very, very interesting background. He was a science teacher, he then became a head, he has been a teacher trainer, Ofsted inspector, and then he decided, and reasons he’s going to talk to you about, to become involved in Holocaust education. He is a fellow of Yad Vashem, and is a very, very gifted educator. Sa'ad’s background, and we’re going to talk more about that later on, not just his work background, but his personal background, he is a quarter Jewish, he is three quarters Arab, he was actually conceived in the city of Jerusalem, and his personal story and his personal journey is absolutely extraordinary. So welcome, welcome.

• Thank you.

• And it’s so great to talk to you again, Sa'ad. Now, why did you decide to get involved in Holocaust education? You come from a science background. If you could start by discussing that with us, please.

• Well, at the time, I was actually involved in teacher training, but part of my background is that I was fortunate enough to get a full one-year sabbatical, literally in the seventh year of my teaching career. And I was seconded by the Department for Education to the University of London to study moral education. I had possibly been sort of pencilled in as having potential to become a senior manager within schools. I was fortunate enough after that year to become an assistant head teacher. So by the age of 29, I was already an assistant head teacher, which is quite heady, but at the same time, that year, studying and talking and discussing the very nature of morality of how to educate young people, so I was studying Plato, I was studying Aristotle, I was studying Locke, Bacon, names that resonate throughout philosophy, and in company, because it’s quite important that that debate that goes on is free-ranging, and that acts as a stimulus to your own personal development. Yes, I’d studied science, I’d studied science as a breadth of sciences, so I had an integrated science degree. I was formally awarded a biochemistry degree, but in fact, I’d studied a whole range of sciences. So I had an interest in learning. I also had a family history, and that family history included a Jewish experience. And I had left at the young age of seven, having witnessed some quite difficult events.

• Could you describe those? Because I think that will help our students understand where you were at that-

• Yes, yes, yes. I was actually in the Middle East at that time, and my parents’ marriage had actually broken up. I was in a boarding school. Both of my parents had remarried, and I was, like my brother, in a sort of limbo. Being placed in boarding school is not an ideal place, but nevertheless, it was an English-speaking boarding school in the Lebanon. And my father had remarried, and my sister, my stepsister had just been born in Damascus, but my father wasn’t there for the birth. He was working out in the Gulf. He obviously had got the news, was very pleased, rang the school, now, ringing long distance is never easy, and hoped to bring both my brother and myself to Damascus to see our baby sister. My brother actually was on a school trip, so it was only myself that was collected in the end and taken to Damascus. And literally, we arrived at the point of a pogrom against Jews in Damascus, and it traumatised me.

• Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• So it was a very, very difficult experience. And fortunately, my stepmother realised that I was traumatised, and she spoke with my father and also got a message to my mother, who was also in the Middle East. And as an outcome of that, both my brother and I ended up being collected from the boarding school in the Lebanon and flown immediately out and back to England. And I was very fortunate. I had loving grandparents. My grandfather was quite wealthy. He immediately paid for the flights. And if you like, I recovered. But it was-

• But there was a memory. It was a memory.

• It’s quite… It was quite traumatic what I witnessed, and also, what I’d been brought up to believe, and attacks on Jewish people. You know, I identified with being Jewish, so-

• Because, for people who’ve just joined us, Sa'ad is a quarter Jewish and three quarters Arab. And at the moment, what we’re… ‘Cause I’ve just seen a lot of people have just joined. And what we’re talking about now is how he came to Holocaust education. So what made you take up this extraordinary fellowship? I can believe you are the only Palestinian fellow of Yad Vashem, that’s correct?

• Correct.

• Yeah, so what made you take this up?

• Well, a challenge. A challenge in terms of education, but also what had recently happened within education. There was supposed to be a working party that was looking at the history of both Palestinians and Jews as the foundation of Israel, and the whole working party had fallen apart.

• That was a Martin Gilbert initiative, wasn’t it?

• And, well, this was one in which… Well, that’s where Martin Gilbert gets involved, but he’s only involved after the working party has fallen apart. It was actually the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, QCA, part of the Department for Education that were supposed to be producing the materials for schools. And of course, I knew that I had a working knowledge of both sides.

• Also important.

• And that’s what… And that’s really what I wanted to explore. But being binary, and the fact that my father was actually the Palestinian leader. So in the period from '67 right through to 1980 until he died, he was effectively Palestinian, unofficial, but Palestinian leader on the West Bank.

• Because your family is a very important family from Jerusalem.

• Yes.

• And I want to go back on the Holocaust education, because I think, some people know, but I think it’s important to state that Holocaust studies goes on the core curriculum in Britain in the year 2001. Back in about 1998, the Swedish prime minister, Persson, had realised there was a huge upswing in antisemitism in Sweden. He called together other countries, there were seven countries in the end that sort of formed what became known as the Task Force. There was England, America, Israel, France, Sweden, Italy, and Poland. Now, these were the original five, but he convened an incredible conference. It was the first conference of the third millennium. Over 60 countries sent either their heads of state or their prime ministers. And there was a real belief that if Holocaust studies was taught properly, it could lead to, as you would say, better morals education, that every dilemma you ever wanted was there. And not only that, survivors had begun to go into schools, there was far more awareness, and we were incredibly hopeful. Now, today, I think we would say that a lot has gone wrong. So, but you take up this… And one of the things that we believe, both of us believe that has really gone wrong, there is no mention of 1945 to 1948, there’s very little mention of Jews anywhere else on the syllabus. And then, if you could take up the story, if you don’t mind, as to what you were trying to do with the story of the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine.

