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5. Mnemonic Newswork: Exploring the
Role of Journalism in the Rereading
of National Pasts
OREN MEYERS
Throughout the last three decades the field of collective memory studies
has grown exponentially,1 experiencing what Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, and
Levy have called a “memory boom.”2 At the same time, the rapidly growing
body of collective memory research has paid relatively modest attention to
the operation of journalists as agents of collective recollecting. And so the
valuable works written within this subfield of collective memory scholarship
have mostly been authored by communication scholars,3 while the numerous
scholarly works focusing on collective recollections do not usually address
journalism as a primary goal of inquiry. This is a somewhat curious omission
considering the omnipresence and assumed influence of the news media, and
the documented growing authority of journalists in shaping public discourse
about the past.4
Several factors could explain the relative marginality of journalism studies
within the field of collective memory research. First and foremost, the way
in which collective memory researchers perceive journalism might be influ-
enced by how journalists perceive themselves. The endurance of the objec-
tive-natural-factual paradigm in journalism contributes to the understanding
of newswork as a transparent process of information transformation. So while
collective memory studies often base their arguments on reports and views
that have appeared in the news media, the overwhelming use of such data
tends to overlook the role of journalists as professionals and members of
an interpretive community. Additionally, the prevailing discourse of collec-
tive memory studies points to three major interpretive agencies of the past:
academia, the state, and popular-commercial culture. Within this pattern of
100 OREN MEYERS
negotiation over the meaning of the past journalism is viewed mostly as a
mediating entity: it lacks the stature of the academic establishment, the formal
power of the state, and the far-reaching popularity of popular-commercial
culture.5
Finally, the relative neglect of journalism’s role as a mnemonic agency
might be attributed to conceptual and methodological factors: the prevalent
method of investigating the presence and influence of collective memories
explores how present perceptions shape the understanding of the past. This
attitude underlies studies that look at concrete and intended commemorations,
those that decode the changing ideological givens that constitute our shifting
views of the past. The second, less prevalent method of addressing collective
recollecting aims to trace the movement from the past into the present. This
attitude is evident in studies of non-commemorative and unintended influ-
ences of past phenomena on our perception of the present, such as an analysis
of how the memory of Watergate persists in contemporary American culture.6
The pronounced analytical focus on commemorative memory contributes to
the relative lack of consideration of journalists as agents of collective memory.
This is because most journalistic work is routine and non-commemorative by
nature. The ways in which the past and present are constructed via routine
journalistic work is harder to track down and to conceptualize than the study
of state-sponsored rituals, commemorative museums, or high-grossing popu-
lar culture productions.7
This chapter offers scholars interested in the shaping of collective mem-
ories, working within various disciplines, a research scheme designated to
investigate the mnemonic role of journalism in four interconnected spheres.
Specifically, this scheme looks at how journalism operates within large-scale
cultural re-readings of the collective past. By doing so, this chapter illumi-
nates the complex interrelations between journalism and academia, within the
context of the narration of the past.
The academic study of journalism is positioned between two interpretive
communities of knowledge and practice: the academic community and the
community of journalism practitioners. This liminal position has hampered
efforts to shape a common understanding of what journalism is, and what
academia’s relationship with it ought to be.8 Within academia—in commu-
nication studies, history, and beyond—several central research schools have
traditionally paid little attention to the systematic exploration of journalistic
norms, routines, and practices; at the same time, the scholarly study of jour-
nalism faces the ongoing skepticism expressed by journalists, who oppose
many of the notions put forth by academics.9
Mnemonic Newswork 101
The complex interrelations between academic researchers and journal-
ism practitioners is especially evident in the context of the portrayal of jour-
nalists as cultural interpreters, rather than objective observers. While some
researchers argue that journalists reject their scholarly critique because it
questions the journalists’ self-perception as professionals, journalists often
feel that researchers are condescending towards them, and that academics’
high-minded theoretical discourse often disguises a lack of actual journalistic
experience.10 Correspondingly, C. W. Anderson’s review of journalism trade
magazines identified a dismissal of the idea that journalistic work could be
improved by adopting a more academic approach.11
Within the context of the interrelations between journalism and aca-
demia, previous scholarly works have focused on the divergences between
the operation of journalists and academics, especially historians, as mnemonic
agents.12 In contrast, this study aims to portray a fuller spectrum of interrela-
tions between journalists and academics as narrators of the past: from conflict
to cooperation. The first suggested research trajectory looks at how journal-
ists provide a public stage for scholarly debates over the past and its meaning.
In this capacity, journalists help popularize academic deliberations and shape
them into routinized journalistic formats. A second trajectory looks at the
means by which journalists mediate developments in popular memory for
the academic world. The third trajectory addresses how journalists articu-
late stories of “general” communal pasts. Here, my inquiry focuses on how
journalistic tools are applied to construct and deconstruct narratives of the
collective, national past. The fourth interrelated trajectory investigates the
operation of journalists as agents of the memory of their own professional
community. This trajectory looks at how journalists convey tales about their
shared past as a means to establish professional and cultural authority. More-
over, this process of constructing a “worthy” professional past assists journal-
ists in positioning their story within the context of the larger social-cultural
accounts they narrate.
This proposed four-level, interrelated research scheme is here anchored
within a concrete context: throughout the last three decades an ongoing
debate over the facts and meanings of the Israeli past has surged across a mul-
titude of public arenas. Although the rise (and fall?) of Israel’s “new historiog-
raphy” has been widely discussed, little has been said about the role played by
journalism in this process.13 As mentioned, the relative disregard for the role
of journalism in fueling and framing this deliberative process is symptomatic
of the field of collective memory research. The following inquiry aims to
address this lack. Moreover, the positioning of journalism within the context
102 OREN MEYERS
of such debates is necessary in order to evaluate current developments in the
shared consciousness of journalistic communities, in Israel and elsewhere.14
Journalism, Memory, and the “New Historiography” Debate
The guiding theoretical framework of this chapter is based upon two inter-
related conceptualizations of journalistic work: the exploration of journalists
as interpretive communities, and the investigation of collective memories.
Within the larger body of communication research, the study of journalistic
work has traditionally focused on the activities of the individual journal-
ist, on the centrality of workplace dynamics, and on journalism’s interre-
lations with other social institutions. Extending this traditional research,
Carey offered the notion of news as the product of broader cultural con-
ventions, and journalists as cultural interpreters.15 Zelizer advanced this line
of thought by turning it “inwards,” towards the journalistic community
itself: according to this perception, journalists are not only part of a profes-
sional group, but also members of an interpretive community.16 While jour-
nalists tend to portray their work as objective, individualistic, immediate,
and informative, the interpretive community frame depicts it as value-laden,
communal, continuous, and narrativistic. Thus, the concept of the interpre-
tive community focuses on the existence of an inner-journalistic discourse
that is created while and after journalists conduct their work. Through this
inwardly-directed discourse, journalists learn how to conduct their work,
and interpret the meaning of the events they encounter as a collective. This
collective shares a common heritage of memories and lessons that are culti-
vated in ways that constitute journalistic authority and fortify the status of
the journalistic community.
