Rania Khallaf visits an exhibition of photographs showing Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians, part of a movement to create a museum dedicated to the Palestinian holocaust The Palestinian Holocaust photography exhibition, held last week at the Al-Sawy Cultural Wheel in Cairo, is part of a set of activities initiated by the Palestinian Holocaust Memorial Museum Team, whose aim is to create a museum dedicated to Israeli crimes against the Palestinians. Immediately before the exhibition's opening there was also a celebration of the first anniversary of the team's formation, which included a screening of a documentary film setting out the aims of the proposed Palestinian Holocaust Memorial Museum (PHMM), as well as testimonies by photographers from Gaza and music by Ahmed El-Hagar. The idea of setting up such a museum, the main aim of the Memorial Museum Team, was inspired by an announcement by Israel's deputy defence minister, Matan Vilnai, who told Israeli Army Radio on 29 February last year that the Palestinians "will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah." Shoah is a Hebrew word meaning "catastrophe", and it is sometimes used to denote the extermination of Europe's Jews by the Nazi regime in Germany during World War II. As a reaction to this provocative statement, the idea of creating a Palestinian Holocaust Memorial Museum, modelled on the Jewish Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, was put forward in March 2008. Provoked by Vilnai's words, Dalia Youssef, a young journalist and political activist, decided to promote the idea of the museum in order to draw attention to Israel's crimes against the Palestinians. "Because we do not have the means to establish such a museum in real life, I decided to build it on the Internet," Youssef said. "We have endless resources in terms of documents and pictures drawing attention to the Palestinian victims of Israel's war against them, and so I thought, why not make use of them?" "The PHMM is dedicated to all the civilians who lost their lives during the attacks on Palestine. The aim behind the museum is to document the events in detail, providing pictures and stories of the victims," she said, referring to the Israeli attacks on Gaza that took place earlier this year. It also features detailed information on the locations of the Israeli attacks, the types of weapons used, and the testimony of people who witnessed the atrocities. There are also photographs of items belonging to Palestinian children killed in the attacks, including toys, bicycles and clothing. The pictures on show at the exhibition in Cairo were sent by photographers who witnessed the war against the Palestinians in Gaza. They show the suffering of Palestinian children, the debris of their homes and schools, and the destruction of their dreams. The overall effect of the images on the visitor is to promote immediate sympathy for the victims and a desire to see justice done. "The PHMM aims to break the silence about Israeli actions in Gaza and against the Palestinians. It is a humanitarian project that aims to throw light on the human angle of the tragedy and not to make a political statement," Youssef said. "We want people to remember these victims as more than just statistics. We want them to think of them as people who deserved to live and who deserved a better life." Information accompanying the exhibition at the Cairo show is in both English and Arabic, since "the aim is also to address foreign individuals and organisations, including human rights organisations," Youssef added. While the present exhibition of photographs is one part of the Palestinian Holocaust Memorial Museum Team's efforts, the larger idea of setting up a dedicated museum has also snowballed. The movement now includes 25 groups of members, including groups in Canada, the US and Palestine. The team has also been able to network with Palestinian researchers and volunteers within the occupied territories, thanks to the Internet. "The information and pictures of the victims that we have gathered are taken from more than one source, and the crimes that they point to cannot be refuted," said Nagwan Al-Ashwal, a member of the team. "In some cases, we contacted the families of the victims, who sent us pictures of their killed children and of their belongings, such as photographs of their toys, to be exhibited in the museum." Thus far, the PHMM website has clocked up some 547,000 visitors, and 210 cases of children killed during the Israeli attacks have been documented. While plans for the PHMM take shape in real life, the team has also decided to undertake parallel moves in Second Life, a website presenting a virtual world where members can do everything they would do in real life in virtual terms. According to Al-Ashwal, over 17,000 visitors have thus far visited the PHMM site on Second Life. However, in order to draw public attention to Israeli crimes against the Palestinians more work is still needed. "We need to recruit more volunteers because our work is huge," Youssef said. "Eventually we aim to document all the victims of the war against the Palestinians from 1948 until the present." "We do not have any particular political or religious views. In fact, my dream for the PHMM team is that it should grow both in numbers and in capacity and that it should include enthusiastic people from all over the world," she says. "We intend to make sure that the movement remains independent and avoids the routine ailments of governmental organisations. What counts is the movement's unique spirit. I would like this to infect other people and other organisations, in order that people are able to appreciate the need for a positive reaction against injustice, not only in political terms, but in personal ones as well." Financial support for the PHMM has thus far come from organisations such as Media International and Islam Online. However, "we hope that with time the PHMM can become a reference for international researchers interested in the Palestinian-Israeli struggle," Youssef said. "The road towards punishing Israelis who have committed war crimes against Palestinian civilians is still a long one. But we believe that presenting the international community with the facts and figures of the atrocities committed by the Israelis is more effective than more demonstrations." The group's next move will be to initiate the campaign and put on the exhibition that goes with it in other world capitals, such as Doha and London. "We have been sent invitations from individuals enthusiastic about supporting the Palestinian cause, and I would like to see the movement we have created extending across the world," Youssef said.