• Yes. I don’t know that I had an agenda with regard to Palestinians, but I had one in which children should gain a understanding of both sides in an academic way that would empower them and not lead to them becoming either antisemitic or, in fact, being influenced towards that by virtue of misunderstanding or the lack of any curriculum. So that’s really the reason why I chose to become a fellow, but also to choose a specialist area. And the actual title of the work that I worked was called “Crossroads to Palestine”. And I deliberately chose the word “crossroads” because crossroads implies that it’s not straightforward. It’s complex. And the teaching unit that I created and that I actually, the following year, I was asked to present at Yad Vashem, because they rated it highly, and they actually, the qualifications body in the UK never got to write anything. I had great difficulty, I couldn’t get a publisher to publish it, even though it was praised by Yad Vashem, and I’ve never really stopped to work with schools or understand about schools. And because I had an Ofsted role, at certain times, I wasn’t allowed to go into schools because they were worried that I would be seen as somebody that schools may know too much about. You’ve got to show a certain impartiality as a schools inspector. So, and one of my briefs was to go into Muslim schools, and so, it has allowed me to send through to Ofsted, while I was working for them, a huge amount of information for their analysis and purposes so that they knew exactly what was happening. So even though I wasn’t actually in the position to advise schools or necessarily present to schools, I was at certain times, I could indicate to them that I was stepping out of my role, and for a certain period of time, and they would agree to that, and I would either attend a conference or something like that, and they were quite amenable to that.

• So, okay.

• But it has meant that I have got an index understanding of what is happening to schools. And of course we now have a specialist unit attached to the University of London, the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education, and which has produced now its second report. I was there for the actual conference for the delivery of the first report, the first major report. And in fact, Yehuda Bauer, as professor of Yad Vashem, flew over to attend that conference, and I was able to talk to him. He gave a short speech. And so, the current report is now called “Continuity and Change”, and it’s really looking at what has happened in the last 10 years, and it’s only just been published.

• Okay, I want you to go on to that, because when the Stockholm Declaration was put forward, and of course the great Yehuda Bauer was the man behind it, and that leads to the IHRA, I-H-R-A, Declaration. One of the main points behind Holocaust education was to honour the victims, of course, but also to try and lessen both racism and antisemitism.

• Yeah.

• And I would say, certainly, we are living in a world where antisemitism is at an alarming level. So if one of the aims of Holocaust education was to lessen antisemitism, it hasn’t worked, has it? And-

• I’d be cautious there. It has worked to a certain extent, it’s done a lot of good, but at the same time, children emerge, to some extent, unsure. There was a survey of 14-year-olds done quite recently. 85% of 14-year-olds are sure that the Holocaust happened. 15% indicate that they are not sure. And when teachers have been surveyed, and this is the very latest data, 40% of teachers feel that, in schools, there is some degree of antisemitism that they have encountered. So 40% of teachers are reporting that they are encountering some degree from the mildest remark right through to quite virulent antisemitism. So it’s quite variable, it is a spectrum, but that is-

• Do you think it’s… It’s very politicised, obviously.

• Yes, yes.

• But if you’re talking about the teaching of the Shoah, with every human dilemma possible, it hasn’t worked, has it? If you can say to believe-

• Well, it has worked to a limited extent. First of all, we equip them with vocabulary-

• What were we trying to do?

• We equip them with vocabulary for… As a fellow, and, you know, I’ve talked with lots of teachers, we equip them with a vocabulary, a basic working vocabulary, understanding what a victim is, or who a victim is, who a persecutor is, or a perpetrator is, somebody who is a bystander, somebody who’s a beneficiary, somebody who is a rescuer. They’re equipped with that vocabulary. But to say that they can get an understanding in… The amount of time is half a term in what is called their Key Stage 3, which actually, if you just add it up in history lessons, it’s probably about six hours, six one-hour lessons that a teacher may have. But it depends, it varies from school to school. Some schools feel that it’s too little. They will involve them in what they call an Immersion Day, they will invite people, they will ensure that they go to museums, that they meet Holocaust survivors or people who survived via the Kindertransport, or depending on the geography. But there is a very subtle phrase, and that is, “It’s a national curriculum locally distributed.” So that’s where the professional discretion of teachers comes in. And I would, if I were wearing my inspector’s hat on saying, “Well, how are you meeting the national curriculum, and what resources are you using?” And it will vary from school to school. It is not like sort of Communist Russia in the '50s, everybody turned the same page at the same time on the same day. No, that is not what happens in UK education. We accommodate a lot of diversity.

• No, you see, I’m-

• We empower professionalism.

• Yes, but my problem is this, the Shoah is such a difficult area to teach anyway. And everything you say about anti-racism, teaching children about victims, persecutors, somehow it’s being de-Judaized, because they have no time to study Jewish history. And I think this is a huge one. And some of my friends do go into schools as survivors. I mean, unfortunately, more and more of them are too frail.

