CAIRO: Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister may not have known what he got himself into when he used the word “shoah to describe the disaster that awaited Palestinians in Gaza in February last year.
Immediate media frenzy ensued Matan Vilnai s use of the word holocaust, and the term was appropriated by Palestinians. Members of Media International, the umbrella company of popular Islamic website IslamOnline.net, sprung to immediate action.
The term Vilnai used may have been a slip of the tongue, “but he sent us a gift by mentioning it, Dalia Yousef, head of the organizing committee of Palestine Holocaust Memorial Museum (PHMM) told Daily News Egypt.
Yousef initiated the idea of a virtual museum that documents the massacre of Palestinians. The museum is both a website and a location on Second Life (SL), an online 3D platform in which guests and visitors interact with objects and each other through representations of themselves, called avatars.
On May 11, the PHMM opened a traveling gallery entitled “Refugees of Memory at the Sawy Culture Wheel.
Rooms in SL “capture the feeling of a museum, said Mohamed Yahia, who led the effort behind the creation of the Second Life platform for IslamOnline.net (IOL), another subsidiary of Media International that created the PHMM.
Yahia, also on the PHMM team, said the project is a “humanitarian effort documenting stories and lives of the children and women that died in the violence since March 2008. Up to 350 to 400 testimonies have since been collected; the bulk document deaths from December 2008 and January 2009, Yahia said.
Media International started with testimonies of children’s deaths, extending to women. “No one can argue that children are civilians and targeting them is a war crime, said Yousef.
Questions such as “is he a civilian? Is he a militant? complicates the issue of documenting male deaths, Yahia said.
The museum also documents the weapons used. “If you have a story about Apaches killing children, said Yahia, “you want to show them the full view.
The online platform has also been used to hold live talks with people in Palestine; during some, you could hear bombs, or the lines would cut off, and connection to speakers would be lost. Yahia said these interactions took place with ordinary people in Palestine, because they wanted to document the everyday experience.
Ola Atalla, a reporter for the IslamOnline.net who often retold stories was herself targeted in one such attack and members of her family were killed.
During a conference call, screams on her end were so loud that callers could not hear her.
The largest number of visits to the museum occurred during the turn of this year, when Israel launched an offensive on Gaza. Most reactions came from the Middle Eastern and Scandinavian countries, and Israel.
An Israeli woman said that she found it extremely moving to go on SL at the museum – deliberately constructed like a maze – and find an empty cradle in a room. Another Swedish visitor, whose mother had adopted a Jewish child following the original holocaust, expressed the desire to adopt a Palestinian child.
Recently the PHMM displayed the documentary “Machinema, independently created by Rita J King and Joshua S. Faut as part of a research on understanding Islam in the virtual world, Yahia said.
Holocaust terminology
Vilnai’s comment aside, it was an American film that inspired Yousef to create the PHMM. “Freedom Writers is the story of a multi-ethnic group of students who change their life after their teacher takes them to a Holocaust Museum.
Yousef wanted to initiate a similar change through a memorial conveying that be it Jews or Palestinians, “hating leads to genocide.
While the response to the PHMM has largely been positive, Yahia said much criticism was directed to the use of the term “holocaust.
As on land, so in SL, the site of Palestinian protest was attacked. “Grief attacks in which people overload the 3D platform with objects, appear as nude avatars, or use weapons or offensive language, can disturb the venue.
The first attack by such “griefers caused the “island – as the server is known – to shut down, said Yahia.
Major media outlets have largely failed to report the existence of the museum. Although, IslamOnline.net and the PHMM project – subsidiaries of Media International – are among the first examples of their kind to appear on SL platform.
Yahia said that both of the projects that exist on SL have nevertheless received significant attention from the online and SL media, such as Sky News, and Boing Boing. An Israeli media site, Y News, also gave unbiased coverage of the museum, said Yahia.
The PHMM was a measure taken to “react in a systematic, organized way. This is, Yousef says, because the Arab reaction is often “accused of being a vocal phenomenon.
For the museum, the team has employed accurate methodology, said Yousef. Most of the research goes into verifying testimonies of those killed in the Gaza massacre, Yahia said. “Families are well known in Gaza, said Yahia, and their journalists and contacts in Palestine verify the authenticity of their existence or annihilation.
Most stories submitted online by people living in Palestine. Sometimes they write about “the building next door that was bombed.
Sometimes the PHMM serves to recall the lives of entire families lost – such as the As-samouni family, 48 members of which were killed on Jan. 18.
A gallery commemorating the Palestinian lives lost since March 2008 is part of the PHMM project that was put on display on May 11. “Refugees of Memory, displaying photographs and 3D material, officially opens on May 15 at 8:30 pm. at Sawy’s River Hall.
It is hoped that the gallery will continue to travel to other locations, perhaps London, said Yousef. In the long-term the PHMM team also aims “to cover testimonies of the massacre from 1948 onwards.
PHMM can be visited online at http://www.palestinianholocaust.net. For directions to the Second Life virtual museum, visit http://www.tinyurl.com/PHMM. For further information email [email protected].
