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Victimhood Discourse in
Contemporary Israel
Edited by Ilan Peleg
LEXINGTON BOOKS
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
v
Table of Contents
1Hegemonic Victimhood Discourse in Contemporary Israel and
Beyond: Conceptual Introduction and an Analytical Framework 1
Ilan Peleg
2Zionism and Victimization: From Rejection to Acceptance 15
Moshe Berent
3Israeli Prime Ministers: Transforming the Victimhood Discourse 37
Yael S. Aronoff
4Embracing Victimhood: How 1967 Transformed Holocaust
Memory and Jewish Identity in Israel and the United States 57
Daniel Navon
5Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness:
Incongruous Legacies 85
Yechiel Klar
6The Politics of Victimhood and the Palestinian Collective Identity 123
Ido Zelkovitz
7Transforming Victimhood: From Competitive Victimhood to
Sharing Superordinate Identity 137
Irit Keynan
8The Politics of Victimhood: A Vision of an Apocalypse 153
Ruth Amir
9Moving beyond the Victim-Victimizer Dichotomy: Reflecting
on Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue 177
Maya Kahanoff, Itamar Lurie, and Shafiq Masalha
Index 207
85
Chapter Five
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli
Collective Consciousness
Incongruous Legacies
Yechiel Klar1
In memory of Yonat Klar, my beloved spouse and life-long partner in an
endeavor to understand the presence of the Holocaust in our lives.
Victimhood is indubitably a focal part of the Jewish historical legacy.2The
notion that Jews have been destined for perpetual victimhood is ingrained,
for example, in the extremely chilling verse from the Passover Haggadah,
which is recited (in fact, sung) annually during the Passover festival (the
Seder) in almost all Jewish homes throughout the world. It says: “For not just
one alone has risen against us to destroy us but in every generation, they rise
against us to destroy us.” The actuality of this verse, which is thought to have
been composed around the fifth century, seems to be everlasting. It suggests
both an unnerving summation of Jewish history and an equally unsettling
prophetic vision of the Jewish future for generations to come. In this chapter
I argue that this sense of historical victimhood carries with it several often
contradictory legacies. The chapter travels through Jewish history, starting
with the formative epopée of the enslavement and exodus from Egypt and the
three victimhood and liberation legacies that emanated from these events and
their effects on Jewish life throughout the generations. It discusses the Holo-
caust, being the most defining event in modern Jewish history, and it shows
how the Holocaust evolved from what was considered a negation of Israeli-
ness into one of the corner stones of the Israeli identity. The chapter then
delineates the four existential and moral obligations that the Holocaust has
imparted on Israeli reality and examines the relations between these post-
Chapter 586
Holocaust obligations and the traditional Jewish legacies of victimhood. It
then presents several empirical studies in the field of social psychology that
have examined the relationship between two differing psychological orienta-
tions to historical victimhood (i.e., perpetual ingroup victimhood [PIVO],
and fear of victimizing [FOV]) and two recent highly debated issues related
to the treatment of the other that have divided Israeli opinion: policies toward
the African asylum seekers and Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians.
VICTIMIZATION AND THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT: THREE
DIFFERENT LEGACIES AND THEIR REFLECTIONS IN JEWISH
HISTORY
The Biblical story about the ancient Israelites’ enslavement and oppression in
Egypt and their flight (exodus) to the Sinai desert en route to the Land of
Israel forms the core of Jewish (and later Israeli) collective memory and
identity. It has also become an almost universal paradigm for any group (e.g.,
national, ethnic, religious, and social) seeking liberation from victimization;
oppression, and exploitation.3
This is the story, in brief. After a severe famine in Canaan, the family of
Jacob, one of the founding fathers of the Israelite nation, emigrates to Egypt,
where unbeknownst to them, Joseph, Jacob’s long-lost son, is the de-facto
ruler (as the deputy to Pharaoh, the Egyptian king). Initially they are greeted
very well, invited to settle in “the best of the land of Egypt” (Genesis,
45:18) but years later (as would often happen in Jewish history), a new
Pharaoh “who did not know Joseph” (Exodus, 1:8) comes to power. The
Israelites are then placed in oppressive slavery, and Pharaoh even decrees
that all newborn Israelite boys should be murdered, which would completely
annihilate the Israelite people. Moses and Aaron are sent by God to liberate
the Israelites by leading them across the sea into the desert after the ten
plagues are inflicted on the Egyptians and their armies are swallowed up by
the waves. In the desert, God gives them the Torah (i.e., the Hebrew scrip-
tures) and for forty years they wander until a new generation that had not
been corrupted by slavery emerges while the older generation, the desert
generation, perishes. Then, they are instructed by God to conquer the Ca-
naanite tribes in the Land of Israel.
It might be argued that the choice of this enslavement narrative as the
account of the birth of a nation is quite unusual. Yet this story of victimhood
and redemption can be construed in three different ways, each of which have
different and even contradictory lessons and obligations for future genera-
tions. In fact, these three incongruous construals are found in the Biblical text
itself.
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness 87
The Perpetual Victimhood Legacy: The Biblical Roots of the
Perpetual Victimhood Legacy
One (rather pessimistic) legacy emanating from the victimization in Egypt
and the Exodus story is to view it as simply the first chapter in a litany of
Jewish oppression and persecution. Although Pharaoh and his army were
drowned in the sea, an endless line of fearsome enemies were already prowl-
ing, ready to pounce. The first of these were the Amalekites, a nomadic tribe
which viciously attacked the Israelites when they were in the desert. In re-
sponse, God issued a commandment, effective not only for the contempora-
neous Israelites but also for generations to come: “Remember what Amalek
did to you along the way when you came out from Egypt, how he met you
along the way and attacked among you all the stragglers at your rear when
you were faint and weary; and he did not fear God” (Deut, 5:18). “Therefore
it shall come about when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your
surrounding enemies, in the land which the Lord your God gives you as an
inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under
heaven; you must not forget” (Deut, 25:19). In Jewish lore, Amalek became
the incarnation of all the future enemies of the Jewish people throughout the
generations. Annually, for more than two thousand years on the Sabbath
before the festival of Purim, in which the Jewish victory over their enemy
Haman in ancient Persia is celebrated (Haman is considered to be a descen-
dent of the Amalekites), Jews are commanded to recite these blotting out the
memory of Amalek verses in public and that particular Sabbath is known as
the Sabbath of remembrance (Shabbat Zechor). Thus, the overriding concern
reflected in this reading is protecting the safety of the ingroup against its
existential (and eternal) enemies. Thus, Pharaoh simply became one figure in
a long line of historical enemies.
Perpetual Victimhood Legacy: Its Impact on Jewish History
For most of their existence, Jews could only envisage freedom as a future
utopia. During the festival of Passover that commemorates the Exodus, they
recite hopefully every year: “This year we are slaves; next year we will be
free people.” However, the real hope for freedom and redemption, as rooted
in the traditional Jewish framework, concerns a future Messianic era when
Jewish misery (diaspora life and subjugation) will come to an end. Tragical-
ly, Jewish history with its short-lived stretches of independence or relatively
unbothered community life can be portrayed as a series of calamities with
some brief moments of independence and autonomy. These catastrophes
include the destruction of the first Jewish temple in Jerusalem by the Babylo-
nians and the exile to Babylonia (in 586 BCE) which was preceded by the
captivity, exile and disappearance from history of the ten Israelites tribe in
Chapter 588
Assyria. Later, in the aftermath of the destruction of the second temple in
Jerusalem by the Romans (70 CE), roughly one million Jews revolted in
Judea which further thinned the Jewish holdings in their land. Countless Jews
perished, and tens of thousands went to exile. The Jews who were now
dispersed in the diaspora experienced various forms of persecution through-
out the centuries, including expulsions, forced conversions, religious dis-
crimination, offensive and restrictive decrees and accusations (e.g., blood
libels), harassment, and the destruction of entire communities. The massacres
and other attacks on Jews in Germany and France during the Crusades, the
expulsion of the entire Jewish community from Spain in 1492 and later from
Portugal as well as the pogroms in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russia,
culminated in the Holocaust during WWII, when the Germans aimed to
exterminate the entire Jewish people to the furthermost reaches of the Reich.
