An announcement of a lecture next Monday night at the New School in New York:
THE NEW SCHOOL HISTORY DEPARTMENT PRESENTS: AMOS GOLDBERG The Holocaust and the Nakba: Traumatic Memories and (Bi)National Identities in Israel-Palestine
The Jewish Holocaust and the Palestinian Nakba fundamentally shape two peoples’ identities. Memories of each function as exclusionary “Myths of Origin,” at once demanding acknowledgement by the other, while denying recognition of the other.
Deeply polarizing, the Jewish and Palestinian national narratives become irreconcilable, inhibiting prospects for a political settlement. Amos Goldberg will offer a framework – influenced by Arendt, Agamben, and LaCapra — for establishing an egalitarian public sphere for Jews and Palestinians which will enable both catastrophes to be told on shared ground. Dr. Amos Goldberg is a senior lecturer of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of Trauma in the First Person: Diary Writing During the Holocaust (2012). October 29, 6-8pm 80 5TH Ave, Room 529
Wow, we’re living in amazing times. It’s great that Americans and Israelis are talking about the Nakba– and that a scholar wishes to have the Palestinian narrative “on shared ground” in a binational social sphere. So he has idealistic political notions of what might arise from the opening to Palestinian suffering. But one quick point: I have not heard Palestinians denying the Holocaust; and as for my country, for 40 years Americans have embraced knowledge of the Holocaust, and sought to memorialize it to make humanity better. The New School itself was founded on the noble wreckage of European Jewish refugees. There is, by contrast, widespread denial of the Nakba in this country and dishonor of its refugees. Goldberg refers to Arendt. Well 50 years ago she was writing about the Eichmann trial in The New Yorker. No parallel cultural process has taken place involving the Nakba.
“Deeply polarizing, the Jewish and Palestinian national narratives become irreconcilable, inhibiting prospects for a political settlement”
That is a very negative take on things . Palestinians can understand the Holocaust but Zionism is too fragile to accept the Nakba. Perhaps that is because Zionist history is built on ideology rather than facts. Zochrot show that Jews can understand the Nakba. And they will, in time. It is part of their history.
Also good he updates it via Georgio Agamben, if you don’t mind, for the larger politico-philosophical context we live in.
I seriously hope us non-US, non NY State residents get a chance to be Internet witnesses to the event?
Maybe they could also invite a German to attempt to recollect how Germans felt after WWI, when the demands for reparations were crushing Germany — a crushing experience to which Germany reacted both by starting WWII and by the very racial Holocaust against all (not just Jews) who were not proper models of “the Aryan”.
If they did get such a speaker, the speaker explaining the Jewish Holocaust could experience hearing speakers-for-their-tormentors explaining how suffering (seemed at the time to) justify becoming racial victimizers. and then the Palestinian could explain how it felt being victims (and having not yet had opportunity — which I hope it never has — to victimize anyone else.
It seems to me calling the Nakba a “Myth of Origin” borders on Nakba denial, in as most people take “myth” to mean false belief. Also, saying it’s a “Myth of Origin” might imply that Palestinians originated with the Nakba. That’s more a Zionist myth than a Palestinian one.
I totally agree, there’s nothing exclusionary about the Holocaust and Nakba “narratives.” The exclusionary myths are the many (false) myths of Israel’s origin, that Israel, that mass murders and terror aimed at the removal of Palestinians was necessary or good or accidental or didn’t happen or they came from somewhere else.
Anyway, I find the dueling “narratives” meme of some “liberal” Zionists have problematic, because “narrative” can mean fiction or non-fiction, the implication being that one is free to deny there’s any truth to the stories of the Nakba.
Phil,
Mahmoud Abbas, onetime President of the puppet “Palestinian authority,” wrote a doctoral dissertation that denied the Holocaust. (See his Wikipedia page). My impression is that these ideas are pretty widespread in the Arab world.
And of course, Nakba denial is a regular cottage industry in the US, from Joan Peters to Alan Dershowitz to The New Republic, etc. The Israel Lobby is just starting to lose control over that debate.