Mar 29th, 2009 | JENIN, West Bank -- Palestinian authorities have disbanded a youth orchestra from a West Bank refugee camp and barred the conductor from her studio after she directed a concert for a group of Holocaust survivors in Israel, a local official said on Sunday.
Adnan Hindi of the Jenin camp called the Holocaust a "political issue" and accused the orchestra's conductor of unfairly dragging the children into a politics.
The dispute underscores Palestinian sensitivities over acknowledging Jewish suffering, which many fear could weaken their own historical grievances against Israel. Ignorance and even denial of the Holocaust is widespread in Palestinian society.
At last Wednesday's concert in Holon, most of the Holocaust survivors did not know the youths were Palestinians from the West Bank, a rare sight in Israel these days. And the youths, who range in age from 11 to 18, had no idea they were performing for people who lived through Nazi genocide -- or even what the Holocaust was.
Hindi said that conductor Wafa Younis, an Israeli Arab living in Israel, has been banned from the camp, and the apartment where she taught the 13-member Strings of Freedom orchestra has been boarded up.
"She exploited the children," said Hindi, the head of the camp's "popular committee," which takes on municipal duties. "She will be forbidden from doing any activities ... We have to protect our children and our community."
"The Holocaust happened, but we are facing a similar massacre by the Jews themselves," Hindi said. "We lost our land, and we were forced to flee and we've lived in refugee camps for the past 50 years."
Younis, the conductor, denied the issue was political, saying camp officials wanted to take over the orchestra to get its funding.
"They want to destroy this group. It's a shame, it's a tragedy. What did these poor, elderly people do wrong? What did these children do wrong?" she said.
Some 6 million Jews were killed in the Nazi campaign to wipe out European Jewry. The urgent need to find a sanctuary for hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors catalyzed the creation of the Jewish state after World War II.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians either fled or were expelled from their homes in the war that followed Israel's creation -- an event known by Palestinians as their Naqba, or catastrophe.
Kaynan Rabino, director of "Ruach Tova," or "Good Spirit," the foundation that organized the event, said he was disappointed to hear about the reaction in Jenin.
"They approached us and volunteered to play. Wafa knew the orchestra would play before Holocaust survivors," he said. "We wanted to bring people's hearts closer together and if they are against that then that's a real shame."
The foundation was founded by billionaire Shari Arison, Israel's wealthiest woman.
Hindi said Palestinians -- especially in his hardscrabble cinder block refugee camp-- had suffered at the hands of Israel and demanded their grievances be acknowledged first.
The refugee camp in the northern West Bank was the scene of a deadly April 2002 battle where 23 Israeli soldiers were killed, alongside 53 Palestinian militants and civilians, in several days of battle. The clash destroyed swaths of the refugee camp.
The camp's residents are descendants of Palestinians who were displaced following Israel's creation in 1948.
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