Condemned the Storming of al-Aqsa and Then Decided to Educate About the Holocaust — What Behind UAE's Double Standards?

During January 2023, the UAE showed contradictory positions regarding the violations of the Israeli Occupation, raising questions about its intentions and objectives.

On January 3, the UAE strongly condemned the storming of the extremist Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, into the courtyard of al-Aqsa Mosque, under the protection of the Occupation forces and requested an emergency session of the Security Council to condemn his actions.

On the same day, it was announced that a supposed visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the UAE had been postponed after Abu Dhabi’s alleged anger at Ben-Gvir’s storming of al-Aqsa Mosque in the same month.

However, 48 hours after condemning Ben-Gvir’s storming of al-Aqsa, Abu Dhabi announced on January 5 that it would start teaching the Jewish history of the Holocaust in Emirati primary and secondary schools.

Three days later, the UAE received, on January 8, the first Israeli delegation from the far-right government to participate in the Negev Forum in preparation for the second normalization Negev summit, scheduled to be held in Morocco in March 2023.

The Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said on January 11 that 150 officials from “Israel,” Egypt, Bahrain, the UAE, and Morocco participated in the first meeting of the working groups of the Negev Forum in Abu Dhabi, in the presence of the United States.

The Israeli delegation, headed by the Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Alon Ushpiz, included high-ranking representatives from the ministries of foreign affairs, defense, health, intelligence affairs, agriculture, tourism, energy, education, and economy, according to the newspaper.

The UAE’s conflicting decisions between normalization and condemnation of “Israel” raised questions about the actual Emirati policy towards the Israeli Occupation.

Observers believe that the UAE is leading normalization with steady steps in search of its economic interests with “Israel” and those who support it in the West, so it does not care much about an extremist or moderate Israeli government, but it is trying to move quietly to implement this without provoking the people.

After requesting anonymity in his interview with Al-Estiklal, a Palestinian journalist said that UAE “plays on the chord of condemning Israel at times, if al-Aqsa is stormed, for example, with alleged respect for Arab popular feelings, and on the chord of normalization plans at other times.”

As part of the game of balances, the UAE e-committees, in turn, sought to promote Abu Dhabi’s patriotism and claim that its priority is Palestine and the Arab interest, with total neglect of the normalization steps.

 

Abu Dhabi and the Holocaust

On January 5, 2023, the UAE Embassy in the United States announced in an English-language statement that it would include studies of the Holocaust in the curricula of its schools, saying it is “essential to humanity.”

The “Israel in Arabic” account on Twitter, focusing on Israeli foreign affairs, celebrated this step and considered it a “historic decision.”

It indicated that the UAE’s decision is a historical precedent, as it is the first Arab country to take this step, and its decision stands in the face of the deniers of the Holocaust.

Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the US special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, applauded the Emirati announcement, tweeting, using a Hebrew word for the Holocaust.

She wrote: “Pleased to see this important step by the United Arab Emirates. Holocaust education is imperative for humanity, and too many countries, for too long, continue to downplay the Shoah for political reasons. I commend the UAE for this step and expect others to follow suit soon.”

The irony is that despite the statement of teaching the Holocaust in the schools of the Gulf states, AP confirmed on January 9 that the educational authorities in the UAE do not recognize what their embassy in America announced.

Prominent academic Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, one of the former advisors to UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed when he was crown prince, also criticized the move.

He said on Twitter that talking about teaching the Holocaust in schools has no national value and called for an explicit official denial of what the embassy announced.

But the UAE’s pledge to teach the Holocaust dates back to November 22, 2022.

At the time, The Times of Israel said that the UAE was taking great steps to combat the culture of Holocaust denial in the wake of the Abraham Accords.

After it was completely absent from the educational materials for children in the Emirates, and the name of “Israel” was obscured from the maps, it has now been decided to include the Holocaust entirely in the school curricula, according to the newspaper.

The most dangerous thing is the Hebrew newspaper’s disclosure that the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), based in Tel Aviv and London, will provide advice to the UAE Ministry of Education on how to teach children, primary and secondary school students, about the Holocaust.

Indeed, The Times of Israel revealed that “Israel’s Holocaust Museum” (Yad Vashem) is also working with the UAE Ministry of Culture and Youth to develop curricula, change its Arabic content and help develop new materials.

The Hebrew newspaper reported that the Emirati Ahmed al-Mansoori held the first exhibition dedicated to the commemoration of the Holocaust in the Middle East as an attempt to overcome the denial of the Holocaust.

