This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
Don’t know if the huge storm will allow the event to proceed but at the New School tonight, Amos Goldberg, a Senior Lecturer at Hebrew University, is scheduled to be lecturing on the Holocaust and the Nakba in the life of Israelis and Palestinians. His subtitle: ‘Traumatic Memories and (Bi)National Identities in Israel-Palestine.’ The description is as follows:
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.
I’m not quite sure what Goldberg will do with this lecture theme. It should be interesting and, if his reputation serves, perhaps even provocative. Or it could be old ideas dressed in new theoretical clothes.
Old ideas would be mutual recognition, with each side recognizing the tragedy that has befallen the other. There’s no harm in mutual recognition of past suffering. I wonder, though, if at this point it’s better for Jews and Palestinians to agree to drop the past suffering of both and concentrate on suffering and justice in the present.
Justice helps the past sort itself out. When justice is achieved, the past is leveled. ‘Myths of origins’ take a back seat to the demands of the present. As justice expands, mutual recognition becomes part of everyday life. Mutual recognition is no longer mythic. History has to get real.
The meaning of ‘mutual’ is often contested. One person’s ‘mutual’ is another person’s ‘transgression.’ Since the geographic frames of Jewish and Palestinian suffering are so different, their ‘mutual’ experiences aren’t so mutual after all. Sure there are connections, especially this one: Jews after the Holocaust causing the Palestinian Nakba in the formation of the state of Israel. Now we have the ongoing Nakba, continuing even as Goldberg delivers his lecture.
‘Mutual’ recognition could go somewhere if such recognition had the power to halt – and reverse – Israeli expansion. As Israel expands the so-called mutual sphere decreases. Is there any mutual sphere left?
The argument for bi-nationalism today is often another way of saying two-states as the real two-state option disappears. It’s a way of side stepping the one-state option, even though the one-state option as an achievable goal has never really appeared.
If mutual recognition had happened right at the beginning, as Israel was being formed, say in 1948, our options today would be different. In the heat of the moment, with the devastation that had occurred to Jews in Europe and the devastation that was about to occur to Palestinians in Palestine, a mutual way forward might have been achieved. Bi-nationalism may have had a chance to take root.
Whether this is wishful historical thinking, the argument for mutual recognition of the other’s suffering today has to be so titled toward Palestinians. Palestinians, not Jews, have been suffering since the establishment of Israel. Goldberg will be tipping his hand early if he argues a mutual equality in suffering.
I have written about the meaning of the Holocaust in Jewish identity for decades. Nonetheless, it’s clear that Holocaust arguments in the Israel/Palestine sphere are no longer credible. The Holocaust can’t carry the weight Israel has burdened it with.
One reason is the passage of time. Holocaust appeals cannot be made forever. In present-day historical time frame, ‘forever’ has already arrived for the Holocaust.
A second reason is that the Holocaust has been abused as a lever for unjust power. Whatever one’s judgment on the Holocaust time-frame, there’s no denying that the guts of Holocaust consciousness have been violated by the exercise of Israeli and American Jewish power.
The third reason the Holocaust cannot be invoked is that Israel has become such an expansionist enterprise there isn’t a way back to the argument that Jews without power suffered horribly. A need for a Jewish state may or may not have been self-evident after the Holocaust. In light of the actions taken against Palestinians during the formation of Israel and its subsequent actions, a self-evident need for a Jewish state is vitiated.
The argument for a Jewish state is over. It can’t be made in the present occupation/settlements framework. Nor can it be made by “establishing an egalitarian public sphere for Jews and Palestinians which will enable both catastrophes to be told on shared ground.” The only argument that can be made regarding Israel is that it exists. The challenge is what is to be done with Israel and what Israel will do with itself.
Palestinians don’t have to argue the Nakba for their right to exist. The Nakba is something that happened and is still happening to Palestinians. The Palestinian need for a state is not dependent on their suffering. The Palestinian right to a state is their historical existence on the land which was interrupted by the formation and expansion of the state of Israel.
Yes, I have indulged in the “shared ground suffering” argument to some extent. That was way back when, in 1987 to be precise, with the publication of Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation. Several years later, a Palestinian, Naim Ateek, reciprocated that approach in his book on a Palestinian theology of liberation. Yet even then, our priority was Palestinian suffering and the Palestinian need for justice.
I hope that Goldberg’s lecture doesn’t bring us back before the first Palestinian Uprising. I’m not predicting. I’m just pointing out a danger in the ‘mutual’ suffering approach.
Sometimes the same idea comes around when the time is ripe, whereas the first time around it wasn’t. Yet more often than not what comes around a second time is out of joint. Whereas the first time was a point of departure for thought that went further, the second time around can be a stop-gap to delay the next round that should have commenced years ago.
Well on you go Dr. Goldberg. You can consider this my (un)invited introduction to what I hope won’t be old hat. We need a new departure that brings us closer to the true mutuality that can only be based on justice for the present generation. Then the past, including the suffering in the past, will take on a new life of compassion and reconciliation.
Had Israel not undertaken its (to itself delicious) colonization/settlement project in the post-1967 occupied territories, one could (echoing the international consensus of UNSC 242) speak of peace independently of talking of any roll-back of Israeli territory and control.
But Israel itself has abundantly shown that it does not regard those lines as sacrosanct. Why should anyone else?
Israel has insisted in raising the question of the legitimacy of its capture and colonization and settlement of all of Mandatory Palestine. If the question of a roll-back of Israel must be raised (with respect to its post-1967 captures), then the question is “out there” with respect to its pre-1967 captures as well.
It is not hard to imagine the difficulty that USA and Europe (and indeed most states) will have deciding to exert pressure on Israel to roll-back territorially. It may never happen! But as Israel fast-forwards in its now-clearly-fascist horror, the nations just might react (as the USA finally reacted to Nazi Germany long after Germany had captured much of Europe!). And if the nations do react, why should the energy of their reaction be limited to seeking a mere roll-back to the 1967 lines?
And if they do react, why should the Holocaust be given any weight (since the Israeli steamroller tactics make them victimizers rather than victims)?
Short answer… no!
The Holocaust ended 67 years ago, the Nakba continues today, far longer than the Holocaust.
Germany has paid billions in reparations, Israel has paid none.
Germany has legislated RoR laws for German Jewish folk, including lineal descendants, Israel has not passed any RoR legislation.
The amount of idiotic nonsense written trying to justify Israel’s illegal activities is mind boggling
Excellent points, Marc Ellis!
A few Jews and a few Palestinians “share” the Nakba and the Holocaust. Even though most do not, the fact that a few do suggests unused potential. There are Palestinian writers who sympathetically portray Holocaust survivors turned Israelis — Ghassan Kanafani in “Return to Haifa” and now Susan Abulhawa’s “Mornings in Jenin.” It is a painful sympathy because the fellow sufferer is also one of those who inflict suffering, simultaneously victim and perpetrator. I feel that this is a factor that may yet facilitate reconciliation by making it a little easier for Palestinians to forgive Israelis, but only after the Israelis (and the diaspora Jews who support them) have stopped tormenting the Palestinians and are looking for the way back and trying to heal the wounds they have inflicted. The “sharing” of PAST suffering is something that may help to forge the shared identity required for a new Palestine, once the suffering of the Palestinians is relegated to the past. Past suffering on one side and continuing suffering on the other is a very shaky basis for sharing, it is too asymmetrical.
Shared suffering?most holocaust survivors i know are believers in a strong jewish state