Palestinian lecturer who led Auschwitz trip quits after backlash

Prof. Dajani, castigated for taking students on unprecedented trip to death camp, had expected university to back him, reject his resignation

By Yifa Yaakov for The Times of Israel

A Palestinian university lecturer who led a delegation of Palestinians to the Auschwitz concentration camp has resigned, reportedly following weeks of pressure and threats.

Al-Quds University Professor Mohammed Dajani had served as head of the university’s Department of American Studies and the director of its brand-new library.

But on May 18, less than two months after the Auschwitz trip, Dajani resigned, telling the Israeli daily Haaretz that he believed he had “no choice” but to do so after the university gave in to fellow faculty members’ “incitement” against him, refused to support him publicly and expelled him from the staff union, to which he said he never belonged.

In March, Dajani led a delegation of 30 Palestinian students to Auschwitz-Birkenau, in what was said to be the first organized visit by Palestinian students to a concentration camp. The delegation, which also spend several days in Krakow, was guided by two Jewish Holocaust survivors.

Dajani was praised in Israel and the West for taking the trip to the former Nazi death camp in Poland, but was condemned by Palestinians, who called him a traitor.

One article about the trip, in the Palestinian newspaper al-Quds, was removed from the paper’s website after online comments got out of hand, according to the Washington Post.

The academic, a former Fatah fighter who was banned from Israel for 25 years, said the university had distanced itself from his decision to lead the student delegation to Poland, and added that he had acted “in a personal capacity” while “on leave.”

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