Transcultural Memory in Conflict: Israeli-Palestinian Truth and Reconciliation

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 Louis Bickford and Amy Sodaro, 'Remembering Yesterday to Protect Tomorrow' in Memory and the Future, eds. Yifat Gutman et al. (London; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp.66–86; Annelies Verdoolaege Reconciliation Discourse (Amsterdam: John Benjamin's, 2008); Richard A. Wilson, The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2001); John Torpey, 'Introduction' in Politics and the Past, ed. John Torpey (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), pp.1–34; Leigh A. Payne, Unsettling Accounts (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); Deborah Posel, 'The TRC Report' in Commissioning the Past, eds. Deborah Posel and Graeme Simpson (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 2002); Jeffrey K. Olick, The Politics of Regret, (London: Routledge, 2007); Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider 'Sovereignty Transformed', in The British Journal of Sociology, 57:4 (2006), pp.657–676; Laurie King-Irani, 'To Reconcile, or to be Reconciled?', Hastings Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 28 (2005). 2 Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009). 3 I define 'memory activism' as a transnational strategy of peace activism in which a contested past is recovered through local on-site commemoration. For more see: Yifat Gutman, Past Before Future: Memory Activism in Israel-Palestine (forthcoming); for previous definitions see Carol Gluck Past Obsessions (New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming) and Jay Winter, 'Film and the Matrix of Memory', American Historical Review (June 2001), pp.857–864. 4 My research was conducted in 2006–2010, with the help of a research grant from the New School for Social Research, and included participant-observations and interviews in Israel, text and performance analysis and historical research. 5 Kimberly Spring, Challenging the (Moral) Order, (PhD dissertation, n.d.). Public witnessing gained prominence with the international trials after WWII, especially the Eichmann Trial, and the growth of the human rights discourse in the 1970s and 1980s (see Richard A. Wilson, The Politics of Truth). 6 Kimberley Theidon, 'Justice in Transition', Journal of Conflict Resolution, 50:3 (2006), pp.433–457. The Armenian case, Israel-Palestine, and U.S. accountability for torture during the occupation of Iraq are among these conflicts. On Transitional Justice see for example, Ruti Teitel, Transitional Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); on restitution see Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), on TRC in Israel-Palestine see Stanley Cohen, 'Justice in Transition' Middle East Report, 194/195 (May-Aug. 1995), pp.2–5. 7 Salim Tamari, 'Kissing Cousins' in Palestine-Israel Journal 12/13:4/1 (2005), pp.16–18; Nadim Nashef, interview 2008; Benoit Challand, 'Coming Too Late?' in The European Union, Civil Society and Conflict, ed. Nathalie Tocci (New York: Routledge, 2011), pp.96–125. 8 Challand, 'Coming Too Late?'. 9 Craig Calhoun,'Nationalism and the Public Sphere' in Public and Private in Thought and Practice, eds. Jeff Weintraub and Krishan Kumar (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), pp.82, 86, 100. 10 Marianne Hirsch, 'Surviving Images', Yale Journal of Criticism 12:1 (Spring 2001), pp.5–37. 11 A striking example is an interview with Benny Morris, a Jewish-Israeli 'new historian' who introduced the critical retelling of the 1948 war, where he, separating his political view from his scholarship, states that the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 should have been completed to prevent the escalation of the conflict to its current state, which he places in a historical chain of Jewish suffering. Ari Shavit 'Waiting for the Barbarians', Ha'aretz Weekend Supplement (6 January 2004). 12 T interview, 2009. 13 According to Hayner's definition, 'official, temporary bodies established to investigate a pattern of violations over a period of time that conclude with a final report and recommendations for reforms.' 'Truth Commissions', International Review of the Red Cross, 88:862 (June 2006), p. 295. 14 On Dutch commissions see Ann Stoler, Along the Archival Grain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), on British commissions see Oz Frankel, States of Inquiry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). 15 Ann Stoler, Along the Archival Grain; Oz Frankel States of Inquiry; Deborah Posel, 'The TRC Report'; Richard A. Wilson, The Politics of Truth. 16 Deborah Posel, 'The TRC Report'; Richard A. Wilson, The Politics of Truth. 17 Deborah Posel, 'The TRC Report'. 18 Annelies Verdoolaege, Reconciliation Discourse. 19 Lisa. J. Laplante and Kimberly Theidon, 'Commissioning Truth, Constructing Silences' in Mirrors of Justice, eds. Kamari Clarke and Goodale Mark (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Leigh A. Payne, Unsettling Accounts; Kimberley Theidon, 'Justice in Transition'; Richard A. Wilson, The Politics of Truth; Nkosinathi Biko, 'Amnesty and Denial' in Looking Back, Reaching Forward, eds. C. Villa-Vicencio and W. Verwoerd (Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2000), pp.193–198. 20 Richard A. Wilson, The Politics of Truth. 21 Among them, Oxfam Solidarity, ICCO, CCFD, Worldwide Friends, and Youth Action for Peace. 