• Yes.

• And they say, yes, they do get a good response from students, but the students don’t necessarily know the world they come from. They see them as, one of my greatest friends said, “I’m a little old lady.” She’s the least little old lady I’ve ever met, but that’s not the point. And they sympathise with her, but she said, “They don’t know about being a Jew. They don’t know my background.” And also, the other thing that I think is a huge problem is there’s no relation to the Shoah and the establishment of the State of Israel. I mean, you and I have discussed this. That’s the area you think should be put in, '45 to '48. So for kids who politically have picked up what’s in the ether now, there’s a lot of problems.

• And they don’t understand modern Israel.

• Yes.

• So they have… Their experience of people who come from modern Israel is likely to be very, very limited.

• Mm.

• And furthermore, we have very little teaching of modern Hebrew in schools, they have very few role models of people who are Jewish other than, as you say, sometimes it’s just elderly people or a visit to a synagogue. And this is a problem, and the teaching can become problematic if a teacher focuses excessively on somewhere like Auschwitz and so, and perpetrators, then that’s all they learn. They don’t learn about either survivors or the fact that they… The actual word “Yad Vashem” means “remembrance of names”. Although we know that over 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust, they’re not told that the Jewish population of Europe actually was 9 million, therefore 3 million survived. They don’t do the maths. They don’t do the maths. And what was happening to those other 3 million? They were being left in camps, nobody wanted them, nobody wanted to give them visas. There was no escape from that. Yes, they were being given food and decent clothing, but very little else. And that whole movement of populations towards Palestine was almost quietly encouraged by many Western states who didn’t want to… History won’t repeat itself, but Mark Twain said, “Sometimes it rhymes.” We’re seeing the rhyme of the 1930s. So we have so many situations now because of economic hardship. It’s so easy to blame some group or other, or focus on refugees and so on, and we’re seeing all those elements of bad government. When I studied moral philosophy, I had to study Plato, and Plato had a wonderful story that he calls the ship of fools. Of course, Nazism was the ship of fools. It was a model of bad government, it was chaotic, and again, the problem in just teaching over some six lessons or six hours of teaching, is they see it as a straight line. I’m a scientist. It wasn’t a straight line, it was the opposite-

• But it’s interesting-

• All over the place. Yes, you can organise and tell yourself various things about it, but to gain that overall picture, you’ve got to induct young people into understanding what history is about.

• Yeah. And history is so badly taught. And the other point that… So you would agree that the fact that they don’t teach '45 to '48 is a terrible problem. But I think it was you who told me-

• No, it’s an issue. It’s an issue.

• Right, it’s an issue.

• It’s an issue.

• Right, I’ll give you that.

• And the other issue that’s coming up now is that the pressure from the government for schools to succeed in public examinations means that the intended year in which they were supposed to be taught about the Holocaust, because it was judged by the time they were probably 14 going on to 15, that they would be mature enough to absorb various things about the Holocaust. To bring it in before that, they were considered to be too young.

• And the other people-

• But increasingly, they are now not being taught in year nine, they’re being taught in year eight, and the sort of softer approaches. So we’ve had the introduction of 25% of schools are saying they’re showing that film, “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”. I find it-

• 25%? That’s what I was going to ask you. Is it 25%?

• One in four. One in four schools is showing “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”.

• And that is the Holocaust education they are delivering?

• Well, they’re using it as a platform, and it is a-

• That’s extraordinary.

• We talk about ways in and ways out. When we have lessons, there are ways into lessons, but it-

• Yes, of course.

• It is a means, but how many teachers actually know and understand? And again, it’s the quality of training of teachers. Now, this is a fictional novel, this is a fictional film.

• Can I ask you something? Let me ask you something.

• This is not what actually happened.

• Would it be, with something so difficult and dark, and I find it fascinating that you talked about the concentration on Nazis, because there is a fascination with evil, we know that, but would there be a case for actually sending in proper Holocaust educators for certain things?

• We are trying to create-

• Because, you see, I-

• There is a movement to much more education, and teachers at the moment, we’ve got a bit of a teacher strike. There are online courses being offered. All that it’s going to cost the teacher is time. It doesn’t cost them anything, they just register for the course.

• Because you know, what I remember, I remember when it went on the core curriculum, we used to work with the Imperial War Museum, putting on seminars for teachers. In those days, teachers could be released.

• Yes, yes.

• And what we also tried to do, I mean, the great Yehuda Bauer spoke sometimes, we actually tried to give them more background of Jewish history so that they knew about the-

• Yes, exactly.

• But this has all disappeared now, hasn’t it? Because I think-

• And the report says precisely that, there is a lack of understanding about even the Jewish population within the UK before the second World War.

• And we used to-

• There is one unique facility. You can go to Newark and go to the Nottingham Centre, and they have built a house which is built in the style of a 1930s house. So young children of about the age of 10 or 11 are invited into this house. They will hear the radio giving a broadcast, they will see artefacts from Jewish life, they will have educators talk to them. It is a gentle way in. It’s much better than “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”

• Yes, but it’s one place.

