Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi (1946 - ) is a Palestinian professor and peace activist. In 2014, he became the center of a controversy when he led a group of students from Al-Quds University to Auschwitz.
Mohammed Dajani was born to one of Jerusalem's historic Arab families.[1] 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.[2] 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 occupation).[2]
Dajani's parents, educated secular Muslims, sent him to English-speaking Quaker-run schools.[2] As an engineering student at the American University of Beirut, Dajani joined Fatah.[2] Although he received military training, he was put to work in the English-language public relations department of the Palestine Liberation Organization.[1]
In 1975, Lebanon deported Dajani.[2] Banned from both Israel and Jordan because of his Fatah activities, he decided to travel to the United States to continue his education.[2] 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.[1]
By this time, Dajani's father was successful in getting his son a pardon from King Hussein of Jordan.[2] Dajani was hired by the Applied Science Private University in Amman, where he created and chaired the political science and diplomacy department.[2] In 1993, his father won permission from Israel for Dajani to return to Jerusalem.[1]
Dajani accompanied his father to chemotherapy treatments at an Israeli hospital, 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."[2] Several years later, a second experience with Israeli health care affected Dajani; his mother became ill near Ben Gurion Airport.[2] "I did not believe that anybody would help her, being an Arab and coming to an airport where Israelis are very keen about security."[2] Dajani was surprised when an ambulance was called and paramedics tried to revive his mother for more than an hour.[2] "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."[1]
During the late 1990s, Dajani trained Palestinian civil servants for the United Nations Development Programme and various Palestinian organizations.[2] 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".[2]
Dajani was invited to join the faculty at Al-Quds University in 2001, and the following year he established its American Studies Institute.[2] In 2007, with his brother, Munther Dajani Daoudi,[2] he co-founded Wasatia ("Moderation"), an organization that promotes the Islamic traditions of nonviolence and compromise.[1]
In March 2014, Dajani took a group of 27 students from Al-Quds University to visit the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz.[2] They are believed to be the first group of students from Palestine to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.[1][3] The trip to Auschwitz was part of a joint program with the Friedrich Schiller University 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".[3] (For their part, the Israeli students visited the Dheisheh refugee camp.[3])
After the Israeli newspaper Haaretz wrote about the trip, and the Hebrew article was mistranslated into Arabic,[4] Dajani was vilified as a "traitor" and "collaborator" by some Palestinians.[5] Al-Quds University said Dajani and the students were acting in a "personal capacity",[5] and the faculty union expelled Dajani.[5] 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."[6]
In January 2015, Dajani's car was set on fire and destroyed in front of his home.[7][8] Dajani told The Times of Israel that the attack saddened him more than it frightened him.[7]
In 2016, he told Haaretz newspaper that he was planning another Auschwitz tour.[9]