The UAE will begin training on the Holocaust in the categories of history in high schools and number one across the country, the country’s embassy in the United States announced.
The embassy did not provide major details about the program and the school government of the United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven emirates, did not acknowledge the announcement on Monday.
However, the announcement comes after the UAE normalized with Israel in 2020 as part of a deal negotiated through the Trump administration.
“Following the old #AbrahamAccords, [the UAE] will now include the Holocaust in the curriculum of primary and secondary schools,” the embassy said in a tweet, referring to the normalization agreement, which also saw Bahrain and, later, Morocco. it also recognizes Israel.
U. S. Ambassador U. S. Deborah E. Lipstadt, the special envoy for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism, welcomed the announcement in her own tweet.
“Holocaust education is an imperative for humanity and too many countries, for too long, continue to downplay the Holocaust for political reasons,” wrote Lipstadt, a Hebrew word for the Holocaust. “I congratulate the UAE on this step and hope others will join. “coming soon. “
The announcement comes ahead of a planned assembly of the Negev Forum athletics teams in Abu Dhabi this week, which grew out of normalization. The assembly will feature officials from Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and the United States. Egypt has diplomatically identified Israel for decades.
The Holocaust saw Nazi Germany systematically kill 6 million European Jews in World War II. Israel, founded in 1948 as a safe haven for Jews after the Holocaust, automatically grants citizenship to anyone of Jewish descent.
Other Arab nations have refused to diplomatically recognize Israel for its decades-long profession of land that Palestinians need for a long-term state.
The UAE’s announcement also comes after it and other Arab countries condemned an ultra-nationalist Israeli cabinet minister to a hot spot in Jerusalem after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new far-right government took office.
TheArray, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, is Judaism’s holiest site, home to ancient biblical temples. Today it houses the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest in Islam. Jews have been allowed to pass there but not to pray there.
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