• It’s not perfect-

• It’s an idea.

• But it’s only a local resource, if you like, in the centre of the country. And a school based in London, it’s going to have to make a tremendous effort to go out to Newark, in Nottingham, to see a resource like that. Now, admittedly, they have the War Museum, but this is-

• And they have a good exhibition there.

• This business of a national curriculum locally distributed, so it’s the intelligence that teachers have to use and realise the resources that they may have within their area, or sometimes they’re going to make that special plea or exception to a head teacher saying, “We do need to do a trip to X or Y because…”

• But it’s more than that, isn’t it? I mean, look, there are over 300 Holocaust memorials, museums throughout the world. It’s not impacting antisemitism. And one of the things that fascinates me, that we could be prepared to spend up to 120 million on a new memorial. How much better to have a proper Jewish museum, which tells the history of the Jews in London, with a branch in the North, and that the Shoah should be just part of that, because as you well know, the ultra religious regard it as just one more catastrophe.

• Well, we do have small, small museums. We have a small one in London.

• But they don’t really-

• We have a small one in Manchester.

• I mean, they don’t-

• Yeah, yeah.

• But there’s a brilliant museum, ironically in Poland, POLIN, there’s a very interesting one in Berlin. But I do think it’s… And I think also it’s so political now, where you have the extreme left.

• And again, we now have… Well, we have a Muslim population. It’s a minority within this country, but a very sizable minority. And it is a fairly orthodox Muslim population. They have this concept of community, it’s known as umma in the Muslim world. And so, again, they’re open to views which are out there, from influencers and so on, so it can generate antisemitism. And they don’t have an understanding of what actually happened, and in Palestine or in, you know, the wider view of what happened both during the second World War and afterward, even going back to the first World War, that there was a very significant effort by the Indian Army in the first World War.

• Do you know something?

• Yeah?

• Would you… When Abbas made his speech on the 15th of May at the UN, and he talked about the lies and compared it to Goebbels, that’s how far we’ve gone now. It’s not just the utilisation of the Shoah, it’s the-

• He’s playing a political game. He’s playing a political-

• I know he is. I know.

• Yeah, no. Israel is celebrating 75 years, so as far as the Palestinians are concerned, it’s 75 years of Nakba, and it’s point and counterpoint.

• But they don’t ever talk about the Jews of the Arab world. I mean, look, there is a tragedy. I’m not in any way minimising the tragedy of the Palestinians.

• No, no. But it can be summarised in terms of the British dilemma. It ended up becoming a country twice promised. So they promised the Palestinians that the Jewish immigration wouldn’t change society, and it did. And they equally promised the Jewish diaspora that they would create a homeland. So it…

• It’s a tragedy.

• It’s a tragedy, yes, but I think… I don’t like to live too much in the past. I do like to live in the present. I am a bit of an optimist, and I do want to… And I’m optimistic for this next generation.

• So are you saying that, despite everything, despite all the problems that we’ve talked about, you still think there is room for manoeuvre within the school curriculum that teachers are, so many of them really do want to do a good job, but they just don’t have the equipment?

• They do. They do.

• Is that… So that would be-

• They do. But I think a part of that is… And that’s really why I feel that they need a balanced story. I’m not… That’s not to criticise what… Sir Martin Gilbert produced “The Story of Israel” as a response because he didn’t want to see a vacuum. But it was only a limited number of schools that adopted “The Story of Israel”, and of course it didn’t talk too much about what happened in terms of the Palestinians. But because of who my father was-

• Can you just talk a little bit about that before we turn over to questions?

• Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, my father was orphaned in the 1927 Jerusalem earthquake. He went to and was placed in a German orphanage, which was Schneller’s in Jerusalem. Now, he came from possibly the most important Arab family in Jerusalem. It was a German vocational school, so he was very bright. He ended up at the municipal college, and he won a scholarship to Heidelberg, only to arrive in Heidelberg and realise that it was Nazi Germany. And so, his uncles had, if you like, been looking after him, he was part of a very important family, and his principal uncle was, actually, had been a high court judge, and went on to become mayor of Jerusalem during the second World War. So he manages to get himself moved to London and joins the LSE. And he’s mentored by Laski as tutor there, and his tutor for, actually, trade union studies was Emanuel Shinwell, the famous Labour MP. And a lot of the students by 1940 were looking to get officer cadetships. But somehow, he told me that he found that the door was closed to him. The fact that he was basically… Well, it was a mandate, but as far as most British people were concerned from the colonies, he wasn’t going to get a cadetship. He complains to Laski and Shinwell, and ends up being recruited by SOE. And he was ideal SOE material, attending a German school, visibly not pro-Nazi, and having the background of being able to speak fluent Arabic, excellent English, and also being Muslim. He sent on his first mission to Finland. The Finnish-Russian War had broken out. In Finland, they had some 20,000 Muslims living around Helsinki who were basically white Russian, Crimean Muslim Cossacks, who were… And the British government needed to know, would they fight on the Finnish side against the Russians? 'Cause the Red Soviets under Stalin had invaded Finland and wanted to retake it into the Russian Empire. We’re almost seeing, as I said, history rhyming again in terms of Mark Twain’s, what is going on in Ukraine.