A second underlying premise of this study deals with the creation of social
memories, and the role of journalism as an agent in this process. Social groups
shape their understanding of the past in ways that fit current goals and chal-
lenges. This common past is constantly reproduced by the group through a
process of negotiation over the meaning of events.17 Correspondingly, past
events and shared experiences shape the ways in which communities under-
stand the present.18 Thus, “collective memory” is composed of two comple-
mentary components: it is the common consciousness shared by members of
social groups regarding their joint past; at the same time, it is the system of
mnemonic signifiers placed across time and space in order to publicly narrate
and affix these shared perceptions.19
Nowadays, major historical events acquire their public meaning not only
through academic and state-sponsored interpretations but also through the
Mnemonic Newswork 103
mass media, social media, and other popular venues.20 This has led to the rise
of the field of Media Memory studies—that is, the systematic exploration of col-
lective pasts, narrated by the media, through the media and about the media.21
Within this context of the role of journalists as Media Memory agents, Motti
Neiger, Eyal Zandberg and I22 suggest a typology of news coverage, accord-
ing to its uses of the past as resource, ranging from the positioning of the past
as the focus of coverage (commemorative journalism), to the use of the past
a yardstick, or an analogy in routine coverage, and finally to the continual,
nearly sub-surface presence of the past in the news as “the scene against which
the events are played out.”23
In sum, when journalists act as memory agents they engage in three com-
plementary dimensions of their work: on a basic level, they do what they
always do—tell the public stories about realities that are beyond the pub-
lic’s immediate reach. On a second level, the journalistic coverage of the past
always situates it within larger cultural and social contexts. Thirdly, when
journalists narrate the past they tell stories about their own work, and the role
they have played and still play in shaping social memories.24
Israeli Journalism: An Overview
Israeli journalism was not invented in 1948 with the birth of Israel;25 rather,
pre-state Hebrew journalism had a pivotal role in the establishment of the
Zionist movement. During Israel’s first decades of existence, very few Israeli
journalists were able to position themselves as critical observers of the young
state. The mainstream journalistic community of the 1950s was not just sup-
portive of the Zionist ideal, but rather viewed itself as an integral part of
its fulfillment. Hence in most cases publication policies were restrained and
receptive to the authorities’ requests. Along with this strong ideological com-
mitment, Israeli journalists of the formative era also engaged in initial efforts
to define their independent professional identity.26
Through the 1970s and 1980s Israeli journalism changed in various sig-
nificant ways due to shifts and crises in Israeli society, the introduction of a
first (public) television channel and the influence of the norms and practices
of Western journalism. The national trauma of the 1973 Yom Kippur War,
and the harsh political debates over the 1982 Lebanon War eroded, in many
respects, the willingness of Israeli journalists to yield to the authority of gen-
erals and politicians, and to self-censor their reporting.27 At the same time,
national security-related criticism is still curbed by (weakening) military cen-
sorship and a fundamental sense of identification between mainstream Israeli
journalists and the military.28
104 OREN MEYERS
During the last two decades, the Israeli media system has further changed,
in ways that make it far more similar to Western media systems. Since the
beginning of the 1990s, the state monopoly over electronic broadcasting
has ended with the introduction of broadcast, cable, and satellite television
channels, local-commercial radio stations, and ubiquitous Internet usage.
In recent years, Israeli journalism has been operating in a continuous cri-
sis mode due to a combination of technological and economic factors that
have influenced news media across the Western world.29 An employment sur-
vey in Israeli newspapers (most of which have a significant online presence)
found that in recent years there has been a drastic reduction in the number of
employed journalists, resulting in a lack of specialization among reporters and
weakening editorial oversight.30
“New Historiography” and the Shaping of Israeli Collective Memory
The term “new historiography” was first coined by Israeli historian Benny
Morris to define a generational and analytical shift in the study of Israeli his-
tory.31 According to Morris, the majority of Israeli historians working during
the state’s first four decades did not conduct valid and objective historical
research but rather provided apologetic justifications for the deeds and mis-
deeds of the Zionist project; their explorations were bluntly one-sided and
they avoided discussing “uncomfortable” issues, such as the Israeli role in
the expulsion of Palestinians during the 1948 war. In contrast, a group of
then younger Israeli historians who based their research on newly released
archival evidence and adopted a critical approach offered more balanced and
accurate insights into Israel’s past.32 In the following years, various accounts
addressed the dispute over “old” and “new” readings of the history of the
Jewish people, the Zionist movement, and the State of Israel. Moreover, the
dispute overstepped the realm of historiography into the exploration of con-
trasts between “institutional” and “critical” approaches in Israeli sociology,33
political science, geography,34 architecture35 and more.
Critics of the “old/institutional” approach point to several strategies
through which previous academic research advanced the construction of the
Zionist narrative: by stressing the uniqueness of the Israeli case as a means of
avoiding and dismissing comparative study, which might, for instance, sug-
gest certain similarities between Zionist settlement in Palestine and colonial-
ism; by forming a historical (or rather a-historical) continuum that connected
the ancient Jews who lived in the Land of Israel in antiquity and current
Israelis, while downplaying Diasporic Jewish life; by identifying “Israeli soci-
ety” with Israel’s Jewish population while virtually ignoring Israel’s substan-
tial Arab-Palestinian population; by using ideologically-marked terms such as
Mnemonic Newswork 105
Aliyah (Hebrew: ascending) instead of “migration,” Geulat Karkah (redemp-
tion of the land) instead of land purchase, and more.36 By contrast, opponents
of the “new/critical” research agenda dismiss it on several accounts, claiming
that the “new historians” did not actually reveal any substantial new findings;
their methodology is flawed; their arguments are self-contradictory; and it is
the “new historians,” rather than their predecessors, who tilt their research
for the sake of advancing political goals.37
Reviews of later developments in the debate suggest that some arguments
made by the now “‘new’ veteran historians”38 became consensual givens, such
as the claim that during the 1948 war some Israeli forces actively expelled
the Palestinian population; still, other “new historiography” arguments were
rejected by most Israeli scholars. In his survey of “the third wave in Israeli
historiography” Likhovski suggests that a new generation of historians is cur-
rently producing works that differ from those of both institutional and critical
scholars.39 Such studies explore new subjects, new types of sources, ask new
questions, and their attitude towards Zionism is often more empathic than
that of the previous generation of scholars.