In most Jewish eyes, Jewish existence has always been under constant major
threat.
In depicting their survival strategy against these persistent adversities,
Jews have traditionally adopted the ninth-century phrase that the Jewish
people can be likened to “a solitary sheep surrounded by seventy wolves”
(Midrash Tanhuma, 5, 10:11). This is because the Jewish predicament as a
people among the gentile nations of the world is fragile and torn (and will
always be until the coming of Messiah) and because the gentile nations’
hatred of the Jews is ingrown and therefore permanent. This is simply be-
cause “Esau hates Jacob.”4Thus, sitting around the Passover table, in the
relative safety of their homes, Jews could only pray to God to take revenge
upon the gentiles: “Pour out Your wrath upon those who do not know You
and upon the governments which do not call upon Your Name. . . . Pour out
Your fury upon them; let the fierceness of Your anger overtake them. . . .
Pursue them in indignation and destroy them from under Your heavens.”
However, starting in the third century, the Jewish religious leadership devel-
oped a highly cautious and docile survival strategy that consisted of never
antagonizing, rebelling or resisting the host gentile nations among whom
they resided. This attitude was maintained by the Jewish Rabbinical leader-
ship up to the twentieth century.5As late as 1978 in the independent State of
Israel, Rabbi Eliezer Schach, the leading ultra-Orthodox figure of the time,
wrote to then–Prime Minister Menachem Begin, warning him against taking
overly hard-line positions in the peace negotiations with Egypt (under US
auspices). Rabbi Schach wrote that the sages of the Talmud “thanks to divine
inspiration, knew that the nations’ hatred for the nation of Israel is an eternal,
permanent hatred” and that the sages of the Talmud “forbade us to rebel
against the nations of the world and storm the wall, because they sought the
welfare of our people. [The gentiles] should not be provoked even if justice is
on our side, because this will pile hatred on top of hatred.”6
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness 89
However, the belief in the perpetual hatred of the Jews by the gentile
nations of the world should not in itself necessarily lead to such passive or
docile strategy. The traditional Jewish response of never antagonizing or
standing up to the gentile nations is reflected the assumption that Jews as a
collective are weak and defenseless. However, in other situations, the belief
in the overriding external hatred of the ingroup led to much more proactive
and even militant reactions.
The Separateness Legacy: The Biblical Roots of the Separateness
Legacy
While in the desert, preparing to enter Canaan (soon to be termed the Land of
Israel), the Israelites were given a series of strict orders concerning the fate
of the idolatrous seven Canaanite nations, the current inhabitants of the land:
“and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have
defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with
them, and show them no mercy” (Deut, 7:2). The reason for this harsh in-
junction differs considerably from the commandment to wage eternal war
against the Amalekites. In fact, the Canaanites did nothing wrong to the
Israelites to deserve such a stark fate. What motivates this injunction is the
fear that the Israelites would be affected by their Canaanite neighbors and
would imitate their idolatrous religious customs: “They shall not dwell in thy
land, lest they make thee sin against me; for if thou serve their gods, it will
surely be a snare unto thee” (Exodus, 23:33). To ensure the separateness of
the Israelites and to keep their religious integrity uncorrupted by the current
idolatrous inhabitants of the land, the most inhuman solution is prescribed;
namely, “clearing” the land from the religiously inferior people. The book of
Joshua provides a depiction of the swift campaign in which the Israelites (led
by Joshua Bin Nun) conquered the land while exterminating the Canaanite
nations.
Did the Israelites perpetrate the merciless genocide of the Canaanite
tribes just forty years after their liberation from slavery and near-annihilation
in Egypt? The historical validity of the “conquest of the land” story is highly
questionable.7However, regardless of the historical reality of these stories,
the harsh and merciless stipulations to totally destroy the Canaanites were
part of the sanctified Torah commandments. Moreover, the Israelites were
explicitly instructed to keep their distinction, and not to follow the gentile
customs (e.g., “Do not follow the ways of Egypt where you once lived, nor of
Canaan to where I am bringing you. Do not follow their customs”; Leviticus,
18:1–3). Thus, spiritual, social, and physical separation from the gentiles
became major part of Jewish theology and practice.
Chapter 590
The Separateness Legacy: Its Impact on Jewish History
For ordinary Jews living in the diaspora as powerless and persecuted minor-
ities, and sometimes as aliens under the protection of local rulers, there was
nothing more detached from their tangible reality than the hypothetical dis-
cussions of whether or not the Canaanites and idolatrous gentiles would be
permitted to enter the Land of Israel after their own return to the land. This
was mainly a matter of debate for Halachic scholars. For example, when
relating to the passage from Exodus that “They shall not dwell in thy land,”
the Rambam (Maimonides, 1125–1204), one of the most influential Jewish
figures in medieval Judaism, made a sharp distinction between present times
“when Israel is exiled among the nations” and the future Messianic era when
“Israel has the stronger hand.” As for the present (or “normal”) time, he
instructed the Jews to show compassion and kindness to non-Jews living in
in the Land of Israel, such as to let them collect the leftover crops from the
field and even to greet them in peace (although not excessively so) on their
holidays. However, in Messianic days idolatrous gentiles will not be allowed
to reside or stay in the land, even temporarily, so not to religiously and
morally corrupt the Jews.8
More broadly, however, being distinct and separate on almost all spiritu-
al, social and physical dimensions from the gentiles became one of the tenets
of Jewish life. A myriad of rules and practices governing daily life were
devised for this purpose. For example, Jews were prohibited from eating
bread baked by a non-Jew, food cooked by a non-Jew, or drinking wine made
by a non-Jew and they were encouraged not to live in the same area as non-
Jews. Apart from kosher concerns reflected in these prohibitions, the explicit
goal of these injunctions was to minimize intermingling with non-Jews
which could eventually lead to intermarriage.9
The notion of separateness from the gentiles (as an essential prerequisite
for the survival of the Jewish faith and Jewish people) was extended by some
Jewish schools of thoughts to mean inherent supremacist separateness. One
of its prime exponents, the medieval Jewish poet and philosopher Rabbi
Yehuda HaLevi, 1075–1141, argued in his book The Kuzari that the whole
purpose of the creation of the world was to preserve and study the Torah. The
Jewish people were inherently chosen to be the guardians and students of the
Torah, and therefore are entitled to a preferential position in the world over
all other peoples.10 In the early twentieth century, the highly influential Rab-
bi Abraham Hakohen Kook wrote that:
The difference between the Jewish soul, in all its independence, inner desires,
longings, character and standing, and the soul of all the Gentiles, on all of their
levels, is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a man and
the soul of an animal, for the difference in the latter case is one of quantity,
while the difference in the first case is one of essential quality.11
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness 91
Given all the difficulties inherent to these uneasy distinctions, it is worth
noting that most of them were put forward when the Jews in the Diaspora
were routinely vilified, humiliated and victimized. Thus, this notion of “spiri-
tual superiority” can be seen as a form of symbolic compensation for their
victimization. The real issue in contemporary terms is what happens to these
supremacist approaches when the protagonists themselves in positions of
power and control over others.
The Caring for the Oppressed “Strangers” Legacy: The Biblical
Roots of the Caring for the Oppressed “Strangers” Legacy
A quite different (and clearly more optimistic) reading of the Biblical story
of Egyptian victimization and Exodus is to see it as a story of transition from
slavery in “the house of bondage” to freedom, and from affliction and misery
to affluence and happiness. In this spirit, Moses promises the newly liberated
Israelites that they will prosper and be blessed in their new, promised land:
“There also you and your households shall eat before the Lord your God, and
rejoice in all your undertakings in which the Lord your God has blessed you”
(Deut, 12:7). Redemption can be defined as a particularistic experience bene-
fiting only the liberated slaves. However, the message for the newly liberated
slaves does not end there. The wandering Israelites in the desert are ordered
time and again to remember their past victimization: “You shall remember
that you were a slave in the land of Egypt” (Deut, 15:5), and this command-
ment to remember is always provided with a specific purpose, which is to
acknowledge that as liberated people they have a solemn obligation to care
for less fortunate others, and mainly those who are not their brothers. That is,
liberation from victimhood also entails some universalistic responsibilities.