The British did support the Fins, and the Russians got their fingers burnt in the first Finnish War. But again, the history of Finland in the second World War, they are anti-Stalin, but they end up, in the second Finnish War, siding with the Germans. But by that time, he has been sent on a second mission. So his first mission was to Finland, his second mission was to Syria, and he’s working within an Arab society, he’s in charge of Northeast Syria, working with General Spears, a very difficult general to work with, although very favoured by Winston Churchill, and he’s also encountered General De Gaulle there in Syria. Things do go well and don’t go well for him in Syria, and he ends up rowing with Spears, and Spears tries to court martial him and doesn’t succeed, and he ends up going back to Jerusalem and complaining to his uncle, who is by then mayor of Jerusalem. And he tells him, “Well, I’m just recruiting at the moment for this new fighting unit for Egypt, to defend Egypt, and it’s going to have Palestinians and Jews fighting side by side. It’s going to be called the Palestine Regiment.” So he enlists in the Palestine Regiment, and then he’s spotted by the leading general for the Middle East, Jumbo Wilson, on the parade ground, saying, “What are you doing here? You’re SOE?” And the whole story comes spilling out. So Jumbo Wilson was very sympathetic, he immediately promotes him to sergeant, and within two, three months, he is doing officer training in Palestine, and he is part of this joint Palestine-Jewish regiment. Palestinians and Jews fought side by side at El-Alamein, and not many children know that. The regiment fractures after the battle of El-Alamein because they are asked to hold various strategic positions behind the main Eighth Army, and it is at that point that the Jewish soldiers learn about the Holocaust, and they insist on having and fighting under the flag of the Star of David. Now, that was unacceptable to the Palestinians, so the regiment fractured, the Jewish soldiers were put in purdah for about six months because, actually, it’s known as the flag mutiny.

They weren’t prepared to fight under the British flag. Understandable. And the Palestinians were returned to Palestine and became what’s known as the PDFs, the Palestine Defence Force, the force that was in Tegart forts. And it released many of the British soldiers from the Tegart forts to join the Eighth Army. So it further reinforced the Eighth Army while they held Palestine in a secure way. But they were still full-British soldiers. And researchers have now discovered 12,000 Palestinians actually were in the British Army, of which a quarter were women. So 3,000 Palestinian women actually served as truck drivers, racks, rafts, all of those auxiliary services that women who were allowed to join, they were part of that in Haifa, in Tel Aviv, and so on, and Jaffa, and Jerusalem. So it’s a hidden history. We’ve got quite an important professor, Professor Abbasi, looking at that, at Tel-Hai, and documenting it quite ably. The Jewish soldiers went on to become the Jewish Brigade, and ironically-

• Sa'ad, I’ve got to hurry you because I can see so many questions-

• And ironically-

• Can you-

• 40 of them, 40 of them became Israeli generals. Okay, I’ll just stop at that point.

• Look, this is so many fascinating stories, but I want you to talk briefly, because I can see so many questions, about your father and how it was. Basically, he was in Syria in '48, wasn’t he? Could you just get us up to speed in about three minutes, because questions.

• Churchill, after his famous Black Sea Conference with Stalin and Roosevelt in Yalta, actually has a second conference in Cairo. He meets with the king of Saudi Arabia and the new president of Syria, and he agrees that, after the war, the British Army will train the Syrian Army. And it’s my father that is selected to train the Syrian Army and members of the Palestine Regiment. Now, I have documentation of that. And so, he sets up the Syrian Military Academy and trains a whole brigade of volunteer Syrian soldiers. So they’re being trained in British Army methods, and that’s going on to approaching towards 1948. But he’s become a married man by that time, and my elder brother is born by that time. But they then ask him to use this brigade to invade Palestine, the Arab League, and he refuses. And instead, he decides to have nothing to do with them, after all, he had a Jewish mother-in-law, he wasn’t going to fight against his own, he didn’t believe in doing things like that, and he moves to Jerusalem. My parents rented a house in Katamon, and he actually becomes the commanding officer of Lod Airport in '48. So he’s officially in charge of Lod Airport, and because there aren’t many planes coming into Lod, Lydda, as he would’ve called it, he’d spend some of his time working with Arab cooperatives, and helping to advise them, and going back and forth between Lod and Jerusalem. There was a train service, but he would move back and forth and see my mother. And then things really break out. But the Syrians were quite… They chose to use the brigade that he trained and make it part of what they called the Arab Liberation Army. And Qawuqji was asked to command it. He’s eventually sacked as incompetent.

My father ends up defending Jerusalem, he is the most senior military man on the Palestinian side, and he’s organising the defence of Jerusalem in '48, and of course the Arab Legion comes to his rescue, so Jerusalem ends up being divided so that he’s able to hold the Old City. He’s somewhat of a hero figure by that time. And then, because Qawuqji had been sacked, he’s then asked to, by the Syrians, who are suddenly more amenable, to command the soldiers that he’d actually trained in Northern Galilee. So he fights the last battles, but realises that it’s a losing battle. He retreats back into Syria, that the Jewish forces were much stronger and much after a sort of… There was a ceasefire, they were able to get much more equipment and create a small air force.

