At the site of his ancestral home in Ellajon

I’m Khaled Kasab Mahameed born in Um El Fahem in 9^th of May 1962 from a family who was deported from the destroyed Palestinian village “Ellajon” – which is Armageddon – mentioned in the holy Bible:  Revelation Chapter 16.

My father Mahmood was expelled with his family and all the inhabitants of that village in 1948 from Ellajon – accompanying other  541 Palestinian villages by the Israelis when he was 17 year old where he carried in his memory, and which he told me and my other 12 brothers and sisters later, when he was returning from the Israeli jail -  there he spent a few periods of prisonment because he was claiming for the right of his fellow Palestinians.

I was six years old when I heard about the Holocaust  first time in my life. My father said, “We Palestinians Pay the price for the Atrocities the Nazis caused the Jews in the Holocaust”. From that time my mind wanted to know – what is was Holocaust?

It took for me 4 decades to decide to establish what is now called “The first Holocaust Museum in the Arab world,” after studying Sociology and Political Science in Hebrew University, business administration in Stockholm’s University and in Haifa University, and Law in East London University.

I practice Law for my living but Holocaust research and education for Palestinians in my “free time” for my “prophecy” and by my own expenditure.

In 2004 my wife Izdihar and I, with the support of our two children – Jawdat, who is now 14,  and Asil who is now 12 -  put on the internet the first website in Arabic  about the Jewish Holocaust  - which is aimed to inform Arabs about this unique crime in human History. We established “the Arab Institute for Holocaust Research and Education” in October 2004. Then in January, 2009, we inaugurated the second Holocaust museum in the world, in the Palestinian village of Ni’lin in the West Bank.

Next step is to inaugurate 5 Holocaust Museums in different 5 Palestinian towns.

Fast forward to the Israeli/Palestinian mess. I’m a card carrying Jew (circumcised, Bar Mitzvahed, even a kabbalistic tattoo on my arm). I’m proud of my ancient heritage – especially when it talks about “justice, justice, shall you pursue” and “a stranger shall you not oppress, since you know the heart of a stranger, seeing you were strangers in the Land of Egypt.”

I immigrated to Israel in 2006 (as any Jew worldwide can do, according to Israeli law – something any Palestinian refugee worldwide, whose grandparents actually lived somewhere in the current state of Israel, can only dream of). I immediately realized this is a frustratingly polarized place. A lot of “leftists” are just as aggressive and angry as the worst of the ultra-Zionists, pan-Arabists, and other fundamentalists. And I soon discovered this very unusual Palestinian activist, lawyer, and poet. Not only a terrific subject for a doc, but a great excuse for some wild adventures.

How do you teach people compassion? Especially when they don’t necessarily WANT to identify with “the other”?

Mahameed sometimes hangs a Palestinian flag in his tiny museum. He often spends the first hour with a Palestinian audience developing rapport, speaking their language – yes, he wants every one of them to be able to return to their villages WITHIN Israel. Then finally, near the end of his talk, when they’re itching to see the photos he’s mentioned several times, he takes them out.

It’s almost like he has to trick people into feeling something they don’t want to feel. And likewise, when he shows the photos to Israeli soldiers, he says he wants to “shock them” into treating Palestinians more humanely.

A guy who has sat down with sheikhs and rabbis, Hamas and Fatah members, holocaust survivors and the father of Gilad Shalit – is not afraid to test his ideas wherever he can. One thing for sure: he has an almost obsessive faith in the power of examining the Holocaust – “looking into the pain” – to change peoples’ thinking on BOTH sides.

I’ve quickly found that not only Khaled’s work, but my film will provoke people – including potential funders. One Jewish guy was totally high when I first talked w. him (I guess he assumed Khaled was some kind of simplistic saint), but the more I showed him, the more suspicious he got, until he was quoting me warnings like, “If we are kind to the cruel, then we will be cruel to the kind.”

So I ask you – Arab or Jew, Zionist or anti-Zionist, religious, secular, none of the above – to look at this project with open eyes – don’t immediately evaluate it one way or another. We welcome interaction and feedback. Stay with us for the ride, support us in any way you can – and in a year or so, we’ll have finished a cool film about an amazing man, set in a beautiful, peaceful corner of the world.