This is stated time and again: “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress
him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus, 22:21); “You
shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a
stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus, 23:9);
“So show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt”
(Deut, 10:19); “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the
native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in
the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus, 19:34). The ban
against vindictive and hateful acts is even extended to the Israelites’ past
victimizers, the Egyptians: “you shall not detest an Egyptian, because you
were an alien in his land” (Deut, 23:7). Thus, liberation from victimhood
should bring with it, according to these Biblical stipulations, a special under-
standing of the pain and misery of the others, even those they have good
reasons to resent.12
Chapter 592
The Caring for the Oppressed “Stranger” Legacy: Its Impact on
Jewish History
Throughout most of their diaspora existence, when Jews lived in segregated
(and often despised, and frightened) communities, the primary value of Jew-
ish life was caring for the welfare of other members of the Jewish community
(and sometimes also for other Jewish communities), which was termed aha-
vat Yisrael.13 However, when during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
while some of this isolation had waned, many European (and later north
American) Jews became actively involved in socialist movements, whose
missions were universal solidarity and caring for the poor, the exploited and
those deprived of their rights (e.g., the proletariat), regardless of their group
affiliation. Traditional Jewish values, such as caring for the oppressed were a
major underlying force in their mobilization. 14 Another late-nineteenth-
century Jewish faction ideal was the Zionist movement,15 which defined
itself as a national liberation movement that aimed to distance itself from the
traditional views of the Jewish fate as insular and entangled with perpetual
victimhood. The Zionists redefined the Exodus as a transition from victim-
hood to liberation and normalization, “to be a free nation in our land” (as
expressed in Hatikva, the national anthem) or to accomplish: “the natural
right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other
nations, in their own sovereign State” (from the Israeli Declaration of Inde-
pendence). Many Zionists detested what they perceived as the victimhood-
saturated diaspora mentality. For example, in a short but highly influential
literary work by writer Haim Hazaz, titled “The Sermon” (Hadrasha) pub-
lished in 1942, Yudke, the protagonist, attacks the Jewish tendency to pas-
sively and timidly accept calamities without adopting a more proactive ap-
proach. In fact, many of the first generations of Zionists viewed themselves
as “new Jews,” as the descendants of the heroic King David, and the heirs of
the fearless Maccabees, rather than the sons and daughters of the Diaspora
Jews, who were likened to the “desert generation” in Exodus.16
The yearning for national normalization was associated with the drive to
view Jewish liberation in a broader, open, and more universalistic frame-
work. Theodore Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, saw Zionism as
part of a more progressive ideology that would not only provide a solution to
the “Jewish problem,” but also create a model for resolving social problems
and improving the lot of other disadvantaged groups.17 Similarly, the Social-
ist streams in the Zionist movement argued that the movement should be a
part of the global struggle for liberation of the proletariat and other subjugat-
ed groups internationally and express its solidarity with other underprivi-
leged, browbeaten, and suffering groups.18
For David Ben-Gurion, the leading Zionist statesman, Jewish national
redemption should be accompanied by an equally important mission to be-
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness 93
come “a people of virtue” (Am Segula) or a “light unto the nations” (Isaiah,
42:6). In a letter written after the 1967 war to Charles de Gaulle in response
to hostile remarks made by the French president, Ben-Gurion referred at
length to the universalistic interpretation of the Exodus story: “We are of
course proud of the fact that the ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ was said for
the first time in our Bible, and that it is followed by the words: ‘And if a
stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger
that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou
shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt; I am the
Lord your God’ (Leviticus, 19: 33–34). Such a law did not exist even in the
Athens of Pericles, Socrates and Plato.”19
Apart from the Zionist movement, in North American Jewry, mainly
among reform and conservative, denominations Tikkun Olam (“restoration of
the world”) is a major value, which refers to bearing responsibility for the
welfare of society as a whole, or even the world in general, for groups that
are persecuted, wronged, discriminated against, or marginalized.20
The Three Legacies: Conclusion
Three different historical legacies can be said to have emerged from the
Jewish narrative of their victimization in Egypt and their liberation from it.
The first two legacies, perpetual victimhood and supremacist separateness,
are group-centered (i.e., particularistic). They are focused on the protection
of the group and its unique identity from non-Jewish “others.” They entail
two commitments for Jewish people. The first is to continuously be on the
alert for lurking [gentile] enemies, and to always remain adamantly separate
and distinct from the [sinful and morally inferior] gentiles. The third legacy,
caring for oppressed strangers, is more universalistic and other-oriented. The
commitment it entails is to be kind and empathic to others who are victims or
currently suffering, even if they are not one’s brethren. These legacies have
been transmitted throughout the thousands of years of Jewish history, albeit
in varying intensities in different Jewish schools of thought and at different
historical periods. To weigh the influence of these three incompatible orien-
tations on contemporary Jews and Israelis, we must first pause to ponder the
Holocaust, which is the most defining event in modern Jewish history, and
consider its effects on current Israelis and their awareness of victimhood. Has
the Holocaust, which is unmatched in its scope and totality with any previous
event in Jewish history, changed or instead reinforced the traditional concep-
tions and legacies of Jewish victimhood and liberation? Before turning to this
issue, we need to briefly consider the evolution of the Holocaust conscious-
ness in the Israeli collective mindset, from the antithesis of the Israeli essence
to a major component of its core identity.
Chapter 594
THE HOLOCAUST: FROM “WHAT ISRAELINESS IS NOT” TO
“WHAT ISRAELINESS IS ALL ABOUT”
From the end of WWII until 1949, the first year of the new State, Israel
absorbed about 350,000 Holocaust survivors. One out of every three Israelis
was a Holocaust survivor at that time.21 Nevertheless, over the course of this
decade and a half, the role of the Holocaust in Israeli public consciousness
was relatively marginal. The Holocaust at that time was not the defining
feature of the Israeli collective identity. Veteran Israelis (those who had
immigrated prior to WWII, or were born there) “knew and did not know
about the Holocaust; ached and did not ache given the disaster.” 22 This
emotional divide existed despite the fact that most of these long term or
native Israelis came from exactly the same countries and communities as the
survivors, most of them had lost their families there, and many had relatives,
friends and acquaintances among the survivors who managed to reach Is-
rael.23 Such unresponsiveness, or even what might be viewed as apathy
toward the Holocaust and its survivors, was not unique to Israel, also charac-
terized American Jewry24 and in fact all the European countries where the
Holocaust took place.25
Perhaps more striking was the condescending and even contemptuous
attitude of long-term Israelis toward the survivors. The survivors were held
accountable on three points: they had not been Zionist enough (or proactive
enough) to move to Palestine when this was still possible; they (except for
the scores of ghetto fighters and partisans) behaved like passive diaspora
Jews; and thirdly, rather than facing their enemies with arms (which in fact
they did not have), they went collectively to their death like “sheep to the
slaughter”. Had the Israelis, as the sons and daughters of the Maccabees,
been in such situation, they surely would have fought the Germans. 26 An
additional point, which was even more demeaning, and constituted an implic-
it sword of Damocles was “How/Why did you survive?” The hidden, ill-
informed and erroneous assumption was that those who survived were selfish
and unscrupulous or had even collaborated with the Nazis.27
However, this initial view that the Holocaust served mainly as the
counterpoint to “real” Israeli-ness, gradually turned into a richer and more
complex view, which embraced the Holocaust as an integral part of the
Israeli identity. The Eichmann trial in 1961 is generally considered the major
turning point.28 For most of the Israeli public of the time, this was their first
opportunity to be exposed in an emphatic and non-judgmental way to the
personal stories of myriads of Holocaust survivors. More than one hundred
appeared as witnesses during this trial, which became a form of “national
group therapy” for the Israeli public.29 Holocaust survivors in Israel have
also taken an active role in preserving the memory of the Holocaust. They
have been the impetus for museums, memorials, and active educational pro-
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness 95
grams in Israel and abroad.30 Survivors lecture frequently in schools in Israel
and in other countries as the remaining “witnesses,” whose own stories of the
concentration camps are included in school curricula and during basic train-
ing.
