I have no qualms about the Yad Vashem memorial to the Holocaust. However, the location of the memorial is right next door to the ruins and site of Deir Yassin.
The Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, which is on the outskirts of then 1948 West Jerusalem, now forming part of a Jewish neighbourhood, was the scene of a grotesque massacre of Palestinian men, women and children. Some several hundred were grossly butchered. It was a peaceful village of stone cutters who had a peace agreement with a nearby Jewish settlement. This infamous pivotal massacre was instrumental, some say, in a successful campaign of terrorizing more Palestinians into fleeing - in accomplishment of the Jewish Zionist template for the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, shaped and formed over the previous several decades.
Itamar Shapira, an Israeli employee instructor at the Yad Vashem memorial, was sacked in early May of this year for daring to mention and make a comparison that the Holocaust is the trauma of the Jewish people, rightfully memorialized as the epitome of Jewish suffering and the trauma of the Palestinian people as evidenced in their Nakbah, or Catastrophe in 1948 and 1967.
He also spoke to visitors to the Jewish Memorial about the Dayr Yasin Massacre and how the fact that, on leaving Yad Vashem, one can see some remaining ruins of the village nearby. Is the Palestinian Nakbah, or Catastrophe, in both 1948 and 1967 given its due weighting according to Itamar Shapira? According to him:
"If Yad Vashem chooses to ignore the facts, for example the massacre at Dir Yassin, or the Nakba ["The Catastrophe," the Palestinians' term for what happened to them after 1948], it means that it's afraid of something and that its historic approach is flawed," Shapira said.
Haaretz, May 4th, 2009
I wonder if the Pope will be aware of that on his visit to those climes?
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