Journalism and the Rereading of the National Past:
Four Research Trajectories
As the debate over Israel’s “new historiography” gained momentum several
observations developed as consensual givens, seemingly shared by propo-
nents and opponents alike: first, most discussants seemed to agree that the
debate was not only, not even mainly, about the proper way to conduct his-
torical research. Rather, the debate could only be adequately grasped through
a consideration of its larger current cultural-political contexts: the dispute
over Israel’s past was an embodiment of the ongoing negotiation over Israel’s
present; the undermining of earlier hegemonic narratives of Israel’s history
were reflections of a new “post-Zionist” political culture advocating a liberal,
non-nationalistic, non-militaristic, and multi-cultural Israeli society.40
The second, interconnected agreement regarding the “new historiogra-
phy” debate was that the dispute over Israel’s past was anchored in the larger
question of the relations between academic historiography and collective
memory.41 The traditional approach to the relation of history and memory
contends that the implementation of certain analytical and empirical methods
for the study of the past could validate the accuracy of such representations.42
An opposite approach evolved from the notion that historiography cannot
be separated from other modes of representation of the past. Historians, like
all other interpreters, structure their understanding of the world, more spe-
cifically their understanding of the past, through narratives.43 The attempt to
106 OREN MEYERS
expose the biases and suppressions of “old” established historiography has
been, at times, accompanied by an overall attack against the historiographi-
cal-objective model. At the same time, it would be misguided to identify this
entire strand of research with postmodern or relativistic approaches, as some
of the most important accounts written by “new historians” still aim to depict
history “just as it happened.”44 However, both advocates and critics of the
“new historiography” approach framed their arguments within the context of
the relations between academic historiography and popular memory.
The derivative of the following two conceptualizations of the “new histo-
riography” debate—that it ought to be interpreted within the context of the cur-
rent political discourse; and that it is mostly about the shaping of Israeli collective
memory—is the common perception that the popular-public arena was the
most significant sphere in which the dispute took place.45 And yet, the role of
Israeli journalism in framing and fueling this critical rereading of the national
narrative has not yet received the scholarly attention it deserves.
In order to address this conceptual and empirical lacuna, the following
discussion proposes an analytical scheme for the investigation of the opera-
tion of journalism as a collective memory agent, within the context of critical
reevaluations of the national past. This research scheme operationalizes the
large scale themes at hand via the exploration of four, interconnected realms
of public narration: the representation of scholarly re-readings of the national
past in the news media; the complementing utilization of news media cover-
age as a source of information and validation in academic discourse; the con-
struction and re-construction of the national past in the news media, through
commemorative and non-commemorative coverage; and the articulation of
the shared past of journalistic communities, as part of the larger process of
reevaluation of the national past. This investigation is executed via an integra-
tion of a variety of sources, retrieved through computerized database searches
and the selection of strategic case studies. Correspondingly, the analysis of the
data intertwines measurements of frequencies and distributions of data items
alongside close textual reading.
This research scheme offers collective memory researchers and communi-
cation scholars alike a conceptual and empirical framework for understanding
journalism’s operation as a collective memory agent, as well as the reciprocal
interrelations with journalism and academia.
Shaping the Popular Representation of the Academic Debate
The most rudimentary role played by Israeli journalism in framing and fuel-
ing the “new historiography” debate was presenting it to the public, i.e. the
Mnemonic Newswork 107
“popularization of science”; the Israeli news media mediated the debate for
mass audiences who would have missed it but for its journalistic coverage.
Moreover, what is considered to be the starting point for the popular-public
phase of the debate took place on the pages of a daily newspaper: on June
10, 1994 veteran novelist Aharon Meged published in the weekend sup-
plement of Ha’aretz a fervent attack against the “new historians” entitled
“The Israeli suicidal drive.” The daily Ha’aretz was founded in 1919, and it
is widely viewed as Israel’s newspaper of record, which is read by the coun-
try’s elites. The daily is known for its dovish stands on issues of peace and
security. Meged’s article yielded a flood of supportive and critical responses
that occupied the pages of Ha’aretz’s weekend supplement in the follow-
ing months. Taking the same line, in October 1995 Ha’aretz convened a
special symposium entitled “On Zionism, post-Zionism and anti-Zionism”
that hosted five historians, a prominent rabbi and Israel’s minister of edu-
cation, who debated the value of the “new historiography” and its political
implications.
The images below capture the front pages of the cultural supplement of
the daily Yedioth Aharonoth on two sequential weeks during December 1994.
Yedioth Aharonoth was founded in 1939 and it appears in a tabloid format.
Between the late 1970s and 2011 Yedioth Aharonoth was, by far, Israel’s most
widely circulated newspaper.
The first article (Figure 5.1) features an interview with historian Benny
Morris, the scholar most closely identified with the “new historiography”
approach;46 the article’s title reads: “[they] lied to us, covered-up, plastered
and blurred.” The second article (Figure 5.2) features a rebuttal interview
published the following week. The interviewee is eminent historian Anita
Shapira, closely identified with traditional, mainstream Israeli historiography;
the article’s title reads: “there is no subject that is taboo for an historian.” An
analysis of the two interviews illuminates some of the characteristics of the
journalistic coverage of the academic debate: the first, striking feature is the
near-symmetry between the two articles, which corresponds with notions
of journalistic balance and objectivity:47 as mentioned, the two interviews
were published sequentially, presenting a grievance and its corresponding
refute. The two interviews were conducted by the same journalist (Rami
Tal), they are graphically designed in a similar manner, featuring one pho-
tograph of the interviewee positioned in a similar place on the page, and a
similar “jump” from the cover page to an inner-page. Moreover, both inter-
views feature a similar, graphically-distinct “box” at the bottom of the page,
in which each interviewee directly addresses the work and approach of the
other interviewee.
108 OREN MEYERS
Figure 5.1: 1994 Yedioth Aharonoth interview with Benny Morris
Mnemonic Newswork 109
Figure 5.2: 1994 Yedioth Aharonoth interview with Anita Shapira
110 OREN MEYERS
Other traits of the coverage demonstrate the constructed nature of jour-
nalistic newsworthiness; that is, how an academic dispute is narrated in ways
that fit common journalistic perceptions. First, the narration tends to person-
ify the conflict between the two academic approaches, as the two interviewees
are asked about their feelings towards the “other side” in the debate. More-
over, in the case of Morris, the critical scholar, the interviewer explains that
as a son of an Israeli diplomat, Morris received much of his schooling abroad;
this suggestion of Morris’ possible foreignness is balanced by a mention of
his “proper” service in the Israeli military. Another trait of the coverage that
illuminates the process of newsworthiness construction is the push towards
clarity and unambiguousness. While the two historians strive to present the
complex realities of the 1948 war, the interviewer aims to conclude which of
the two sides who fought the war was “more” at fault for the outcomes of the
war, including the Palestinian Nakba (Arabic: catastrophe).