The sons and daughters of the survivors, the “second generation” and
their offspring (the “third generation”) have become an important part of the
Israeli social fabric. Many now transmit the Holocaust legacies and memo-
ries of their grandparents.31 The impact of second- and third-generation au-
thors, educators, and artists on public life is massive. 32 With their obvious
native Israeli identity, they have contributed to the perception of the Holo-
caust as an integral part of Israeli life, as suggested by the title of the ac-
claimed Israeli novel Our Holocaust.33
The Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973 also trans-
formed the Israeli view of the Holocaust.34 The Six-Day War (which was a
swift Israeli military triumph over its Arab neighbors) was preceded by
weeks of mounting concerns, tensions, and anxiety in Israel, spurred by
virulent Arab rhetoric to totally obliterate Israel, and intensified by doubts
about Israeli leadership.35 Anita Shapira noted “the sense of helplessness, of
there being no way out, that had hitherto been identified only with the Holo-
caust and life in exile was seen now as being possible in the free Jewish state
as well.”36
Israel was unprepared for the Yom Kippur War, and initially the Israeli
military supremacy appeared to waver, thus undermining the myth of the
“invincible Israelis” and fueling the notion of the “feeble Jews of the Holo-
caust.” Eighteen years later, in 1991, the Gulf War which opposed an interna-
tional coalition led by the United States against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, in
which Iraqi missiles were launched at Israeli cities, again prompted real
concerns about Israel’s vulnerable geopolitical predicament. Israelis were all
equipped with gas masks and antidotes for nerve gas, which made the associ-
ation with the Holocaust almost inescapable.37 There were also reports that
Iraq had purchased German military equipment, including deadly chemicals.
Media depictions of Israelis fleeing Tel Aviv for the countryside and the
comparison with the calm demeanor of Holocaust survivors faced with this
new existential threat negated and further banished the previous images of
fearful Holocaust Jews and brave new Israelis.38
More recently, the Iranian nuclear program, accompanied by routine
threats by Iran’s leadership to eliminate Israel, has prompted the ghastly term
of the “second Holocaust”, which now appears frequently in the media and in
private conversations.39 In 2006, Israeli prime minister to be Benjamin Ne-
tanyahu declared that “It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to
arm itself with atomic bombs. . . . While the Iranian president denies the
Holocaust, he is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state.” Such
statements connecting Iran and the Holocaust have often been repeated by
Chapter 596
the prime minister over the years.40 In an off-hand remark, Prime Minister
Netanyahu commented, during a 2017 closed Bible study session in his home
that the Hasmonean kingdom [the last Jewish sovereign kingdom that lasted
from 140 BCE to 63 BCE] survived for only around eighty years, and that he
was working to make sure that modern Israel would surpass that point to
reach the century mark.41 As early as 1989, New York Times columnist
Thomas Friedman, a shrewd observer of Israel, noted this aura of pessimism
bordering on existential anxiety42 and commented that Israel is becoming
Yad Vashem with an air force.43
Thus, in the first decades of the Israeli State, the Holocaust was distanced
and relegated to something that had happened “there” (in the Diaspora) to
“them” (the Diaspora Jews), which has little relevance to “our (Israeli) real-
ity”, and can serve mainly as the direct opposite of the Israeli reality and
essence.44
Gradually, however, the Holocaust has undergone a process of internal-
ization (or perhaps “Israelification”) and it has become an integral part of the
Israeli core identity. It is possible, that the “second Holocaust” discourse that
has grown stronger over time (paradoxically along with increased Israeli
military and economic capacities) is part of this internalization process and
can account for the greater role of the Holocaust in the public (and private)
mindsets. However, it is noteworthy that the Holocaust is present not only
when security and survival considerations are at stake. It is present in a wide
range of issues facing Israeli society. It is manifested in conjunction with the
three traditional victimhood and liberation legacies discussed earlier (i.e.,
perpetual victimhood, supremacist separateness, and care for oppressed
strangers). These legacies have been translated into several moral and exis-
tential obligations, which just like the traditional legacies are mutually
contradictory.
CONFLICTING MORAL OBLIGATIONS IN
POST-HOLOCAUST ISRAEL
In his 2002 book Rethinking the Holocaust, historian Yehuda Bauer sug-
gested that after the Holocaust, three commandments should be added to the
original Ten Biblical commandments: “Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt
not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.”45 In-
spired by this proposal, Klar, Schori-Eyal, and Yonat Klar (2013), and Klar
(2016) defined four moral obligations that characterize members of histori-
cally victimized groups. They are: never be a passive victim; never forsake
your brothers; never be a passive bystander; and never be a perpetrator.
These moral directives, which range from exclusive concern for the security
of the ingroup even at the expense of outgroups, to the protection and correct
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness 97
treatment of ingroup enemies even at the expense of the ingroup’s security
and well-being, are sometimes clearly at odds with each other. These four
moral obligations are unequal in their prominence and prevalence. Klar
(2016) suggested that they can be described as the four arms of a foldable fan
(see Figure 1). This fan can be completely folded (i.e., only the first obliga-
tion to never be a passive victim is operative), or it can be spread open to
include additional obligations. Thus, the four obligations are unequal in their
dominance, prevalence and intensity, as will be discussed more fully later,
and can be ordered from the most prevalent and dominant (the first obliga-
tion) to the least common and effective (the fourth obligation). The four
moral obligations and the foldable fan image can be helpful in depicting
some of the major concerns and dilemmas facing post-Holocaust Israeli soci-
ety.
The First Obligation: Never Be a Passive Victim Again
For most Israelis, the Holocaust serves as the primary depiction of the exis-
tential predicament of Jews (and Israelis) in the world.46 The Nazis and their
accomplices were actively engaged in activities designed to entirely annihi-
late the Jews. Many other nations were apathetic bystanders and the Jews
themselves were frail and defenseless during these dark times. The inevitable
conclusion is that in order to survive, Israel must have enormous might and
be ready to deploy it when needed. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is
probably one of the most eloquent and persistent proponents of this orienta-
tion. For example, during his annual Holocaust Remembrance Day speech in
2017, Netanyahu told the audience that the Holocaust was the product of the
terrible hatred for the Jewish people, the international indifference to the
plight of the Jews while the horrors were taking place and “the terrible
weakness of our people in the Diaspora.” His conclusion was: “The strong
survive, the weak are wiped out . . . our people learned this in the Holocaust.
The lesson taught by this terrible time, is in front of our eyes at all times. The
lesson is that we must be able to defend ourselves, by ourselves, against any
threat, against any enemy.”47
This lesson constituted one of the pillars of the Israeli national security
policy as developed and implemented by David Ben-Gurion. The key as-
sumption was that Israel should always be prepared for the worst and rely
solely on itself.48 This Holocaust-based lesson was behind Ben-Gurion’s
persistent determination to develop Israel’s nuclear capabilities 49 and Prime
Minister Menachem Begin’s decision in 1980 to destroy the Iraqi nuclear
reactor.50 In sharing his thoughts with one of his closest aides, Begin cited
the Holocaust as a major consideration:
To his cabinet secretary, Begin remarked, referring to traditional Jewish
names given to children in the shtetls of his native Poland, that he had seen
Chapter 598
Figure 5.1. The Klar (2016) model: The four moral obligations as a foldable fan
Originally appeared in: Klar, Y. “Four Moral Obligations in the Aftermath of His-
torical Ingroup Victimization.” Current Opinion in Psychology 58, 11 (2016):
54–58.
some children playing and had said to himself, “We will never allow that
contemptible villain to do to our Shloimelach [Solomon in Yiddish] and
Surelach [Sarah in Yiddish] what was done to them then.”51
Since 2001, the Israeli army (IDF) has sent thousands of army officers to
visit the death camps in Poland as part of a program titled “Witnesses in
Uniform.” These trips (which also include Holocaust survivors and members
of bereaved families from Israeli wars52) reflects a basic duality. On one
hand, Israeli army personnel marching in their uniforms “above the death
pits, beneath the flag”53 are living proof of the sharp contrast between the
anguish and humiliation of the silent victims whose ashes are buried there
and the strength and pride of Israeli soldiers. On the other hand, the soldier-
witnesses symbolically become one with the victims and are inculcated with
the feeling that they are survivors themselves (several months after the trip,
the participants are awarded the distinction of “ambassadors of the Holocaust
victims”54). The overriding message is of continuity and justification for the
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness 99
actions of the State and the necessity of the army to act as a shield against
another total extermination.