• And you… 'Cause we’ve got to open it to questions. Your father said something fascinating about Israel. Can you finish on that quote that he said?

• Well, he’s also the person who surrendered in '67. He was just about to become mayor of Jerusalem. He was Under Secretary of State to King Hussein at the time, and he was just going to become… And he is the person who defends the city in '67 with 1,000 volunteers on the walls, and there is this battle for Jerusalem. And actually, the Israeli army could not. He fought them off for 48 hours to our armoured divisions. He fought them off, and this Israeli general, who he knew, they knew each other, and I’m talking about Uzi Narkiss, they knew each other personally, he has this brilliant idea, which is to storm the Damascus gate with a World War II Sherman tank, a tiny little World War II Sherman tank. Now, of course it smashes through the gate, and it’s so tiny, but it can get through the street to the Old City, and at that point, he surrenders the Old City to Narkiss and, well, Dayan, Narkiss, and Rabin. And he is the person, in 1968… I had very little contact with him as a child. At various points, yes, I did have contact with my father, but at the age of 19, I go over to Jerusalem, and he has embarked on creating the Middle East peace process from the Palestinian side, and he’s holding direct talks with the three Israeli leaders of the opposition, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres. And he is talking, and these talks were actually taped. So they exist, and they were even… Certain extracts were published in an Israeli-American magazine at the time. He even gave me a copy, and so I know of their existence. But the key phrase to me was, he said, “I have come to the view that Israel is a state of necessity. It’s a very important statement in terms of what is happening in the Middle East. We have to recognise that it is necessary for the State of Israel to exist. If you go around denying it, then you’re fooling yourself. You’re fooling yourself, you’re not engaging in reality. But we have to come to some sort of peace process.” And he had quite a few ideas, which, confidentially, he talked to me about.

• Do you know something? If only there were more people like you and your family. I think it’s important. So basically, on Holocaust education, we both agree there are terrible problems, but you’re more optimistic than me. But I think we are going to invite you back more.

• I don’t want to say that teachers aren’t doing… If we compare it with America, that sure/unsure, 85% to 15%, in America, it’s 33% to 66%, which is quite worrying.

• I know. But do you know, I can see so many questions. And for our audience, I want to say, I will be inviting Sa'ad back after the Yom Tov to talk more about his family, because it’s such an incredible story. He hasn’t even touched on the Jewish side where, unfortunately-

• No, no, I haven’t.

• They were involved in the Shoah. So your background is very, very special, the fact that you’re involved in Holocaust education. So let’s… Apart from the fact that I wanted to thank you, and also for your friendship, let’s see what they’ve got to say. Let’s see what… I’ll look at the questions. Let me get them.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: Oh, yes. “What can be done about the demonization of Jews and Israelis in UNRWA textbooks in the West Bank and Gaza schools?”

A - Well, the European Union does look at, and it does offer grants and so on. There is financial support for Palestinians on the West Bank, and one of the conditions of that support has been to stop any overt antisemitism and so on. But at the same time, we have a split society. Palestinian… Let’s not fool ourselves. And when I talk with my father about this issue, of course we have now the West Bank and we have Gaza, and we have all sorts of rival political factions, so you can’t talk about unity. It’s a disunited situation that is quite difficult to manage. The Jordanians do have an influence, and some Palestinian children follow the Jordanian curriculum. They don’t necessarily follow the Palestinian one. We’ve even had problems in this country with British Muslim schools, Muslim independent schools following Saudi curriculum, and that was one of the things I had to report to Ofsted about what was the impact of that, and was there any hidden antisemitism within that? So yeah, there are real issues there, but part of that is, if you like… Although, I don’t speak excellent Arabic. I was brought up mostly in the UK. Yes, I do speak Arabic, but at the same time, I spent the majority of my life here, in the UK, and I’ve been a UK educator, but I do have an understanding of what happens in the Middle East, and I have even gone out to the Gulf and inspected schools there. And so, I-

• And we have the Abraham Accords, as you reminded me.

• Yes.

• There are breakthroughs. It is… We’ve got to go on, there’s so many questions. Ettie, “Did you hear about the case during the German occupation of France about Kaddour Benghabrit, the founder and first erector of the Great Mosque of Paris, who managed to hide a Jewish singer at the mosque by providing him with a false birth certificate as a Muslim and etching the name of his late father on a tombstone at an unmarked grave in a Muslim cemetery?” That’s a lovely bit of bravery. Yehuda, “I suggest that the fact that antisemitism is increasing does not imply that Holocaust education has failed. The fact is disappointing, but it’s not possible that things would’ve been even worse without Holocaust education. On the other hand, I agree with you that the link between the Holocaust and Israel’s establishment should be included.” This is Peter. Wait a minute, this is… “I suspect Holocaust education has failed to curb racism because it failed to get people to consider the folly of basing an identity on determined traits like race, ancestry, and gender.

• Can I just come in there?

• Yeah, you-

• Because, as you know, I’m a scientist.

• Yes.

• Race does not exist.

• Yes.

