Mohammed Dajani Daoudi

Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi (Arabic: محمد الدجاني الداودي‎; born March 19, 1946) is a Palestinian professor and peace activist. Dajani gained international recognition for his work in helping to raise awareness concerning the Holocaust through a variety of media. Dajani has also been active in forming relationships with Jewish and Christian religious leaders and peace activists to spread the Wasatia message of understanding, tolerance, coexistence and brotherhood. Dajani is tackling the ideological roots of extremism. In 2014, he became the center of a controversy when he led a group of students from Al-Quds University to Auschwitz.

Dajani was born to one of Jerusalem's historic Arab families. The honorific "Daoudi" was added to the family name in 1529 when Suleiman the Magnificent designated an ancestor keeper of the Tomb of King David on Mount Zion. His family fled to Egypt when Israel declared its independence in 1948, but returned to the Old City of Jerusalem the following year (then under Jordanian rule).

Dajani's parents, well-educated secular Muslims, sent him to English-speaking Quaker-run schools. As an engineering student at the American University of Beirut, Dajani joined Fatah. Although he received military training, he was put to work in the English-language public relations department of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

In 1975, Lebanon deported Dajani. Banned from both Israel and Jordan because of his Fatah activities, he decided to travel to the United States to continue his education. He eventually earned a Ph.D. in government from the University of South Carolina and another Ph.D. in political economy at the University of Texas at Austin.

By this time, Dajani's father was successful in getting his son a pardon from King Hussein of Jordan. Dajani was hired by the Applied Science Private University in Amman, where he created and chaired the political science and diplomacy department. In 1993, his father won permission from Israel for Dajani to return to Jerusalem.

Dajani accompanied his father to chemotherapy treatments at Ein Kerem, an Israeli hospital in Jerusalem, where the younger man was surprised at the way his father was being treated: "I was expecting that they would be treating him differently—with discrimination—as a Palestinian, as an Arab, as a Muslim. I found out that this was not the case. They were treating him like a patient." Dajani saw many other Palestinians receiving medical care from Israeli doctors. Several years later, a second experience with Israeli health care affected Dajani; his mother became ill near Ben Gurion Airport. "I did not believe that anybody would help her, being an Arab and coming to an airport where Israelis are very keen about security." Dajani was surprised when an ambulance was called and paramedics tried to revive his mother for more than an hour. "I became confused about my enemy, who did their best to help my father and my mother. I started to see the other side of my enemy, which is the human side."

During the late 1990s, Dajani trained Palestinian civil servants for the United Nations Development Programme and various Palestinian organizations. In 1999, he was invited to Turkey to lead a program for Israeli and Palestinian religious leaders, which he developed into a conflict-resolution model called "Big Dream, Small Hope".

Dajani was invited to join the faculty at Al-Quds University in 2001, and the following year he established its American Studies Institute. In 2007, with his brother, Munther Dajani Daoudi, he co-founded Wasatia ("Moderation"), an organization that promotes the Islamic traditions of nonviolence and compromise.

In March 2014, Dajani took a group of 27 students from Al-Quds University to visit the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz. They are believed to be the first group of students from Palestine to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. The trip to Auschwitz was part of a joint project with the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, whose purpose was to teach Palestinian and Israeli students about the "suffering that has helped shape the historical consciousness of the other side". (For their part, the Israeli students visited the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem.)

After the Israeli newspaper Haaretz wrote about the trip, and the Hebrew article was mistranslated into Arabic, Dajani was vilified as a "traitor" and "collaborator" by some Palestinians. Al-Quds University issued a statement saying Dajani and the students were acting in a "personal capacity", and the faculty union expelled Dajani. On May 18, he submitted a letter of resignation, "hoping the university authorities would reject it and denounce the campaign against him. Instead, he received a response from the university personnel department that his resignation would take effect on June 1."

In January 2015, Dajani's car was set on fire and destroyed in front of his home. Dajani told The Times of Israel that the attack saddened him more than it frightened him. Later that year, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he served as a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

In September 2016, Dajani told Haaretz he was moving back to Jerusalem and that he was "hoping and thinking about organizing" another trip to Auschwitz, but he didn't want the details published.

Books

HOLOCAUST: HUMAN AGONY: IS THERE A WAY OUT OF VIOLENCE.With Zeina Barakat and Martin Rau.Jerusalem: Dar al-Mishkat Publishing, 2012. (in Arabic); EXPLORING AMERICAN STUDIES: A SUCCESS STORY. Jerusalem: Al-Quds University, 20123. DAJANI GLOSSARY OF ISLAMIC TERMS. Jerusalem, Wasatia Publishing, 2015. THE HOLY BOOKS AS GUIDING LIGHTS. Jerusalem, Wasatia Publishing, 2015. TEACHING EMPATHY AND RECONCILIATION IN MIDST OF CONFLICT. Jerusalem: Wasatia Press, 2016.

Articles

Interviews

• Al-Wasatia: Reviving the Palestinian Peace Camp | an interview with Professor Mohammed Dajani Daoudi