Tunisian protesters destroyed a Holocaust exhibition in the National Library in the capital of Tunis last month, according to a special dispatch released Wednesday by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
Citing a report by Meem, an online Arab women's magazine, MEMRI said the protesters showed up to the exhibition's opening on Dec. 15, tore down posters, and chanted, "Free Palestine, out with the Zionists."
According to Meem, the exhibition was supported by the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the U.N. and the German Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, an NGO with regional offices in Ramallah and Tel Aviv.
The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation's website says the organization "focuses on strengthening democratic elements of civil society" and "promotes alternative education based on the principles of democracy, social justice, absence of violence and peaceful regional and international cooperation."
The exhibition's organizer, Tunisian University Professor Habib Kazdaghli, said, "This is a historical documentary exhibition, which exposes and denounces Nazi propaganda. I saw very large exhibits at the UNESCO headquarters in 2016. I contacted the curator and said that if they could make smaller pictures, we would be able to show them to our youth."
The exhibition opened a week after U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a decision that outraged many in the Arab world, but "the negotiations about this exhibition were held months ago," Kazdaghli said.
"By mere coincidence, the statement by Trump [about Jerusalem] was made now, but this does not change anything. What Trump said is nothing new," he said, referring to the U.S. Congress' passing of the Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995, which recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and required the U.S. Embassy in Israel to be moved to the capital. Until Trump, every U.S. president has invoked a clause in the law that allows the embassy transfer to be deferred.
"The purpose of this exhibition is to make our children love history," Kazdaghli said."I'm a historian, but my children don't like history."
One of the protesters, Hamida Bessaad, was a researcher for the National Library.
"We have come here, as employees of the National Library, union members, researchers, and readers, in order to oppose this exhibition, especially since I have learned from the [organizer's] statement that he was planning to incorporate this in the curriculum," she said.
"He wants our little children to get to know the history of the Jews, and learn about their Holocaust. He is upset that Tunisian children don't know about the Holocaust of the Jews. But he is not upset that the children of Palestine have been going through a Holocaust since 1948 and to this day.
"The employees, intellectuals, readers and researchers of the National Library are all opposed to normalization [of relations with Israel], and to propaganda for the Jews," she said.
Civil society activist Kawthar Chebbi said, "Our youth is being brainwashed with empty lies and myths. This decades-old myth about a genocide of the Jewish people by the Nazi regime. ... This is a lie to promote the Zionist entity and the 'Israeli state.'"
Political activist Omar Al-Majri said, "The Holocaust was perpetrated by the Zionist movement in collaboration with the Nazis, in order to transfer the Jews to Palestine. This is a historical truth that Habib Kazdaghli likes to ignore."
