Israel Studies

Introduction

Written in a Pencil in the Sealed Railway Car

  Here in this carload      I am Eve    With Abel my sonIf you see my other son    Cain son of man  Tell him that I . . .

(Dan Pagis)

In August 2006, during the political tension at the time of the planned unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, a group of settlers in Gaza and the West Bank attached orange stars to their sleeves that were reminiscent of the “Yellow Star” Jews were forced to wear in countries under Nazi domination. A stormy reaction erupted among Israelis from all walks of life, including politicians from both right and left. The wall-to-wall condemnation maintained this was an act demeaning to the memory of the Holocaust. By donning the orange star the, settlers presented themselves as victims and the government as perpetrators, using one of the symbols of Jewish subjugation to Nazi oppression. The heated debate convinced the settlers to retreat from this demonstrative act.

I begin with this event for two reasons: to demonstrate the scale on which the codes and symbols of the Holocaust are central to and extremely sensitive in the Israeli consciousness, and to show how political groups [End Page 70] make use of it to promote their goals. It also indicates the limits of such usage. I relate to this issue through the challenges with which the Holocaust has confronted Israeli culture and its historical self-understanding.

Collective memory is not a self-contained domain. It progresses alongside intentional and planned activities of social and political agencies, and is nourished through memories of individuals. Both of these facets are prominent in Israel. Israel’s physical landscape is dotted with a variety of commemorative monuments and museums dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust as well as to the fallen soldiers of Israeli wars and to pre-state heroes and defense organizations. Israel’s landscape could be seen as a large “site of memory” (lieu de memoir) using Pierre Nora’s definition, in particular if the conversion of the names of streets and localities from Arabic to Hebrew is considered.¹

A set of contradictions has shaped the complex attitude of Israelis towards the Holocaust. The origins of some of the contradictions rest in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel, including the mass immigration and the change of Israel’s social and cultural composition. Holocaust survivors comprised about one third of Israel’s population in the early 1960s while Jews from Islamic countries accounted for another half. The latter did not experience the Holocaust and their attitude towards their life in the Diaspora was not as negative as that of the Jews of European origin.

Despite the diverse approaches of Israelis towards the Holocaust, there is an important common denominator about the message of the Holocaust—the commitment to ensure the future of the Jewish people. Many associated this commitment with their perceptions of, and efforts toward, the realization of Jewish life in the State of Israel. The term “Jewish life” ranges from a strictly religious perspective to an atheistic and secular one. Beyond this basic commitment to the Jewish future, opinions of Israelis on the meaning of the Holocaust vary considerably.

The impact of the Holocaust on the consciousness of Israelis stemmed from its singularity and the dimension of the tragedy; its scale and outcome appeared ever more threatening as political tension in the Middle East increased.

In the following discussion, I discuss two major issues: how patterns of commemoration were developed, and also the public fashioning of Holocaust memory and the search of individuals and particular communities for their own means of commemoration.

These necessarily lead to the question of identity and how history and memory agree or disagree in constructing the narrative of the Holocaust. [End Page 71] It refers to the impact of the understanding of the Holocaust on the life of Israelis, on the mentality of Israel as a collective entity, and to the self-understanding of individuals in Israel as survivors, heirs, and kin to...