22 For example, Musih, interview, 2010. 23 Tom Hill, '1948 After Oslo' in Mediterranean Politics, 13:2 (2008), pp.151–170. 24 Uri Ram, 'Postnationalist Pasts: The Case of Israel' in Social Science History, 22:4 (1998), p.515. 25 Uri Ram, 'Postnationalist Pasts'; Ilan Pappé, 'Post-Zionist Critique on Israel and the Palestinians: Part I: The Academic Debate', Journal of Palestine Studies, 26:2 (1997), pp.29–41; Ilan Pappé, 'Fifty Years through the Eyes of 'New Historians' in Israel' in Middle East Report, 207 (1998), pp.14–17, 23; Aliza Craimer, 'Do the 'New Historians' Practice What They Preach?' (Paper presented at the Association for Israel Studies Annual Meeting, 2006); Benny Morris, 'The New Historiography.' Tikkun, 3:6 (1988), pp.19–23, 99–102; Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel, (New York: Pantheon, 1987); Avi Shlaim, 'The Debate about 1948', International Journal of Middle East Studies. 27 (1995), pp.287–304. 26 Uri Ram, 'Postnationalist Pasts', p.519–520; Aliza Craimer, 'Do the "New Historians"', p.4. 27 Aliza Craimer, 'Do the "New Historians"', p.4; Ilan Pappé, 'Fifty Years through'; Benny Morris, 'The New Historiography' in Making Israel ed. B. Morris (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), pp.11–28. 28 The words in italics are used in the mission statement: < http://www.zochrot.org/en/menu/%D7%96%D7%95%D7%9B%D7%A8%D7% 95%D7%AA/%D7%9E%D7%99-%D7%90% D7%A0%D7%97%D7%A0%D7%95> [15/05/2011]. The right of return is seen as part of taking responsibility but was not part of earlier mission statements, which stated the goal was 'make[ing] the history of the Nakba accessible to the Israeli public so as to engage Jews and Palestinians in an open recounting of our painful common history'. < nakbainhebrew.org> [12/01/2007]. 29 The booklet contains historical information, maps, photos, and testimonies on the village life gathered from 'new historians', Palestinian historians, refugees, and Zochrot's research. It partially resembles other memorial books, especially by Palestinians authors, a commemorative genre of communities eradicated by atrocities such as the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide. Susan Slyomovics, The Object of Memory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). 30 Tamar Katriel, 'Touring the Land', Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review, 17:1/2 (1996), pp.6–13. 31 For example, O and N interviews, 2008. 32 For example, after the war in Gaza in winter 2008–9, one of the councilors traced the refugees who reside there back to their pre-1948 villages in Israel, linking the separate Palestinian experiences today with a shared experience of 1948 (J, interview, 2009). 33 'Knowing that there are lies on the Jewish-Israeli side, and knowing that there are also lies on the Palestinian side' as a youth counselor puts it (J interview 2009). In one of the meetings, the youth and parents choose the 10 most influential historical events for them today. The list usually starts with either the first Zionist Congress in 1897 in Basel, or with the Arab Revolt in British Palestine in 1936–1939, but the variety of trajectories suggests more than one view of the history of the conflict. 34 O interview 2009; J interview 2009; C interview 2009. 35 T interview 2009. 36 Among them the "Nakba Law" and a loyalty oath for new citizens. 37 Tom Hill, '1948 After Oslo'. 38 Annelies Verdoolaege, Reconciliation Discourse. 39 O interview 2008. The group is further exclusive by the self-selection of its Jewish-Israeli members – middle-class, educated, with a Leftist view of the conflict, and residents of urban centres. Baladna is also a secular elite-oriented initiative but works with communities in the periphery. 40 C. F. Epstein, 'Tinker-bells and Pinups' in Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality, eds, M. Lamont and M. Fournier (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 41 Richard Crownshaw and Marianne Hirsch express a general concern about postmemory's 'retrospective witnessing by adoption' (Marianne Hirsch, 'Surviving Images', p.10) – that 'seeing through another's eyes, 'and' remembering through another's memories' (10) would 'collapse into seeing through one's own eyes and remembering one's own memories instead' (Crownshaw, 'Reconsidering Postmemory: Photography, the Archive and Post-Holocaust Memory' in W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz', Mosaic 37:4 (2004), p.215. 42 Lisa. J. Laplante and Kimberley Theidon, 'Commissioning Truth' on the Peruvian TRC. 43 Especially because it is often forced on a complex reality, such as Lebanon's multiple civil war parties (Shea McManus n.d.), child soldiers (K. Clarke, Fictions of Justice (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009)), and collaboration under threat. 44 Tom Hill, '1948 after Oslo'. 45 J, interview 2010. 46 Ann Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, p.148. 47 Ann Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, p.3, although naming itself displaces realities as well. 48 Ann Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, p.148. 49 Noga Kadman, Erased from Space and Consciousness (Jerusalem: November Books, 2008) [in Hebrew]. 50 Yet radical left groups like Matzpen have always talked about 1948. On destruction of Palestinian built environment see Raz Kletter, Just Past? (London: Equinox, 2006).