• Race is fictive. If you want to use it for sociological or political purposes, fine. Obviously racism exists, but we are just Homo sapiens. We have just awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine to Svante Paabo, the Swedish professor who has done research on Neanderthal and Denisovan genetics and shown that they merged into Homo sapiens. We are all Homo sapiens on this planet. Races don’t exist, ethnicities do. And there are possibly 5,000 ethnicities across the entire globe, and they unite to form nations. They unite. And it is that unity, that unity of culture, of tolerance, of acceptance that creates nations of culture and language, that creates nations. So, and I visited the British Museum a couple of years ago. They did an exhibition on the Arctic. There are 22 ethnicities alone in the Arctic Circle.

• That’s great.

• So once you multiply that across the world, you have to… And in London, as a London head teacher, I could encounter anywhere up to 200 different languages from the pupils that might have been coming into my school. I still have a catalogue of what those 200 languages could possibly be. So it’s silly, and we’re playing the Nazis’ game. The moment we start to talk about race or mixed race, we’re playing their game, we’re playing the eugenics game.

Q - Thank you for that strong answer. Anyway, Jacqueline’s saying, "Antisemitism has been decoupled from racism for political reasons. Antisemitism is racism, unequivocably.” I think you’d agree with that, wouldn’t you? And this is-

A - It is a form of racism, yes.

• Yes.

• And particularly-

• And there is a problem with-

• And any… All of these isms, sexism, racism, and so on, those isms are about de-skilling the other party, about denigrating and de-skilling, and that whole concept that… The Nazis talked about Untermensch, that you are not a worthy person, creating ladders of, fictive ladders of different ethnic groups. And of course they put Jews right at the bottom. I’m sorry to say Arabs were just slightly a tad over the Jews.

Q - This is from Sharon. “Broader education needed as kids will bring up issues about Palestine. Background needed.” Now, this is from Agnes, and we’re not going to answer it because it’s too big, but we’re going to have more debates. “History is so badly taught. What is wrong with the way history is taught? How should it be taught? We need advice.” I’m not going to ask you to get on that one because we will be here ‘til next .

A - Well, I could. Very, very quickly-

• Go on.

• You have to have a body of knowledge, so dates are important, but at the same time, you have to have a capacity for in-depth study and empathy. So it’s a mixture of the two.

• Okay, I’m going to stop you there because there are so many questions.

• Yeah.

Q - Now, this is from Odette. “What about Nazism that affected the Jews in the Middle East? Hajj Amin al-Husayni welcomed Hitler with open arms.”

A - Oh, yes. Yes.

• “During that time, -

• Well, no, it isn’t-

• Met the same fate.

• Can I correct? Can I correct?

• Can I just go on a minute?

• Can I correct? Yes.

Q - Because then I’ll come back. "Shouldn’t their history be included in Holocaust education? Shouldn’t teachers be aware of this history?” This is from Odette Masliyah.

A - Right.

• Okay.

• Hitler initially cold-shouldered him for two or three months. He didn’t want to know. It was Goebbels who got him an audience, and it was for propaganda purposes. And so, he was just a propaganda stooge for them. And that’s… He was being used. But there is the whole issue of what is known as the Carmel Plan. Yad Vashem had the North Africa conference. I was recently teaching in a school about the Carmel Plan, which is that they did want to murder the Jews in Palestine.

• Yes, I think… Can I just… I actually gave a class on Hajj Amin al-Husayni in lockdown, and you can get it if you just get in touch with them, get in touch with Lockdown. And this is from Sharon. Jewish Museum London has a bit of background, yes. Oh, this is from Roberta, which is fascinating. “'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ is a work of fiction, so these 25% of schools don’t even use a true story from a jumping off point.”

• No, but it’s because of… Yes, it is an issue for us, and it’s because of the fact that they’re learning in year eight and not year nine. It’s all the pressure of examinations and so on. There was one school they came across that tried to put things right. They did do it in year eight, but then they created a unit called “From Prejudice to Genocide” in year nine, which gave them a taste of the GCSE history. But it is difficult. I’ve run a school, I know what some of those pressures are, and-

• I’m going to have to stop you ‘cause I’m going to have to go from question to question.

• Go on.

Q - Christine asked, “What exactly would you like people to know about the years '45 to '48?” We have to put that on hold, don’t we? Because that would keep us going for an hour. The point is, look, how are we going to… Look, a lot of people are getting very engaged with this, and I think we both, both Sa'ad and I agree that it is inadequately taught, and we’re hoping that things will improve and that we’re going to put more pressure on. This is from Carol, and Carol doesn’t quite take your optimism. She said, “We’re facing…” She’s from America. “We’re facing horrendous antisemitism every day, certainly in America. We’re even seeing the politicisation of using Anne Frank time and time again.” True. “See posters in Germany today. I agree, education is all we have, but we haven’t got it right. Is your guest being realistic? 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ does not do it.” Now, well, you’re saying that. I mean, I think Sa'ad is agreeing with you.

A - Yeah, I’m not happy with-

Q - And Movy is saying, “I was invited to the Nottingham Centre. It’s a perfect introduction.” That’s what you said. This is from my Mia Greenberg. “Is the evil of Holocaust denial ever part of the con curriculum?”

A - Well, this is… We even have problems with the misuse of the word “Holocaust”.

• Yes.