Finally, the framing of the “new historiography” debate as a journalistic
story requires its constant anchoring within the present. For instance, the
interviewer asks Shapira: “And what about the claim that the struggle over
the mere existence of the State of Israel is not over yet, and thus it ought to be
prohibited to write anything that will cast a significant doubt on rightness of
the Zionist way?” Shapira disagrees with this assertion, but affirms the notion
that “this is not a debate over historiography, but rather about politics.” In
the following years, as the debate became a routine journalistic coverage topic
it was framed as such: coverage by Ha’aretz, as well as other Israeli news out-
lets emphasized personal rivalries and motivations, and set the debate over
the past within the discourse of the present. Furthermore, the framing of the
“new historiography” debate as a journalistic coverage topic naturally slanted
the public’s attention to sensational revelations of past atrocities and rivalries,
rather than broader conceptual arguments.
Next, I would like to offer a more general illustration of the journalistic
coverage of the debate: the following figure shows the number of all news-
paper items (including news stories, articles, columns, book reviews, and let-
ters to the editor) mentioning the words “new historians” and “Israel” that
appeared between 1994 and 2013 in the Israeli dailies Yedioth Aharonoth and
Ha’aretz.48
As can be seen in Figure 5.3, the elitist Ha’aretz provides the main jour-
nalistic platform for the discussion of the debate, in contrast to the far fewer
mentions of the term “new historians” (and “Israel”) in the more popular
Yedioth Aharonoth. The reasons for Ha’aretz’s pivotal role in the popular
mediation of the academic debate are related to the characteristics of the
newspaper, its staffers, and its readers: as an elite newspaper, Ha’aretz tends
Mnemonic Newswork 111
to deal intensively with academic issues, and it publishes long form articles.
Moreover, a number of Ha’aretz’s current and former staffers—such as Tom
Segev and the late Shabtai Teveth—are or were historians themselves, a fact
that validates their authority to mediate the academic debate. In this context,
Gutwein has argued that Ha’aretz’s contribution to the popularization of the
“new historiography” is related to the function it fulfils as “the informal, or
local newspaper of the various Israeli elites.”49
The spread of the findings across the years seems to further support the
positioning of the “new historiography” debate as a popular political dispute
over Israel’s present, rather than just an academic debate over the country’s
past: while Ha’aretz’s writers and readers gradually increased their use of the
term “new historians,” within various (Israeli) contexts from 1994 to 2000,
the use of the term declined steeply in the following four years. The vibrancy
of the debate during the mid-late 1990s, in contrast to its later marginality,
could be attributed to its public and popular traits. Most publications and
conferences dealing with “new historiography” took place during the hey-
days of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, following the 1993 signing of
the Oslo accords. In contrast, the violent outbreak of the second Intifada on
October 2000 seemed to discourage the public questioning of Israel’s past.50
On the Israeli side, the unprecedented wave of terror attacks seemed to
indicate for many that the Palestinians were never genuinely committed to
a resolution of the conflict. Notwithstanding the accuracy of this notion, it
Figure 5.3: Number of items mentioning “new historians” and “Israel,” by year
112 OREN MEYERS
seemed to directly impact the Israeli perception of the past, or rather the
Israeli willingness to rethink its national narrative. Finally, in later years, mas-
sive Israeli military campaigns and the building of the separation wall led to a
dramatic decrease in the number of Israeli civilian casualties from Palestinian
attacks. This change might have contributed to the renewed increase in the
mentions of the “new historians” in Ha’aretz. Further qualitative research,
looking into the contents of the items and the context of their publication will
be required in order to fully interpret these findings, especially in later years.
The Academic Use of Journalistic Coverage
The second research trajectory complements the previous trajectory by look-
ing at the corresponding process by which worldviews that originate in the
popular sphere migrate to the academic realm. Due to the popular-political
construction of the debate, academics who write about it rely heavily on jour-
nalistic accounts which they use as representations of the “outside world.”
In some cases, journalistic coverage is used by critical scholars in order to
illuminate, or rather expose, the assumed modes of operation of cultural and
political hegemony. An example for this practice could be found in architect
Sharon Rotbard’s White City, Black City, a book that challenges the official
historiography of Tel Aviv, “the first Hebrew city,” and traces its complex
relations with neighboring Arab Jaffa.51 One of the components of Rotbard’s
study is an extensive survey of journalistic coverage that demonstrates the
gradual cultivation of the perception of Tel Aviv as a “white city” that reflects
the ideology of European Bauhaus architecture and thus represents an antith-
esis to “black,” Middle Eastern, Arab Jaffa.
In other instances, journalistic coverage is used in an opposite manner,
as a signifier of the growing embrace of critical concepts. For instance, Uri
Ram’s sociological analysis of the “new historiography” debate opens with
a mention of several newspaper accounts that documented occurrences
that were not directly related to the academic debate, but demonstrate the
assumed rise of a new critical “post-Zionist” political culture: a new novel
that mocks national Israeli rituals of bereavement; a new play that features
the “Zionist terrorist,” a protagonist who destroys official state monuments;
and an alternative Holocaust Memorial Day school ceremony in which vic-
tims of other genocides were commemorated alongside Europe’s murdered
Jewry.52
This pattern of often selective reliance on journalistic reporting seems to
be prevalent in the academic debate over Israel’s “new historiography.” Given
how the dispute has been anchored within the context of popular memory
and current political debates, scholars tend to “recruit” journalistic discourse
Mnemonic Newswork 113
as proof for the popular widespread embrace, or rather overall rejection, of
the critical rereading of the Israeli national past.
The Journalistic Construction and Deconstruction
of National Memory Narratives
A third trajectory in this suggested research scheme explores how Israeli jour-
nalism functions as an agent of collective memory through routine news-
work. And so, this research trajectory does not focus on coverage that directly
addresses the “new historiography” debate; rather, this component of my
scheme aims to point, more broadly, at the how journalists construct and
deconstruct national memory narratives through their reporting. As men-
tioned, it is possible to position the journalistic uses of the past as a resource
across a spectrum ranging from commemorative journalism (The past as the
focus of coverage), to the use of the past as a point of reference (The past as a
yardstick), to everyday reporting on the present, in which the past is embed-
ded as tacit knowledge (The past as a curriculum).53 In order to offer an initial
operationalization of this research scheme, I chose to discuss two examples,
positioned on the two extremes of this spectrum.
Non-commemorative Journalistic Memory: When and How
Does Israeli Journalism Recollect “Operation Danny”?
