Suspect Ideology: Unmasking the Operationalization of Holocaust-based Identity in the Israeli High Court of Justice (original) (raw)
Related papers
For the vast majority of contemporary Israelis, the Holocaust is an acquired memory. However, over the years its presence has not diminished but rather is on the rise. We describe how perceptions of the Holocaust have changed from “what Israeliness is not” in the 1940s and 1950s to a core element in Israeli identity. Inspired by Bauer, we present four different and sometimes incompatible voices related to the Holocaust that greatly affect the Israeli society. They are: Never be a passive victim; never forsake your brothers; never be passive bystander; and never be a perpetrator. Experimental evidence related to these voices is also described.
The illusive collective memory: Revisiting the role of law in Israel's Holocaust narrative
Journal of Israeli History, 2020
The article focuses on three “Holocaust trials”: the Kapo Trials (1950-70); the "Kasztner Trial" (1953-58); and the Eichmann Trial (1961), to decipher the illusion of collective memory that marks the Eichmann Trial as the first Israeli legal confrontation with the Holocaust. It argues that the historical–legal oblivion into which the "Kapo Trials" sank is not a product of the mere passage of time, but a systematic reconstruction located in the socio-political and legal contexts of Israel’s early years. The article shows that, when neglecting certain socio-legal conditions, the law can operate not only as a “lieu de mémoire” as Pierre Nora showed us but also as a site of forgetting.
Genealogy, 2022
Much has been written about the representation of the Holocaust in Israel, but there is less awareness to its effects on attitudes toward democracy and the universal meaning of human rights. Representations of the Holocaust by Israeli socialization agents usually focus on hatred toward Jews, disregarding the broader theoretical-ideological context. This tendency is typical to groups that suffered such severe traumas in their past. Nonetheless, we argue that it does not allow a healing process and fosters a reduced perspective on the essential principles of democracy. It also particularizes the concept of human rights, thus excluding those of “others,” such as Palestinians. We further argue that a more extensive perspective on the Holocaust, which includes an understanding of Nazism within an ideological mosaic that denies democratic principles and humanity, may strengthen Israelis’ identification with democratic principles and universal human rights. We analyze the different approaches to teaching the Holocaust in the context of the collective trauma and explore their impact on society’s sense of victimhood and moral injury. The paper ends with a suggestion for further research that will explore the possibility that a school curriculum that emphasizes universal lessons will enable the memorialization of the Holocaust without succumbing to nationalistic perceptions.
Beyond Conviction? Perpetrators, Ideas, and Action in the Holocaust in Historiographical Perspective
Conflict, catastrophe, and continuity, ed Biess, Roseman, Schissler, 2007
The Holocaust is the most utopian 1 of all the great murders of the twentieth century. Unlike most other ethnic conflicts, it responded to no preexisting competition for control of the state. 2 It was a "final solution" to no security problem and brought in no new territory. At times it allowed the expropriation of considerable wealth, but never sufficient to transform Germany's fortunes, 3 while at other times wasting good productive labor the embattled Reich could ill afford to squander. Given that the Holocaust was more purely ideological than any other mass killing, it is striking how slow postwar historians have been to see its perpetrators as motivated by ideas or convictions. Hitler and perhaps one or two of his henchmen were allowed to have a "Weltanschauung"; in most postwar analyses the beliefs of the rest barely figured. Where the staffers of the killing machine were given attention at all, they figured as neutral functionaries, ticking along with the bureaucratic clockwork. Perhaps they were kept at their desks by fear, perhaps they were mesmerized by loyalty, perhaps they were driven by ambition-but they were not inspired by conviction. That was one reason why in the mid-1990s Daniel Goldhagen's claims about the motivating power of the perpetrators' antisemitism were so shocking. 4 The first part of this essay considers why it took so long for perpetrators to be taken seriously as active, conscious participants, embracing their cause.
Review of 'The Holocaust: A New History
Reviews in History, 2017
In Thinking the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder proposes to his friend Tony Judt that the historian's task is 'like making paths' through a forest by leaving signs. Judt qualifies this. 'The first thing', he argues, 'is to teach people about trees. Then you teach them that lots of trees together constitute a forest. Then you teach them that one way to think about the forest-but there are others-is as a place capable of containing paths. Next you point out what you (the historian) take to be the best path through the forest, while acknowledging that there are other paths, though in your view less satisfactory. Only then are you free … to "theorize" about paths: whether they are human creations, whether they distort the "natural" shape of the forest and so forth'. Judt concludes by deriding those historians 'bored by mere tree description, [who] derive greatest satisfaction from teaching the etiology of paths'.(1) For better or worse, Laurence Rees's book The Holocaust: A New History does not concern itself with the etiology of paths. It is a book aimed at the general reader, and so it would be unfair of me to bemoan its absence of theoretical scaffolding. Yet Rees does make a path through the forestall historians do. What makes this book stand or fall therefore is the quality of its tree description and how well it charts a path through this, particularly dark, forest.