A related feature is the recurrent equation of Arab enemies with the
Nazis. As noted by Zertal,55 as early as 1947, David Ben-Gurion in a closed
leadership meeting told his audience that in the approaching war they would
be confronted by the “students and mentors of Hitler,” and later in 1951 he
declared that “we do not want to go back to the Ghetto . . . we do not want to
be slaughtered by the Nazi-Arabs.” More than thirty years later, Menachem
Begin told the Israeli government that the alternative to the impending inva-
sion of Lebanon was Treblinka and equated Yasser Arafat in Beirut to Hitler
in his Berlin HQ bunker.56 In 2005, More than thirty years later, Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that “the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusa-
lem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was the one who instilled the idea of the extermi-
nation of the Jews in Europe in Adolf Hitler’s mind, who otherwise had no
intention of killing the Jews, but only to expel them.” Thus, the Palestinian
Mufti, according to this remark, was “one of the leading architects” of the
“final solution” for the Jews.57
The Second Obligation: Never Forsake Your Brothers
For many Israelis, one of the haunting questions left unanswered after the
Holocaust was whether or not they had done everything they could have
done to save their brethren, or whether they were attentive enough to their
fate when they were led to the gas chambers58: were they “my brother’s
keeper?” (Genesis 4:9). These questions continued to resonate as late as
1992, in the remarks of then chief of staff (later prime minister) Ehud Barak,
when he headed an Israeli delegation to the Auschwitz death camp: “We, the
soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces, have come to this place fifty years
later, perhaps fifty years too late.” Eleven years later, in 2003, the Israel Air
force conducted a ceremonial flyover of Auschwitz. The formation leader
Brig.-Gen. Amir Eshel (later IAF Commander) read out the following radio
message: “We, the pilots of the Air Force, flying in the skies above the camp
of horrors, arose from the ashes of the millions of victims and shoulder their
silent cries . . . promise to be the shield of the Jewish people and its nation
Israel.”59
These statements may reflect the belief (which is probably unfounded
historically) that had the State of Israel existed with an army at the time of
the Holocaust, it could have averted the Holocaust or stopped it. They also
reflect a second consensual “never again” conviction and obligation that
Israel is and must always be the protective shield for all the Jews in the
world. The nascent state (with about 650,000 Jewish citizens) that was im-
mediately mired in war and poverty took in almost 700,000 Jewish immi-
grants in its first three years. Indeed, this immigration was essential for its
Chapter 5100
survival as a Jewish State, but this massive and accelerated effort was de-
picted as a rescue operation where entire communities were sometimes air-
lifted to Israel in military-like operations (e.g., from Yemen and Iran in the
1950s and from Ethiopia in the 1990s). The 1950 Israeli Law of Return,
which states that “Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an ole”
(i.e., Jew immigrating to Israel), provided the symbolic egis and unquestion-
able rationale. Every Jew and any Jewish community in jeopardy can rely on
the State of Israel as a shelter and a home.
The “my brother’s keeper” obligation is sometimes translated (mainly
among Orthodox circles) into poignant lamentations and fervent condemna-
tions of cultural assimilation and marriages to non-Jews mainly in Diaspora
communities. This is repeatedly called “The Silent Holocaust” (referring to
the ostensible decline in the population of the Jewish people due to such
intermarriages), and this is frequently termed as something which is “worse
than the Holocaust.”60 Some even connect “the quiet disappearance of tens of
thousands of our people each year” of the young diaspora Jews to the dis-
tancing of the Holocaust “as a nucleus of their formative identity” among
those young.61
The Third Moral Obligation: Never Be a Passive Bystander
One of the most powerful legacies of the Holocaust for Israelis is the moral
outrage and contempt for bystander countries and nations who failed to help
the Jews when they could or refused to provide them passage to avoid their
fate.62 A question that arises from this condemnation is how Israelis would
have behaved if they had been in the shoes of these nations. From its incep-
tion, Israel has repeatedly tried to prove to others and to itself that it has
higher humanitarian ideals than other countries.63 In the 1960s, Israel prided
itself on the aid and expertise it provided to dozens of new African and Asian
countries. For example, Israeli International Squadron 120 was founded in
1964 as the long arm of Israel’s foreign policy and excels in international
humanitarian aid and rescue efforts mainly in Africa. As noted, many of its
founders and crew members were Holocaust survivors.64
Israelis also feel great pride in the fact that whenever there is some natural
disaster anywhere around the world (e.g., earthquakes, tsunamis typhoons,
floods, massive fires), or other humanitarian catastrophes, airborne Israeli aid
delegations, composed mainly of the Israeli military, are always among the
first and the most efficient forces to provide help, which is often dispropor-
tional to Israel’s size and economic resources. The lessons of the Holocaust
are habitually referred to as the underlying impetus behind this rapid humani-
tarian mobilization. In June 1977, an Israeli merchant fleet saved from the
sea sixty-six Vietnamese refugees whose boat sank off the coast of Vietnam.
The first decision of the new Israeli PM, Menachem Begin, whose govern-
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness 101
ment had just been sworn in was to grant these refugees Israeli citizenship:
“The people of Israel who knew persecution and knew, perhaps more than
any other people, the meaning of the term refugee, could not see the suffering
of these unfortunate people,” PM Begin declared.65
However, such humanitarian commitments have become blurred, in par-
ticular recently, when the refugees and asylum seekers issue has become
much more than merely an opportunity for a symbolic gesture.
Starting in 2006, tens of thousands of asylum seekers mainly from Eritrea
and Sudan reached the border of Israel with Egypt. Both Eritrea and Sudan
are infamous for their harsh military regimes and severe human rights viola-
tions. In Eritrea, men face compulsory military service that can last for forty
years. In Sudan there has been famine and genocide in Darfur as well as
fighting between Sudan and South Sudan. The UN Commission for Refugees
(UNHCR) stated officially that refugees fleeing Eritrea and Sudan are in
jeopardy and should not be sent back to their home countries. The route to
Israel runs through Egypt and the Sinai, where many refugees are exposed to
abuse, torture, robbery, rape and even murders by their smugglers. Until
2014, the border between the Sinai (i.e., Egypt) and Israel was porous, and
refugees reaching Israeli soil were sent by bus after a brief inquiry to the Tel
Aviv central bus station, where most of them found places to live in the poor
neighborhoods of south Tel Aviv. In 2014, Israel completed the construction
of a fence along the border with Sinai, which brought an end for all extents
and purposes to the influx of African asylum seekers to Israel.
Those who had already come to Israel (about 39,000 of whom 26,000 are
from Eritrea, 7,500 are from Sudan, and the roughly 5,000 children born to
them in Israel) found themselves in a limbo. Israel, as a signatory to the 1951
UN Refugee Convention, complied with its obligation not to deport them
back to their countries, but at the same time has neglected its duty to examine
their right to refugee status. Out of the thousands who have applied for
asylum, Israel has recognized only eleven Eritreans and one Sudanese (an
acceptance rate of 0.056 percent). In the EU by comparison, 90 percent of the
Eritrean applicants and 56 percent of the Sudanese have been granted refugee
status. Instead, the State encourages African asylum seekers to go to a third
African country (Uganda or Rwanda) or to return to their homelands. To
pressure them to do so, the State has established a detention facility and a jail
near the Sinai border, where several thousand the asylum seekers are de-
tained.