On July 1948, two months after the establishment of the State of Israel,
Israeli forces captured Lydda and Ramle, two major Palestinian cities, south-
east of Tel Aviv. The military operation, named after Danny Mass, a fallen
Israeli commander, granted Israeli forces control over strategically significant
areas. Throughout the last three decades, “Operation Danny” has stood at
the center of academic and public debates for several reasons: first, it involved
many Israeli commanders, who would later occupy Israel’s political elite
(among them Yitzhak Rabin, Moshe Dayan, and Yigal Allon); second, during
“Operation Danny” Israeli forces expelled 50,000–70,000 Palestinians, the
vast majority of Lydda’s and Ramle’s populations; and finally, the occupation
of the two cities entailed the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians, which
led to an ongoing debate whether the killings were a massacre, or rather an
unfortunate and unintended outcome of the fighting.54 Within the context
of this chapter, the discussion of the non-commemorative journalistic address
of “Operation Danny” is of specific significance because the operation has
been used by “new historiography” proponents as a key example in support
of their claim that Israeli historians of previous generations, who investigated
“Operation Danny,” subordinated their scholarly work to the directives of the
national narrative.55
114 OREN MEYERS
My aim was to identify the presence of “Operation Danny” in routine,
non-commemorative journalistic coverage. To do so, I explored all mentions
of the words “Operation Danny” in Yedioth Aharonoth’s computerized data-
base between 1948–2013. The findings shed some light on the ways in which
journalism shapes memory in non-commemorative contexts. The most fre-
quent mention of “Operation Danny” was found in the real estate and clas-
sified ads sections of the newspaper, due to the fact that many Israeli towns
and cities named streets after the military operation. Other, slightly more
detailed mentions appeared in the daily’s leisure section, advising weekend
travelers on recommended tourism attractions in Lydda and Ramle, while
briefly addressing their histories.
The first, direct address of the battle I located appeared in a July 12,
1964 column entitled “this week in …” marking historical events that hap-
pened on that week. And so along Napoleon’s defeat in Waterloo, the column
mentioned that 16 years ago Lydda and Ramle were taken in a storm by
fearless Israeli commandos. The text fully embraced a heroic version of the
operation, and did not refer to the expulsion or the alleged massacre, though
it did address Israeli casualties. Four years later, Yedioth Aharonoth published
(Figure 5.4) an extended comparative political portrait of Moshe Dayan and
Yigal Allon, two 1948 commanders turned senior politicians. Regarding their
relations with Arab citizens of Israel, the writer explained:
Both men have been engaged, for many years with the Arab problem. Dayan [as
a senior IDF officer] orchestrated the “Qibya affair” [a 1953 Israeli raid in which
more than fifty Jordanian citizens were killed]; Allon beforehand, was responsi-
ble for the “Lydda affair” (as part of “Operation Danny”). But once the borders
of Israel were stabilized, both of them have strived to establish close relations
with its Arab citizens. Dayan, as minister of agriculture, gave water to every Arab
village. And Allon, as minister of labor brought a road to every Arab village.
The paragraph corresponds with Laor’s extensive analysis of the construc-
tion of the hegemonic narrative of the occupation of Lydda and Ramle and
the 1948 war in general. In Laor’s terms, the paragraph demonstrates the
combined, strategic use of “silence and chatter.”56 What is striking about this
quote is its rhetoric of addressing the “elephant in the room,”57 while suppos-
edly ignoring it. That is, its reference to information that we—the community
of newspaper readers—are assumed to be aware of, and yet do not discuss in
public. Up to that point, Yedioth Aharonoth had never addressed the expul-
sion, or the alleged massacre in Lydda. And yet, the article assumes that the
mere mention of a “Lydda affair,” its equalization to the “Qibya affair”—that
gained international notoriety and ignited worldwide criticism against Israeli
retaliation policies—and its positioning as the opposite to Allon’s current
Mnemonic Newswork 115
Figure 5.4: Yedioth Aharonoth, 1968
positive approach towards Arab citizens, is sufficient for making the point,
without addressing it directly.
Finally, a 2007 feature story published in Yedioth Aharonoth’s weekend
supplement illuminates some of the changes that Israeli journalism under-
went in its depiction of the national past. The piece by journalist Igal Sarna
narrates the story of Michael Cohen, a 17-year-old Israeli soldier who disap-
peared during the occupation of Lydda, and was later rumored to live in a
Palestinian village. Sarna’s depiction of Israel’s Independence War is all but
heroic; Sarna quotes a critical Israeli historian who terms it a “children’s war”
and explains that the war was not won because of the soldiers’ faith in Israel,
but rather due to the thoughtless and juvenile energy of teenagers. Regarding
116 OREN MEYERS
the details of “Operation Danny,” during which Cohen disappeared, Sarna
writes:
While the details of the battle in Lydda—the extensive killing of civilian pop-
ulation and the hasten expulsion—are still debated, the moment of [Cohen’s]
disappearance is accurate and lucid [in his comrades’ memories].
And so, the 2007 version of “Danny Operation” in Israel’s most popular daily
acknowledges the fractured nature of collective memory and mentions the
killings and expulsions—that were either silenced, or only eluded to in earlier
years—as common knowledge.
Commemorative Journalistic Memory: When the Past Is
at the Foreground of Reporting
To analytically qualify this component of my research scheme, I explored the
journalistic coverage of “marked” national commemorative events in which
reporters offer comprehensive descriptions of Israeli national history. Hence,
in this section of the chapter, I rely on the findings of my exploration of pho-
tographic-commemorative supplements published by Israeli dailies to mark
Israel’s Independence Day.58 These supplements provide what Karl Deutsch
defined as “national equipment,”59 since they construct shared symbols
thereby enabling Israelis to communicate through them. They are, therefore,
revealing examples of the ways by which Israeli journalism has altered its pre-
sentation of the national past through the years.
In my exploration, the term “commemorative supplement” refers to
11 newspaper supplements published by three Israeli dailies, Ma’ariv,60 Yedi-
oth Ahronoth, and Ha’aretz, marking Israel’s 20th, 25th, 30th, 40th, 50th,
and 60th anniversaries. The activation of different storytelling strategies in
the supplements reflects a spectrum of possible narration patterns. At one
extreme stands the uniform and authoritative narrative of the earliest supple-
ments. These supplements depict Israeli history through a distinctive Zion-
istic master commemorative narrative,61 and so they tell their story through
one omniscient narrator and a tight plot that places every occurrence within
one ideological context. Those early supplements tend to omit or downplay
problematic events or perceptions that contradict the supposedly-consen-
sual plot. When such events or perceptions were dealt with, the supplements
accompanied the uneasy visual representations with rhetoric that downplayed
the visual effects and positioned the problematic event within the construc-
tive context of the grand national narrative. For instance, Ma’ariv’s 1968
supplement featured a 1959 photograph (Figure 5.5) showing demonstrators
from a poor neighborhood in Haifa protesting against the state’s discrimi-
native policies against Jews of Middle Eastern origin. The photograph was
Mnemonic Newswork 117
Figure 5.5: Ma’ariv, 1968
118 OREN MEYERS
accompanied by a text aimed to amend the inner social rift by relating it to a
later, seemingly unrelated, heroic external conflict:
The demonstration in Vadi Saliv led to an increase in funding to improve con-
ditions in poor neighborhoods. The ethnic tension [between Jews of Middle
Eastern and Jews of European origin] would disappear in later days, when the
constant Arab threat blurred the differences between Jews, and gave birth to the
magnificent fraternity of May and June 1967 [the Six Day War].