• “Holocaust” was a word that was created in 1942 in a famous speech. It means “holy sacrifice”. Many children don’t know what it actually means. It is so misused now in the age of communication. And I will move between and introduce the word “Holocaust” of Shoah, of Gerbin, and explain, and it’s even misspelt in terms of… The word “antisemitism” is spelt with a capital S, implying Jews are a race, and with a hyphen. Again, that’s in… I read public articles in newspapers, and they misspell the word “antisemitism”. “The Times” is the only newspaper currently that’s spelling it correctly. But I despair of other editors.

• This is Monty. “I hear talking about a sick form of victim of Rabin antisemitism in North London School.” Agnes is asking for “the way forward, please.” You’re going to… Look, Agnes, there are a lot of good people of good heart who could put together, and there have been many, many syllabus created. It’s a question of somehow getting more time on the curriculum for teacher training, which I don’t think will happen. I mean more time to train. I think the only answer is to train up a whole group of people who can go into schools, because it’s not just about the Jewish, the Shoah.

• The target was to train two teachers in every secondary school.

• Yeah, it’s .

• At one point we were on target, and from about 2016, 2017, we began to drift away, and schools didn’t see it as a priority, and-

• It should be a priority in this.

• It should.

Q - I’ll just give you a few more questions. “Yes, Trudy, a Jewish museum is much more important than a new Holocaust museum memorial. Canadian Jews are out to spend $100 million plus on Holocaust museums in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.” And this is from Nita. “In Ben-Gurion, Declaration of Independence, he said, ‘In the hope, we hope that our neighbours, the Arabs, will join us in the building of a state.’ The reply was five countries, and the irregulars started a war.” Ivan, “Do you think we may approach students like this? Why are we humans here? To procreate and be a good person? Now, two of the greatest crimes in our history are the slave trade and the Holocaust. Now we would like to learn about them. I hope you do, because we would all like to be better people.” That’s right, yeah. That’s rather nice. And this is from Hilton. I’m going to read it-

A - Sometimes we can talk about the Arabs in terms of the Arab League, because they do… It was created by Church of the Arab League, but nevertheless, it acted as a way of bringing the Arab… But the Arab countries are so different from each other. And even to talk about the Arabs as a sort of combined now is, they don’t behave in a combined way. It’s going in all sorts of directions. And, again, that’s why I tried to create a unit, which Yad Vashem approved of. I wasn’t kicked out of Yad Vashem after having given my workshop. It was fully attended, and people… And it was even mentioned in Yad Vashem’s magazine subsequently.

• Can I tell you that Sa'ad is going into schools in England, and he’s brilliant. And I’m going to rush you because we got so many.

• I used the word “crossroads” deliberately. It is not straightforward, and that’s what children need to know. And there is no simplistic or stereotypical answer.

Q - We’ve got to go on, honestly, because there’s a lovely comment from Hilton. “You are a really brave man. How much are teachers willing to engage?”

A - Well, the teachers I come across are prepared to engage. I have gone into all sorts of different schools, and the majority of teachers are extremely receptive and want… That’s why they’re in teaching. They want to do well by their students. They want to have an accurate picture. And I’m proud of my joint heritage. I haven’t spoken too much in this session about the Jewish side, but it’s as important to me-

• We’ll be inviting you to.

• As important to communicate to my children and grandchildren and so on.

• There’s a couple of other interesting comments here. “There were both Arabs and Jews who were called Palestinians. They were not Jews and Palestinians.” Joan is telling us, “My father, a South African, was one of the first officers in the Jewish Brigade.” This is from Terry. It’s an interesting point. “I would like to know more about the Palestinians in a positive light. There is no promotion of their culture. They only seem to see themselves in relation to Israel. It would be good for them to promote their culture as an independent entity.”

• Well, I can only talk about my own father in terms of, he fought against radicalism and radical views and extremism, but he was possibly the only Palestinian who had actually fought his way all the way through to Germany. So he had firsthand experience of what the Shoah meant. He wasn’t prepared to engage in Holocaust denial. And I can just finish by showing you a picture of him here. I’ll just show you there. That’s my father as Under Secretary of State for Jordan. That’s Israels Under Secretary of State. Best Friends.

• I’m going to finish from what Mark had to say, there are more people are asking about the settlements on the West Bank, Holocaust education missed the past. “Are there tapes of Sa'ad teaching? Is your curriculum available?” But I’m going to finish on this one. “Unfortunately, there are not enough, Mr. Khaldis to bring a satisfactory understanding and peaceful resolution.” I will second that. And Sa'ad, thank you so much. Unfortunately, I think we’ve only begun to touch the tip of the iceberg, and we really must… And Wendy has created an incredibly open forum here, and we really must take this forward. So thank you so much, and thank you all for listening, and I’m hoping this will be the beginning of a dialogue.

• Yes. Thank you.

• And I’ll see you soon.

• The word was always between us, a conversation. A good conversation.

• But we don’t stop. Take care. And look, let’s give them a positive note, because we still think there’s a certain amount of hope, don’t we? ‘Cause we have to.

• Yes. Yes, yeah.

• Okay.

• Yeah.

• Take care. God bless.

• Bye.