Terms such as “refugees” or “asylum seekers” were rejected by the
spokespersons of the State (and subsequently by some of the media), because
they were so reminiscent of the fate of the Jews during the Holocaust. In-
stead, governmental spokespersons, who were subsequently followed by
much of the media, began using the term “infiltrators” to describe these
Africans.66 In early 2017, the Knesset passed an amendment to the “Preven-
Chapter 5102
tion of Infiltration Law” aimed at African asylum seekers. Prime Minister
Netanyahu declared (in January 2018): “We are not taking action against
refugees. We are taking action against illegal immigrants who come here for
work purposes. Israel will continue to be a shelter for true refugees and will
expel illegal infiltrators.”67
In the aftermath of his televised September 2017 tour of south Tel Aviv,
after conveying his disgust with the “filth and stench” he found there, Netan-
yahu declared: “We have the right to expel everyone who is here illegally.”
Subsequently, the governmental issued an expulsion plan. This time, strong-
worded comparisons with measures taken against the Jews during the Holo-
caust appeared immediately in the Israeli press. Within several days a pletho-
ra of vehement petitions protesting the planned deportation overwhelmed the
public arena. Each had hundreds (and in some cases also thousands) of signa-
tories. These included academic staff, writers and artists, musicians, choreog-
raphers, psychologists, social workers, nurses, physicians (who also pro-
tested the fact that the head of the government office in charge of deportation
is a physician), diplomats and former ambassadors, residents of Tel Aviv,
school principals and students, and others. Particularly poignant was an open
letter sent by dozens of Holocaust survivors (all over eighty) to the prime
minister. They wrote: “As Jews, the world turned its back on us in our most
difficult time, we have a special obligation not to remain indifferent and to
prevent the expulsion of asylum seekers, the state must grant them a haven
and not send them to their deaths in a foreign country.”68 Journalist Gideon
Levi called on Israeli pilots to refuse to fly expelled asylum seekers. He drew
a parallel with German pilots who refused to fly Afghan asylum-seekers back
to their homeland.69 Thousands of Israelis associated themselves with this
call and subsequently dozens of airline crew members including pilots an-
nounced their refusal to forcibly fly asylum seekers out of the country. Other
evocative initiatives, first spontaneously and later in a more coordinated
fashion, were pledges by several thousand families around the country (in-
cluding Holocaust survivors and their descendants) to host (and sometimes
also to hide) African asylum seekers under threat of expulsion. One such
concealment initiative which was announced by a group of rabbis working
for human rights, was called “The Anne Frank Home Sanctuary Move-
ment.”70 The association with the fate of the Jews during the holocaust could
not be clearer.
These diverse and high-profile efforts all emerged almost simultaneously,
and may give the impression that the entire Israeli public has rallied against
the government’s expulsion plans. But this picture is far from true: the
protest, as described here, mainly reflected liberal circles in the Israeli public,
and was greeted with indifference and sometimes hostility among other seg-
ments of the public. A poll conducted for a national TV channel in January
2018 (during the height of the protest activities) found that 56 percent of
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness 103
respondents supported the government’s decision to deport African migrants,
32 percent opposed, and 12 percent had no opinion. Of those who favored
deportation, 44 percent were even in favor of forcibly removing the migrants,
while 46 percent opposed forced expulsion.71
The Fourth Moral Obligation: Never Be a Perpetrator
The fourth moral obligation deriving from the Holocaust is not to harm
others, even rivals or enemies. Thus, victims must not “do unto others what
they do not want others to do unto them.”72 This moral obligation takes on
critical significance within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Al-
though many Israelis consider Israeli conflict-related actions to be a form of
legitimate self-defense, others are more critical of Israel’s role. Clearly, con-
demning one’s own group or expressing guilt is difficult,73 but this has been
shown to be even more so when the group’s past victimization history (such
as the Holocaust) is made salient.74 However, it is worth inquiring whether
reminders of the Holocaust can make people less inclined to support Israeli
transgressions. A letter written to the Ha’aretz newspaper on the seventieth
anniversary of the 1938 Kristallnacht, the first orchestrated attacks against
Jews in Germany and Austria, said in part: “I was born in Berlin and was
three years old when the rioting occurred on Kristallnacht. . . . For me, stories
about Kristallnacht necessarily evoke the actions of the Israeli occupation
army in the occupied territories.”75 Such statements, it should be acknowl-
edged, are always controversial. In Israel, comparisons of Israel conduct with
Nazi Germany continue to spark heated condemnation from the public and
governmental agencies.76
However, studies on women’s protest and human rights movements in
Israel (“Women in Black” and “Machsom Watch”) found that second genera-
tion women and even Holocaust survivors in their eighties were overrepre-
sented in these activities. These women often stated that they took part out of
fear of becoming passive bystanders “like the Germans.” 77 A typical com-
ment was that although it is impossible to compare the Holocaust to the
situation in the occupied territories, “we would desecrate the memory of the
Holocaust if we did not compare the processes leading to it.”78
This particular Holocaust influence is also evident in protest activities of
younger Israelis. One example is “Breaking the Silence” (Shovrim Shtika), a
grassroots group of veteran Israeli soldiers “working to raise awareness about
the daily reality in the occupied territories.” Breaking the Silence (BtS) col-
lects testimonials from veteran Israeli soldiers and reservists who served in
the occupied territories (i.e., the West Bank and Gaza) and disseminates them
in both Israel and abroad. Yehuda Shaul, one of the founders of this NGO,
told about the army experiences that led him to found the group:
Chapter 5104
When we entered Hebron, we realized the settlers could do whatever they
wanted, and no one would stop them. . . . There is a huge ideological gap
between me and a person who can walk up to an Arab’s door and spray paint
the Star of David or write “Arabs out.” The historical memory is unnerving.
We all know what symbols did to Jews’ storefronts and whose symbols those
were. We all know the writing when “Arabs” is replaced with “Jews.” We
know this history.79
Another BtS founder, Noam Chayut, described an encounter with a young
Palestinian girl in the city of Hebron (in the West Bank), where he served as
an IDF soldier, as the turning point that led him to protest activities. The title
of his book is The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust80:
She took from me the belief that absolute evil exists in this world, and the
belief that I was avenging it and fighting against it. For that girl, I embodied
absolute evil. . . . Since then I have been left without my Holocaust, and since
then everything in my life has assumed a new meaning: belongingness is
blurred, pride is lacking, belief is faltering, contrition is heightening, forgive-
ness is being born.81
This small BtS group is highly controversial in the Israeli public. On one
hand, it won Israeli human rights awards, and several leading figures in the
Israeli defense and security establishment have publicly supported BtS, stat-
ing that it “helps strengthen the IDF and its morality by providing transparen-
cy for military,” and helps Israel to “maintain the required vigilance about
the most sensitive human issues.”82 On the other hand, governmental offi-
cials have manifested continued hostility to the NGO. For example, in April
2017, Prime Minister Netanyahu cancelled a meeting with Germany’s
foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, after being notified that he had met with
BtS people. One of the major allegations is that the NGO disseminates nega-
tive soldiers’ testimonials and other disparaging materials abroad and hence
it is “part of an advocacy campaign intended to harm Israel’s image over-
seas.”83 Journalist Ariel Schnabel wrote that NGO’s such as BtS:
help the Germans move one step further in their attempt to feel normal again
after the atrocities they committed just a moment ago. . . . A German who gets
a report—and more than that from a Jew—about Jews who supposedly com-
mit atrocities against other people, cannot help but feel a little more comfort-
able with his problematic past. 84
The lesson that in present-day Israel any reference, even the most remote,
to twentieth-century European history, in tandem with any critical remark,
even the most subtle, about Israeli moral quandaries might be problematical
for the speaker, should have been anticipated by Major General Yair Golan,
then the Deputy IDF Chief of Staff, who delivered the annual Holocaust
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness 105
Remembrance Day speech in May 2016. Golan’s remarks were made in the
aftermath of several troubling events involving IDF soldiers.85 He said:
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, it is worthwhile to ponder our capacity to
uproot the first signs of intolerance, violence, and self-destruction among us
that arise on the path to moral decline. For all intents and purposes, Holocaust
Remembrance Day is an opportunity for soul-searching. If Yom Kippur (Day
of Atonement) is the day of individual soul-searching, then it is imperative that
Holocaust Remembrance Day be a day of national soul-searching, and this
national soul-searching should include phenomena that are disruptive.