At the other end of the spectrum stand some of the later supplements. These
rely mostly on the same storytelling building blocks as the early supplements,
as they display Israel’s past through similar protagonists (mainly Israeli Jews),
similar events (mainly violent aspects of the Israeli-Arab conflict), or even
the same actual photographs. But the decentered place of the narrator and
the fragmentation of the larger narratives in these later supplements offer
readings that interpret Israeli history through varied perspectives and in the
service of many causes. Hence for instance the 66 photographs featured in
Ma’ariv’s 1998 Israeli Memory supplement are accompanied by 61 short
texts, written by 61 writers, many of them not journalists, who were chosen
to write about “their” photographs for various reasons. Hence for instance,
Ra’aya Harnik whose son, Major Guny Harnik was killed in the battle of the
Beaufort fortress during the first Lebanon war, defined the 1982 photograph
of Menachem Begin (Israel’s prime minister at the time) on the Beaufort as
“the symbol of stupidity and evilness of the war, falsely called, to this day
‘Operation Peace of the Galilee.’”62
Therefore, the ways in which some of the later supplements used canonic
photographs and texts contradicts the notion that they carry an agreed upon
meaning. In fact, such later supplements demonstrate a seemingly opposi-
tional use of “national equipment.” Although those supplements commemo-
rate Israel’s national history on Israel’s Independence Day via Israeli popular
media, the cumulative outcome of their presentation stresses the inconsisten-
cies of the national narrative. Furthermore, this kind of historical presentation
questions the very existence of a national Israeli collective, or rather empha-
sizes its constructed qualities. By offering these conflicting interpretations,
such supplements reflect larger shifts within Israeli society, and transfer the
academic disputes over “old” and “new” narrations of Israel’s past to a more
popular and accessible realm.
The Construction of Journalistic Communal Memory Narratives
A comparison between how journalists position themselves within sto-
ries when they first report them, and how they view those stories and their
Mnemonic Newswork 119
coverage in retrospect, provides an insight into how communal journalistic
perceptions are maintained and changed over time. Thus, the final trajectory
of this suggested research scheme focuses on stories that the Israeli journalis-
tic community narrates about its own past. The starting point of this section
could be found in my work on the journalistic construction of the memory of
the radical and sensational weekly Haolam Hazeh (This world; 1937–1993).
The vast majority of mainstream Israeli journalists of the 1950s and 1960s
who publicly discussed Haolam Hazeh were, to say the least, appalled by the
weekly’s controversial contents, extreme (dovish, anti-religious, anti-estab-
lishment) political stands and its outlandish style. The political, professional,
and moral criticism of the Israeli journalistic mainstream against Haolam
Hazeh during those years was comprehensive, to the extent that it defined
the mainstream’s own journalistic vision: the strategic positioning of Hao-
lam Hazeh as the designated “other” of Israeli journalism of that era was
articulated in order to define the boundaries of the journalistic community,
enforce normative standards, and establish what was considered good and
bad journalism. However, precisely when Haolam Hazeh was being used to
define everything legitimate Israeli journalism opposed, it was also utilized as
a source of professional inspiration (or even straightforward imitation), a de
facto school of journalism, and an unofficial channel for exploring topics and
approaches that were unacceptable to the mainstream Israeli media. And so
Haolam Hazeh’s existence as such a paradoxical phenomenon underscored
the major inner contradictions that characterized the Israeli journalistic com-
munity during that formative era, and the ways in which such contradictions
were appeased.63
Through the last four decades Haolam Hazeh has become a functional
memory of the Israeli journalistic community. In the final decade of the week-
ly’s existence, and still more after it closed in 1993, numerous items in Israeli
new media have addressed the news outlet and its journalistic legacy. A typical
article by Tom Segev, marking Haolam Hazeh’s 50th anniversary, argued:
Haolam Hazeh was the first Israeli newspaper that routinely exposed and covered
the corruption and stupidity of some of the heads of the state. It was revolution-
ary. It undermined the blind faith that people had in their leaders. By doing so,
Haolam Hazeh served [Israeli] democracy. Most of the newspapers saw them-
selves as a part of the Zionist struggle to establish the state, and their editors saw
themselves as an integral part of its leadership. Haolam Hazeh was not the first or
the only newspaper that represented an opposition to Ben Gurion’s rule, but it
was the first to sustain its stands through investigative journalism. This gave birth
to the notion that those who read Haolam Hazeh knew more than those who
only read the other newspapers. Often, this was true … Haolam Hazeh published
what others did not know, or even worse, what others did not want to publish.64
120 OREN MEYERS
The memory of the weekly is therefore used, nowadays, to narrate profes-
sional tales about the history of Israeli journalism. Moreover, the current
dominant retrospective view of Haolam Hazeh could be viewed as a deriva-
tive of the more general tension between “old” and “new” Israeli journalists.
While articles written by veteran Israeli journalists tend to mourn the current
decline of Israeli journalism (overuse of improper Hebrew, lazy over-reliance
on interviews, and so forth), younger journalists offer a critical and contem-
porary take on the work of previous generations of Israeli journalists. Such
writers decry their predecessors’ eagerness to please high ranking political
sources, their unquestioning identification with the Zionist endeavor, their
focus on publicist writing (instead of investigative reporting), and more.
Hence, the memory of Haolam Hazeh is used within the context of this
present critical assessment of “old” Israeli journalism in three interconnected
ways. First, Haolam Hazeh’s hegemonic analysis of Israeli journalism of the
formative era provides a point of reference for similar contemporary argu-
ments. Second, the “worthy forefather” positioning is functional for current
Israeli journalists because it supposedly proves that even in the 1950s and
1960s, Israeli journalists had a viable alternative to their compliant, unpro-
fessional behavior. And finally, the “worthy forefather” positioning provides
a sort of a professional “litmus test” against which the current work of Israeli
journalists can be evaluated.
Conclusion
This chapter offered a research scheme designated to investigate the mne-
monic role of journalists in the rereading of the national past. The conclu-
sions drawn from this Israeli-focused inquiry could inform the study of the
role of journalism in similar debates over the rereading of national pasts.
For instance, the German late 1980s “Historians dispute” (Historikerstreit)
erupted when the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published a speech
by historian Ernst Nolte claiming that Nazi World War 2 atrocities were a
“defensive reaction” to Stalinist mass crimes. Nolte’s arguments were fiercely
countered by philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who also used a journalistic
platform: the weekly Die Zeit. Following this, Germany’s “Historians dis-
pute” continued to unfold in the mass media.65 Similarly, the 1993–1995
heated debate over the Smithsonian’s Enola Gay exhibit was shaped, to a large
extent, through its extensive journalistic coverage.66
As demonstrated throughout this chapter, overlooking the pivotal role
of journalistic discourse in such re-readings of the collective pasts hampers
the effort to comprehend the full scope and nature of such cultural and
Mnemonic Newswork 121
political phenomena. Moreover, future studies ought to implement a com-
parative approach towards the study of the role of journalism in framing
debates over the national past. Such a comparative inquiry could illuminate
the ways in which the characteristics of specific media systems, academic
cultures and national histories shape different rereading of the collective
past.
