Mohammed Dajani Daoudi
Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi (; 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. Early life 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. Career 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 Hadassah Medical Center, 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