He also said:
The Holocaust, in my view, must bring us to deep reflections about the nature
of human beings, even when these human beings are ourselves. It must bring
us to deep reflections about the responsibility of leadership, and about the
quality of the society, and it must lead us to a thorough thinking, about how
we – here and now – treat the stranger, the orphan and the widow and those
who are like them. It should lead us to think about our public life, and more-
over, it must lead all those who can – and not only those who want – to bear
public responsibility. Because if there is something that frightens me in the
memory of the Holocaust, it is the identification of horrifying processes that
took place in Europe and particularly in Germany 70, 80, and 90 years ago,
and finding remnants of that here among us in the year 2016.
Maj. General Golan’s plea to consider Holocaust Remembrance Day as a
day of soul-searching about moral transgressions in Israeli society (and the
army) toward the “strangers” (which was couched in a well-known Biblical
reference) was certainly unusual and departed from both official and standard
discourse which tends to point the finger at other countries and nations, and
demand that they do some soul-searching of their own, given their attitudes
toward Jews (then) and Israel (today). However, the thorniest and most diffi-
cult part of the speech for most Israelis was the appeal to reflect on the
“treatment of the stranger” in Israel 2016 in light of the “horrifying processes
that took place in Europe and particularly in Germany 70, 80, and 90 years
ago.” Maj. General Golan was implying that these “processes” (i.e., of “intol-
erance, violence, and self-destruction”) should serve as warning signals for
Israeli society (and for any human society, for that matter). Apparently,
however, any mention, even the slightest one, of the processes that led to the
Holocaust, in concert with critical remarks about moral violations in Israeli
society is met with hostility and anger in Israel. Following his speech, Major
General Golan in fact experienced such rebukes.
Chapter 5106
THE FOUR POST-HOLOCAUST OBLIGATIONS AND THE THREE
HISTORICAL VICTIMHOOD LEGACIES
As shown above, the Holocaust permeates Israeli life, and its effects on
Israeli public agendas and discourse are varied, in fact, contradictory: The
Holocaust hangs over any debate on perceived external threats or the coun-
try’s survival and continued existence. It colors any discussion of its respon-
sibility toward and relations to the Jews living outside of Israel. It looms over
its actions or lacks thereof in humanitarian disasters affecting communities
around the world, regardless of religion, and its (mis)treatment of those who
are seeking asylum and protection within its borders. The Holocaust also
impacts about any discussion of Israel’s treatment of those who, are living
under its control and domination, who sometimes resist or openly combat it,
and it affects Israel’s approach to its neighboring countries, with which it is
in conflict (which is also embedded in several points of agreement and coop-
eration). In fact, the Holocaust also affects Israel’s relations with the rest of
the world.
The earlier-presented foldable fan model provides a convenient frame-
work to rank the relative prevalence and potency of these post-Holocaust
existential and moral obligations within Israeli society: The “Never be a
passive victim again” and to a somewhat lesser extent the “never forsake
your brothers” obligations appear to be highly consensual and dominant in
Israeli society, whereas the “never be a passive bystander” (mainly when
such humane assistance incurs great costs to the ingroup) and the “never be a
perpetrator” obligations are, no doubt, much less prevailing and influential in
present-day larger Israeli society, and they even elicit antagonism and
counterattacks among segments of society, but they are still striking at the
heart of some other segments of the Israeli society.
Clearly, the four post-Holocaust moral obligations are closely related to
the three more traditional Jewish victimhood legacies. Therefore, the forego-
ing discussion can also shed some light on the relative weight of these three
legacies in contemporary Israeli society, at the aftermath of the Holocaust,
and given the Israeli geo-political predicament.
The Perpetual Victimhood Legacy
Patently, the perpetual victimhood legacy is deeply ingrained in the never be
a passive victim again and the never forsake your brothers moral obligations:
According to this traditional legacy, Jews are being killed or in fact murdered
in Israel, but also in many other places in the world (e.g., by Palestinians,
Arabs, Muslims, and other anti-Semites), just because they are Jews. The
Holocaust, as a horrendously well-planned and well-executed scheme to en-
tirely eradicate the “Jewish race” has rightly confirmed and toughened the
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness 107
“in every generation they rise against us to destroy us” verse and made it the
predominant lesson of the Holocaust for Israelis and many other Jews around
the world. The tough enduring conflict with the Palestinians, and the Arab
world, which has been followed by repeated threats (e.g., Shukeiri, Saddam
Hussein, Ahmadinejad) to annihilate Israel has further strengthened the grip
of this legacy, while at the same time loosening the power of the obligations
associated with concern and compassion toward those who are not members
of a group (i.e., never be a passive bystander and never be a perpetrator).
However, asserting that Jews are being killed or hurt as part of the Jewish-
Arab conflict just because they are Jews obviously ignores the obvious fact
that this is a violent intergroup conflict, like many other violent conflicts
around the world and, more importantly, that in this conflict Israel is not
merely a passive victim but rather an active participant inflicting and subject
to violence.
The Separateness Legacy
The supremacist separateness legacy is firmly anchored in the never forsake
your brothers obligation, and just like the perpetual victimhood legacy just
discussed, it serves to dilute the “other oriented” obligations to never be a
passive bystander and never be a perpetrator.
First, it should be reiterated that caring for Jewish communities and indi-
viduals around the world is part of the lesson of the Holocaust. However,
most Jews outside Israel are not, presently, under physical threat, and as
previously discussed, ensuring the survival of the Jewish people is perceived
as combating spiritual and cultural assimilation, the weakening of the Jewish
ties, but primarily the rising number of interfaith marriages. Large-scale
projects such as Taglit-Birthright were designed “to foster the Jewish identity
of a generation of young adults who it was feared would not feel a connec-
tion to the Jewish community and Israel”86 via a ten-day intensive tour and
educational program in Israel. One of the stated goals of this program is to
increase intra-faith marriages, thus combatting the “silent Holocaust.” As
shown in the evaluation study87 “the Taglit participants are 45 percent more
likely than nonparticipants to get married to someone Jewish.”
The separateness legacy can also explain why the Israeli government and
much of the public so adamantly want to expel African asylum seekers. The
40,000 Eritreans and Sudanese constitute half a percent of the Israeli popula-
tion. In comparison to many European countries that have also been affected
by the global refugee crisis this percentage is quite low and the Africans have
been swiftly and eagerly integrated into the Israeli economy, which desper-
ately needs manual laborers. They do not, pose a security risk, and their
presence does not increase the crime rate. Most of them simply wish to earn
their living and they are basically grateful to their hosts. However, as PM
Chapter 5108
Netanyahu declared the: “phenomenon of infiltrators into Israel endangers
the Jewish and democratic character of the state.”88 A right-wing site close to
the prime minister explains this as follows:
most of the country’s citizens are interested in preserving the unique character-
istics of the state as a Jewish state, while this type of migration can pose a
demographic threat to the existence of the Jewish majority in Israel. Israeli
citizens have the right to choose the nature of government in Israel and to
define as they see fit to preserve their culture. To this end, they also have the
moral right to limit external influences such as the uncontrolled migration of
infiltrators from different cultures. 89
In discussing how legacies of historical victimhood can turn into aggression
toward opposing outgroups, I have mainly discussed so far the role of the
perpetual victimhood legacy. This legacy legitimizes and even sanctifies the
use of violence against enemies, motivated by the conviction that the ingroup
is under constant threat and it will approve retaliatory and vengeful actions,
and lead to “suffering begets suffering” outcomes.90 However, the suprema-
cist separation legacy can also become a source of intergroup aggression and
moral violations. To elucidate this issue, we need to return to the Biblical
command to ancient Israelites to expel and even destroy the Canaanite tribes,
not because the Canaanites had harmed the Israelis, but rather because their
presence in the land violated exclusive Israelite ownership over the land and
because they could morally and religiously corrupt the Israelis. Thus, the
Israelites’ obligation to be distinct from the Canaanite idol worshippers, and
their god-given ownership of the land sanctified their inhuman treatment of
the Canaanites.