Beyond the “horizontal” expansion of this research scheme towards the
study of additional interpretations of the collective past within other national
contexts, this research scheme could benefit from a “vertical” expansion,
tracking the continuous relationships between academic and journalistic nar-
rations of the past. As discussed, the term “new historiography” was coined
by Morris in 1988, and the academic debate gained it public momentum
throughout the 1990s. Thus, further research will need to track the ongoing
development of the interrelations between scholars and journalists in terms
of their accounting of the Israeli past. According to Myers,67 “Post-Post-
Zionist” historians have shifted the focus of attention from political history
to urban, cultural, and gender history. Instead of accepting Zionist ideology
or rejecting it, such scholars view Zionism in a more complex and fragmented
fashion. Following this, further research on the role of journalism in shaping
the representation of national histories—in Israel and elsewhere—should ask
whether and how journalism has embraced changing scholarly interpretations
of the past. How did journalists recalibrate—if at all—their role as narrators
of the past, during an era when Israeli, German or American once-radical
“new historiographies” have been mainstreamed, or rather sidelined, due to
changing academic, political and cultural circumstances?
Finally, further studies of the role of journalism in processes of rereading
the collective past will have to address the ongoing changes in the landscape
of the news media. The underlying assumption guiding the study of jour-
nalists as agents of collective memory is that journalism is executed through
the operation of occupational and interpretive communities of journalists;
as mentioned, such communities share a common heritage of memories and
lessons that are cultivated in ways that fortify the status of the journalistic
community. But through the last two decades, this given has been challenged
in various, fundamental ways. The dire crisis of traditional news media, across
the Western world undermines the ability of journalists to operate as a vibrant
and active community. Correspondingly, social media have become a domi-
nant realm for the discussion of the meaning of events, including, of course,
past events. Therefore, any expansion of this research scheme will require a
close examination of the influence of the crisis of the news media and the rise
of social media on the rereading of the past.
122 OREN MEYERS
Notes
1. I thank Ma’ariv and Yedioth Ahronoth for granting me permission to incorporate the
images featured in figures 1–3 and 5 in this chapter. I thank Shiran Simonov for her
research assistance and Eitan Bar-Yosef, Avner Ben-Amos, Oren Livio, Eyal Zand-
berg, Barbie Zelizer and the editors of this book for their insightful comments on
previous versions of this chapter. The research discussed in this chapter was supported
by a grant (509/16) from the Israel Science Foundation.
2. Jeffrey K. Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi and Daniel Levy, “Introduction,” in The
Collective Memory Reader, eds. Jeffrey K. Olick and Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi (New
York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011), 3–39.
3. Barbie Zelizer, Covering the Body: The Kennedy Assassination, the Media, and the
Shaping of Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Carolyn
Kitch, Pages from the Past: History and Memory in American Magazines (Chapel Hill,
NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Jill A. Edy, Troubled Pasts: News and
the Collective Memory of Social Unrest (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press,
2006); Barbie Zelizer and Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt, eds. Journalism and Memory
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
4. Barbie Zelizer, “Why Memory’s Work on Journalism does not Reflect Journalism’s
Work on Memory,” Memory Studies 1, no. 1 (2008): 79–87.
5. Oren Meyers, “Memory,” in International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory
and Philosophy, ed. Klaus Bruhn Jensen (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016),
1–10.
6. Michael Schudson, “Lives, Laws and Language: Commemorative versus Non-com-
memorative Forms of Effective Public Memory,” The Communication Review 2.1
(1997): 3–17.
7. Moti Neiger, Oren Meyers and Eyal Zandberg (Eds.), On Media Memory: Collective
Memory in a New Media Age (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
8. Barbie Zelizer, “Journalism and the Academy,” in Handbook of Journalism Stud-
ies, eds. Karin Wahl-Jorgensen and Thomas Hanitzsch (New York, NY: Routledge,
2009), 29–41.
9. Oren Meyers and Roei Davidson, “Interviewing Interviewers: Collecting, Analyzing
and Generalizing from Occupational Life Histories of Journalists,” The Communica-
tion Review (2017): 123–144.
10. Rick Perlstein, “If Journalists Listened to Media Scholars,” University of Chicago
Magazine, August 2004, http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0408/features/scholars.
shtml (accessed December 30, 2017).
11. C. W. Anderson, “Drawing Boundary Lines between Journalism and Sociology,
1895–2000,” in Boundaries of Journalism: Professionalism, Practices and Participa-
tion, eds. Matt Carlson and Seth C. Lewis (London: Routledge, 2015), 201–217.
12. Zelizer, “Why Memory’s Work on Journalism,” 79–87.
13. Oz Almog, Farwell to “Srulik”: Changing Values Among the Israeli Elite (Haifa: Uni-
versity of Haifa Press, 2004), 303–342 (Hebrew); Rafi Nets-Zehngut, The Israeli
Memory of the 1948 Palestinian Exodus/Nakba (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan,
forthcoming).
14. Nicholas Gilewicz, “To Embody and to Embalm: The Uses of Collective Memory in
the Final Editions of Failed Newspapers,” Journalism 16, no. 5 (2014): 672–687.
Mnemonic Newswork 123
15. James W. Carey, “Why and How? The Dark Continent of American Journalism,” in
Reading the News, eds. Robert Karl Manoff and Michael Schudson (New York, NY:
Pantheon, 1986), 149–196.
16. Zelizer, Covering the Body.
17. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
[1951] 1992).
18. Michael Schudson, “Journalism as a Vehicle of Non-commemorative Cultural Mem-
ory,” in Journalism and Memory, eds. Barbie Zelizer and Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 85–96.
19. Mordechai Bar-On, Smoking Borders: Studies in the History of the State of Israel
(Jerusalem: Yad Yitshak Ben Tsvi, 2001) (Hebrew).
20. Meyers, “Memory,” 1–10.
21. Neiger, Meyers and Zandberg (Eds.), On Media Memory.
22. Moti Neiger, Eyal Zandberg and Oren Meyers, “Reversed Memory: Commemo-
rating the Past through Coverage of the Present,” in Journalism and Memory, eds.
Barbie Zelizer and Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt (London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2014), 113–128.
23. Carey, “Why and How?,” 151–152.
24. Oren Meyers, “Memory in Journalism and the Memory of Journalism: Israeli Jour-
nalists and the Constructed Legacy of Haolam Hazeh,” Journal of Communication
57, no. 4 (2007): 719–739.
25. The scope and focus of this study does not allow me to discuss the specific histories
of non-mainstream and non-Hebrew Israeli journalism, see Yariv Tsfati and Oren
Meyers, “Journalists in Israel,” in The Global Journalist: News People Around the
World, eds. David Hugh Weaver and Wei Wu (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2012),
443–457.
26. Oren Meyers, “Israeli Journalism during the State’s Formative Era: Between Ideolog-
ical Affiliation and Professional Consciousness” Journalism History (2005): 88–97.
