Earlier this month, the United Arab Emirates announced that its elementary and secondary schools will begin teaching about the Shoah. This is undoubtedly “good news,” writes Lyn Julius, while warning of four potential negative consequences that must be guarded against:

One is that some supporters of the Palestinians misappropriate the Holocaust to draw a false comparison to the Palestinian nakba. The flight of some 700,000 Arabs from soon-to-be Israel, however, was not due to systemized mass murder, but rather the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

The second danger is that teaching the Holocaust tends to portray anti-Semitism as a purely European phenomenon. It shifts the focus away from Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism, perpetuating the myth that Jews and Arabs had always lived in peace and harmony before Israel’s establishment. As Matti Friedman put it, most Jews are in Israel because of the Arabs, not the Nazis. They arrived as refugees from riots, the Arab League’s Nuremberg-style discriminatory laws, arbitrary arrests, human-rights abuses, and forced dispossession.

The third danger is that Arabs could be misleadingly portrayed as “innocent bystanders” to the Holocaust who “paid the price” for a European problem through the creation of Israel. . . . The fourth danger is that teaching the Holocaust will ignore active Arab collaboration with the Nazis, and the specific role played by the Palestinian mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. . . . It is necessary to understand the connection, often erased for reasons of political correctness, between the Nazis, their Arab sympathizers, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

On Sunday, the Tehran-backed Houthi guerrillas, who have managed to control much of Yemen, attacked an American warship and three British commercial vessels in the Red Sea. This comes on the heels of a series of maritime attacks on targets loosely connected to Israel and the U.S., documented in the article below by Mark Dubowitz and Richard Goldberg. They explain that Washington must respond far more forcefully than it has been:

President Biden refuses to add the Houthis back to the official U.S. terror list—a status he revoked shortly after taking office. And [Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei keeps driving toward a weapon of mass destruction with the UN’s nuclear watchdog warning that Iran is increasing its production of high-enriched uranium while stonewalling inspectors.

Refreezing all cash made available to Iran over the last few months and cracking down on Iranian oil shipments to China are the easy first steps. Senators can force Biden’s hand on both counts by voting on two bills that passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support.

Next comes the reestablishment of U.S. military deterrence. America must defend itself and regional allies against any attempt by Iran to retaliate—a reassurance Riyadh and Abu Dhabi [also] need, given the potential for Tehran to break its de-escalation pact with the Gulf Arab states. By striking Iranian and Houthi targets, Biden would advance the cause of Middle East peace.  . . . Tehran will keep attacking Americans and U.S. allies unless and until he flashes American steel.