Challenging the Israeli Occupation Through Testimony and Confession (original) (raw)
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International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 2015
This article analyzes the repertoires of contention and discourse of two Israeli antidenial movements, Breaking the Silence and Machsom Watch. Through confession and testimony, both social movement organizations (SMOs) demand that Israeli society acknowledge its "problematic present," which includes human rights violations in the Palestinian Occupied Territories in a situation of ongoing ethno-national conflict, and insist that it take responsibility for this reality and act against it. It is based on the interpretative analyses of both SMOs' reports. Reports are analyzed as narratives in the context of Israel's national identity and its main motives which are also constitutive of a culture of collective denial. The article compares the testimonial practices of Machsom Watch to testimonies of women in Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and the confessions of Breaking the Silence veterans to those displayed in Truth and Reconciliation Commissions as well as confessions of veterans during the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Confession and testimony are usually analyzed as blazing the path to a new and inclusive national identity (as was the case in South Africa). In the case of Israel, however, their adoption and mobilization destabilize national identity and turn it into a field of contention. Keywords Israel/Palestine. Confession and testimony. Repertoires of contention. Social movements in Israel Research on social movements has recently addressed the ways in which the institutionalization of a global human rights discourse has encouraged the emergence of movements that disclose past human rights violations and demand recognition of an ugly past and the incorporation of collective traumas of perpetration into national identity (Tsutsui 2009). This global human rights discourse is promoted by a host of nongovernmental organizations that recast local models of acknowledgement of Bugly pasts^(prominently, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commissions) into abstract blueprints with universal applicability (Ancelovici and Jenson 2013). These abstract blueprints have turned confession by perpetrators of human rights violations and testimonies of victims and eyewitnesses of these violations into central repertoires of contention in the acknowledgement of collective responsibility of
Psychology, Crime & Law, 2010
The adoption of a resolution by the United Nations declaring 2009 the International Year of Reconciliation signaled the remarkable influence of truth commissions in international and domestic law. This article is a reflection on truth commissions. More precisely, it focuses on forgiveness of perpetrators as a unique outcome of this relatively new trend in transitional justice. The article identifies some developmental trends in the debates on forgiveness in the context of mass atrocity. Using a case example from the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the article considers the subtleties of cultural nuances in the dialogical exchange between victim and perpetrator when both victims and perpetrators are black Africans. The discussion raises the question of whether forgiveness in societies emerging from mass violence might be viewed as a moral imperative necessary to heal societies from a destructive past. The article concludes by arguing that stories of forgiveness in politics may inspire reflective engagement with the past by perpetrators and bystanders who supported repressive governments, and that this may help create a reparative humanism and the possibility of societal transformation.
African Safety Promotion, 2005
Collective violence in the form of war, state-sponsored acts of terror and institutionalised human rights violations, continue to be centrally implicated in the high rates of death and disability across the globe in contemporary societies. Alongside this recognition we have witnessed the development of ongoing economic, political and social initiatives aimed at preventing collective forms of violence and conflicts, and mediating against their long-term impacts and effects. To this end, post-conflict commissions have become a fairly well-established psychological, social and political institutional mechanism to address past atrocities; one of the most acclaimed exemplars is the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). This article reflects on the South African TRC, and highlights the challenges that it has faced in meeting three pivotal aims, namely the eliciting of truth, acting as a facilitating space for confessions related to human rights violations, and effecting reparative processes for the victims of such acts of violence. The article notes that while the TRC may be considered a success in the context of post-apartheid nation-building it falls short as a comprehensive strategy for just reconstruction in post-conflict contexts, since it tends to contribute to the construction of a notion of social healing without significant forms of social justice embedded within it.
Critical Discourse Studies, 2009
In the final years of the 20 th and the beginning of the 21 st century, there has been a worldwide tendency to approach conflict resolution from a restorative rather than from a retributive perspective. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), with its principle of 'amnesty for truth' was a turning point. Based on my discursive research of the TRC victim hearings, I would argue that it was on a discursive level in particular that the Truth Commission has exerted/is still exerting a longlasting impact on South African society. In this article, three of these features will be highlighted and illustrated: firstly, the TRC provided a discursive forum for thousands of ordinary citizens. Secondly, by means of testimonies from apartheid victims and perpetrators, the TRC composed an officially recognized archive of the apartheid past. Thirdly, the reconciliation discourse created at the TRC victim hearings formed a template for talking about a traumatic past, and it opened up the debate on reconciliation. By discussing these three features and their social impact, it will become clear that the way in which the apartheid past was remembered at the victim hearings seemed to have been determined, not so much by political concerns, but mainly by social needs.
Sur: International Journal of Human Rights 5:9 (2008)
This essay examines what is gained and lost when expressions of human suffering are translated into a standardized language of human rights. I argue that South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission demonstrates the ways that this translation makes human suffering both legible and illegible. While the language of human rights functioned in powerful ways to establish a previously unacknowledged history in South Africa, identify and grant dignity to victims, and occasionally designate responsibility, I argue that it also disfigured the testimony of victims in ways that alienated them from their own experience and sometimes retraumatized them, and that it often proved more useful to perpetrators than to victims. I also contend that the promise of healing in which the Commission wrapped its human rights message prioritized national over individual forms of healing, and allowed the South African government to substitute spiritual and symbolic forms of reparation for material ones. Also available in Spanish and Portuguese
International Review of Victimology, 2010
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission has become a model for other societies seeking to rebuild their ethical order, to reckon with the past, and to balance peace and justice. Despite the many differences between apartheid South Africa and the Israeli military regime in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, there are enough similarities which could suggest hope for change by constructfing a political context within which the testimonies of victims and their assailants could be heard. This article studies the role and limitations of human rights organizations in processes of truth and reconciliation and focuses on the tension between the individual victim and the collective victim. 'Might it not make sense for a group of respected historians and intellectuals, composed equally of Palestinians and Israelis, to hold a series of meetings to try to agree a modicum of truth about this conflict, to see whether the known sources can guide the two sides to agree on a body of facts-who took what from whom, who did what to whom, and so on-which in tum might reveal a way out of the present impasse? It is too early, perhaps, for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but something like a Historical Truth and Political Justice Committee would be appropriate.' (Edward Said, January 1999) The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission has become a model for other societies seeking to rebuild their ethical order, to reckon with the past, and to balance peace and justice. Different societies, after periods of war or tyranny, have constructed models for publicizing victims' and perpetrators' testimonies, thus facilitating processes of healing, justice, compensation and accountability. Of all these attempts, the South African model of 'transitional justice' remains the most ambitious. Although it is predicated on what happens after the conflict, after the political negotiations are over, this model is also perhaps the most relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.