27. Tsfati and Meyers, “Journalists in Israel,” 443–457.
28. Daniel Dor, Intifada Hits the Headlines: How the Israeli Press Misreported the
Outbreak of the Second Palestinian Uprising (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press).
29. Ignacio Siles and Pablo J. Boczkowski, “Making Sense of the Newspaper Crisis: A
Critical Assessment of Existing Research and an Agenda for Future Work,” New
Media and Society 14 (2012): 1375–1394.
30. Uzi Benziman, “Honey, the Newspapers have Shrunk,” The Seventh Eye, December 4,
2013, http://www.the7eye.org.il/87641 (Hebrew).
31. Benny Morris, “The New Historiography: Israel Confronts its Past,” Tikkun 12, no.
2 (1988, November-December): 19–24.
32. Rafi Nets-Zehngut, “Origins of the Palestinian Refugee Problem: Changes in the
Historical Memory of Israelis/Jews1949–2004,” Journal of Peace Research 48, no. 2
(2011): 235–248.
33. Uri Ram, Time of the “Post”: Nationalism and the Politics of Knowledge in Israel (Tel
Aviv: Resling, 2006) (Hebrew).
34. Yoram Bar-Gal, “On ‘Tribe Elders,’ ‘Successors,’ and the ‘New Ones’ in Israeli Geog-
raphy,” Ofakim Begeographia 51 (2017): 7–39 (Hebrew).
35. Sharon Rotbard, White City, Black City (Tel-Aviv: Babel, 2005) (Hebrew).
124 OREN MEYERS
36. Ilan Pappe, “The New History of the 1948 War,” Te’oryah u-vikoret, 3 (1993):
99–114 (Hebrew); Baruch Kimmerling, “History, Here and Now,” in From Vision
to Revision: A Hundred Years of Historiography of Zionism, eds. Yechiam Weitz (Jeru-
salem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1997), 257–274 (Hebrew); Benny Morris, Jews
and Arabs in Palestine/Israel 1936–1956 (Tel Aviv, Israel: Am Oved Publishers, 2000)
(Hebrew).
37. Danny Gutwein, “‘New Historiography’ or the Privatization of Memory,” in From
vision to Revision: A Hundred Years of Historiography of Zionism, eds. Yechiam Weitz
(Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1997), 311–343 (Hebrew); Derek J. Penslar
and Anita Shapira, Israeli Historical Revisionism: From Left and Right (London:
Routledge, 2003).
38. Mordechai Bar-On, “What Happened to the ‘New History’ in the Turn of the Mil-
lennium?,” Iyunim betkumat Israel 15 (2005): 53–81 (Hebrew).
39. Assaf Likhovski, “Post-Post-Zionist Historiography,” Israel Studies 15, no. 2 (2010):
1–23.
40. Laurence J. Silberstein, Postzionism: A Reader (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univer-
sity Press, 2008).
41. Ram, Time of the “Post”: Nationalism and the Politics of Knowledge in Israel
(Hebrew).
42. Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American His-
torical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
43. Hayden White, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,” Critical
Inquiry 7, no. 1 (1980): 5–27.
44. Morris, Jews and Arabs in Palestine/Israel 1936–1956 (Tel Aviv, Israel: Am Oved
Publishers, 2000) (Hebrew).
45. Anita Shapira and Ora Wiskind-Elper, “Politics and Collective Memory: The Debate
over the ‘New Historians’,” History and Memory 7, no. 1 (1995): 9–40; Bar-On,
“What Happened to the ‘New History’ in the Turn of the Millennium?,” Iyunim
betkumat Israel 15, 53–81 (Hebrew).
46. A discussion of the specific case of Morris’ changing ideological agendas is beyond the
scope of this chapter, see Ari Shavit, “Waiting for the Barbarians,” Ha’aretz, January
6, 2004, http://www.haaretz.co.il/misc/1.936900 (Hebrew).
47. Michael Schudson, “The Objectivity Norm in American Journalism,” Journalism 2,
no. 2 (2001): 149–170.
48. Ha’aretz’s computerized database does not include items that appeared before 1994.
Yedioth Aharonoth’s database includes two additional mentions of the terms—in 1989
and 1990.
49. Gutwein, “‘New Historiography’ or the Privatization of Memory,” in From Vision
to Revision: A Hundred Years of Historiography of Zionism, eds. Yechiam Weitz
(Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center), 339.
50. Neri Livneh, “The Rise and Fall of Post-Zionism,” Ha’aretz, September 21, 2001,
https://www.haaretz.co.il/misc/1.734630 (Hebrew).
51. Rotbard, White City, Black City (Tel-Aviv: Babel).
52. Uri Ram, “Zionism and Post-Zionism: The Sociological Context of the Historians’
Debate,” in From Vision to Revision: A Hundred Years of Historiography of Zion-
ism, eds. Yechiam Weitz (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1997), 275–276
(Hebrew).
Mnemonic Newswork 125
53. Neiger, Zandberg and Meyers, “Reversed Memory: Commemorating the Past
through Coverage of the Present,” in Journalism and Memory, eds. Barbie Zelizer
and Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 113–128.
54. Alon Kadish, Avraham Sela and Arnon Golan, The Occupation of Lydda, July 1948
(Tel Aviv: The Ministry of Defense Publishing, 2000) (Hebrew); Ari Shavit, My
Promised Land (New York, NY: Random House, 2013).
55. Yitzhak Laor, We are Writing You, Homeland (Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hameucad Pub-
lishing, 1995) (Hebrew); Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem
Revisited (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
56. Laor, We are Writing You, Homeland (Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hameucad Publishing),
121 (Hebrew).
57. Eviatar Zerubavel, The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
58. Oren Meyers, The Subversive Potential of Commemorative Journalism, Paper pre-
sented at the Memory Studies Association Conference (2017).
59. Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foun-
dations of Nationality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966), 66.
60. Ma’ariv was founded in 1948, and until the early 1980s it was Israel’s most widely
circulated newspaper.
61. Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National
Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
62. Ra’aya Harnik, “Israeli Memory,” Ma’ariv, April 28, 1998, 66 (Hebrew).
63. Oren Meyers, “Contextualizing Alternative Journalism: Haolam Hazeh and the Birth
of Critical Israeli Newsmaking,” Journalism Studies 9, no. 3 (2008): 375–391.
64. Ton Segev, “Dear Reader,” Koteret Rashit, May 13, 23 (Hebrew).
65. Anson Rabinbach (Ed.), “Special Issue on the Historikerstreit,” New German Cri-
tique 44 (1988): 1–192.
66. Tony Capaccio and Uday Mohan, “Missing the Target,” American Journalism Review
(1995, July-August), 18–20.
67. David Natan Myers, “Between Israel and the Nations: Reflections on the State of
Jewish Historical Scholarship in Israel,” Tsiyon 74 (2008/9), 345 (Hebrew).