Al-Mansoori has also collected historical Jewish evidence from across the region since the museum opened in 2013.

It indicated that in 2021 the first Holocaust memorial museum in the region was opened in Dubai, just months after the normalization agreements brokered by the United States.

Before this, the UAE allowed—for the first time in an Arab country—the embassy of the Israeli Occupation to hold a memorial ceremony for the victims of the Israeli wars in the capital, Abu Dhabi, on May 3, 2022, which means solidarity with the Israeli Occupation soldiers who were killed during their occupation of Arab lands.

The Israeli ambassador to the UAE, Amir Hayek, presided over the ceremony, which included reciting several traditional Jewish memorial prayers.

The celebration came amid the thriving official relations between “Israel” and some Arab countries, according to what was published by The Times of Israel newspaper on January 8, 2022.

The UAE also allowed the Zionists in 2021, for the first time, to hold a celebration in an Arab country to commemorate the Holocaust (the Holocaust).

The ceremony, held in Dubai, was a joint initiative between Israel-is, an organization aimed at improving “Israel’s global image,” and Ma’an, which aims to integrate Palestinians from the 1948 occupied territories into “Israeli society.”

Abu Dhabi and “Tel Aviv” signed an agreement to normalize relations in September 2020, causing widespread anger among Muslims.

 

Negev Forum and Normalization

The normalizing Arab countries link their relationship and alignment with “Israel” through summits such as the Negev Forum on a peg called “the Palestinian interest,” claiming that these relations will be beneficial in resolving the Palestinian–Israeli conflict and confronting Iran.

This is despite the fact that the statement issued by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs on January 10, 2023, on the Negev Forum clearly stated that they discussed projects aimed at enhancing security cooperation and exchanging information, that is, for security and intelligence reasons.

The statement added that the meeting focused on building capabilities related to information sharing in an attempt to increase cooperation between the armies of the forum countries, that is, Arab–Israeli military cooperation.

When US Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed, on January 10, 2023, the meeting of the Negev Forum in the UAE with the participation of 4 Arab countries alongside “Israel” and America, he said that its goal was to build cooperation networks to promote common interests and regional stability.

However, he claimed that the meeting of about 150 officials from “Israel,” Egypt, Bahrain, the UAE, and Morocco also aimed to create momentum in Israeli–Palestinian relations toward a negotiated solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

US State Department advisor Derek Chollet confirmed to The Times of Israel, January 11, that the Negev Forum in Abu Dhabi discussed issues related to capacity building and information exchange in order to build on the already existing military cooperation between their countries.

He added that the US plans to host members of the Negev Forum to share how it deals with various security threats.

Middle East Eye confirmed, January 8, 2023, that the aim of the joint Arab–Israeli meetings is to enhance the consecration of the Abraham Accords and increase coordination between countries on security, energy, tourism, education, and water security issues.

However, MEE warned that this is the first meeting between the Arab countries and the new extreme right-wing government of “Israel,” behind which two of the religious Zionist movement are supervising the files of the Negev Summit.

The foreign ministers of these countries met for the first time at Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev desert in March 2022, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also attended.

Perhaps that is why the Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouti, criticized the involvement of 4 Arab countries in the activities of the Negev Forum, which was inaugurated in Abu Dhabi, claiming that this serves the cause of Palestine.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera Mubasher on January 11, 2023, he confirmed that none of the participants in the forum has the right to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people, adding that they struggled a lot to reach independence in the Palestinian decision and to represent their people.

The claim that these meetings serve the Palestinians is not true, he believes.

He called on the Arab governments that participate in normalization to stop that, respect the will of the Palestinian people, and “respect our right to resist the injustice and persecution that we have been subjected to.”

Barghouti wondered: “How can Arab countries sit with these extremist fascists, who threaten ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, and announce day and night their intention to annex the West Bank?”

The most dangerous consequence of the Emirati rush to normalization is that it increases Zionist extremism and portrays the matter to the Israelis as an Arab “green light” for their aggressive practices.

Reuters analysis, on January 6, 2023, explains the dilemma of the UAE’s normalization with “Israel,” saying the Abraham Accords were intended to lead to broader normalization, but the four Arab countries that have signed the agreement are now in a difficult situation.

Reuters pointed out that the Israeli Occupation’s sharp inclination after assuming an extremist government put its new Arab allies in the awkward position of having to deal with ultra-nationalists without appearing to abandon the Palestinians.