As discussed earlier in this chapter, the future of non-Jews living in the
Land of Israel after the prayed-for return of the Jews to the land was merely a
hypothetical theological question during the millennia of Jewish exile. How-
ever, mainly after the 1967 military conquest of the entire western part of the
Land of Israel (in the Six-Day War), the presence of millions of Palestinians
in this area and their growing opposition and sometimes violent resistance to
the Jewish aspirations, became a prime obstacle to the dream of a “Greater
Israel” that began to dominate the hearts of major groups within Jewish-
Israeli society (mainly the religious Zionists and the Israeli right) in the
aftermath of what they defined as the miraculous military victory in that war.
The Palestinians then became the Canaanites, the Philistines, the heirs of the
Amalekites, foreign nomads, or migrant workers who came to Israel follow-
ing the Jewish return starting at the end of the nineteenth century. 91 Yeho-
shua Ben-Nun’s mythical image began to emerge among some circles in the
Jewish religious right as a model for ways to treat the Palestinians.92
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness 109
The Legacy of Caring for the Oppressed Stranger
The legacy of caring for the oppressed stranger is the pillar guiding the moral
obligations to never be a passive bystander and never be a perpetrator. This
legacy rests on the premise that the memories of experienced suffering and
pain remain vivid in both the former victim and their descendants, and that
such memories, coupled with the operative moral attitude of “what is hateful
to yourself, do not to other(s)” will make them more attentive and responsive
to the suffering and pain of other sufferers. This logic is best illustrated in a
comment made by Israeli author David Grossman at the end of a hearing at
the High Court of Justice in March 2018, which dealt with appeals to post-
pone the deportation of the African asylum seekers. Grossman said:
My grandmother knocked on the doors of this country, and everybody has a
grandfather or great-grandfather who knocked on doors and nobody would
open them. And now we’re turning our backs, behaving brutally, even cruelly.
Turning our backs actually says there was logic to the way our forefathers
were treated.93
As demonstrated in this and other examples discussed in this chapter
(e.g., the Berlin-born Israeli who is reminded of Kristallnacht; the soldiers
who sees a frightened young Palestinian girl in Hebron and is unwillingly
reminded of the Holocaust), the Holocaust, which is omnipresent in the
minds of Israelis, can evoke unpleasant associations that can be transformed
into moral obligations to “be kind” and “do no harm,” at least in some
Israelis.
However, the more universalistic legacy of caring for the oppressed
stranger is often in conflict with the particularistic perpetual victimhood and
supremacist separateness legacies, which are gaining increasing clout in con-
temporary Israeli society. Proponents of this legacy are very often forced to
be on the defense and are frequently accused of being unpatriotic, loyal to
non-group members (e.g., African migrants or refugees) or the group’s ene-
mies (e.g., the Palestinians) rather than to the ingroup. Insistence on these
moral obligations (on what is seen as the group’s greater good) may earn
them such epithets as “bleeding hearts,” which is not a popular role to play in
Israeli society (and, in fact, in many other societies) today.
CONTRASTING LEGACIES OF HISTORICAL VICTIMIZATION:
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS
Social psychological studies can also contribute to a better understanding of
the effects of different victimhood orientations on individuals and the collec-
tive attitudes, behavioral intentions and actions mainly toward “the others”
Chapter 5110
(“outgroups” in the social psychological terminology), such as the ingroup’s
adversaries, and those who depend on the group. Below I describe several
empirical studies which have recently been conducted at Tel Aviv Univer-
sity.94 They focus on two historical-trauma-based orientations: the perpetual
ingroup victimhood orientation (PIVO) and fear of victimizing (FOV). They
represent the two ends of the foldable fan.
Perpetual Ingroup Victimhood Orientation (PIVO)
The perpetual ingroup victimhood orientation (PIVO) is the belief that the
ingroup (e.g., the Jewish people) is a constant, eternal victim persecuted
continually by different enemies. This orientation views victimhood as the
ingroup’s destiny given the persistent and unyielding hostility and malevo-
lent intentions of many outgroups toward the ingroup.
PIVO, as described by Schori-Eyal et al.,95 is a cluster of beliefs that the
group is currently under threat (e.g., “Our existence as a group and as indi-
viduals is under constant threat”) caused by outside hatred (e.g., “Many
people hate us”), that these harassments are persistent over time (“As they
have harmed us in the past, so will our enemies wish to harm us in the
future”) and by different enemies who are in fact an incarnation of one basic
enemy (e.g., “Even under different guises, the hatred toward us is basically
the same”; “All our enemies throughout history share a common denomina-
tor—their hatred toward us”; “All our enemies throughout history share a
common denominator—the will to annihilate us”). The group’s suffering is
unparalleled to that of any other group (“The suffering we have been through
cannot be compared to that of any other group”). The group’s fate obligates
suspicion toward other groups (“We must not rely on other countries and
peoples”; “History teaches us that we must be suspicious of other groups’
intentions toward us”; “At the end of the day, we can only trust ourselves”).
Although such beliefs may be well rooted in groups with histories of victim-
ization, their intensity, firmness and exclusivity can vary considerably among
individual group members (and different subgroups within the ingroup).
Fear of Victimizing (FOV)
Schori-Eyal et al.96 proposed that historical group victimization may also
lead to a very different response (albeit a probably much less prevalent one).
This is the view that the ingroup might harm enemies with little regard for
moral considerations because past suffering may induce moral callousness
and indifference to the anguish of others. FOV expresses the concern that the
ingroup in its current conflict will switch from victim to victimizer. This may
occur through moral contagion: the fear is that qualities, including evil, are
transmitted when two objects come into contact, 97 and thus historically trau-
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness 111
matized groups may sometimes become contaminated by the evil essence of
their victimizers and become evil themselves.
According to Schori-Eyal et al.,98 FOV may be expressed by adherence to
statements such as “The severe harm we have suffered has made us impervi-
ous to other peoples’ suffering”; “because we have a history of being perse-
cuted, we are in danger of grievously harming other peoples”; “we are in
danger of treating other peoples in the same way that we were treated by our
worst enemies.”
Reactions to the Ingroup’s Treatment of the “Stranger”: The
Asylum Seekers and the Palestinians
PIVO and FOV, which stem from orientations to the group’s history of
victimization, are likely to affect the views and attitudes of group members
toward others, whether “strangers” seeking refuge within the group’s borders
or those who are in national conflict with the ingroup.
The African migrants: In a study conducted on Jewish Israeli commuters
(N=100), participants completed the PIVO and FOV scales, then determined
the extent to which the terms illegal infiltrators or asylum seekers was de-
scriptive of African migrants in Israel. As might be theoretically predicted,
PIVO was positively related to the term illegal infiltrators and negatively to
the term asylum seekers; FOV, in contrast was positively related to the term
asylum seekers and negatively to the term illegal infiltrators. In a second
study, Jewish Israeli participants (N=200) were presented with a short sum-
mary of a private bill, which was submitted to the Knesset (and rejected later)
called “The Refugee Convention for the Regulation of the Status of Asylum
Seekers and Refugees in Israel,” which requires the state to grant refugee
status to those persecuted in their country on political, religious or national
grounds. Here too, FOV was positively (and PIVO negatively) related to this
“pro-refugees” bill.99
Regarding the conflict with the Palestinians: Schori-Eyal et al. 100 tested
how PIVO and FOV manifest with respect to two attitudes related to this
conflict. The first is the sense of group-based guilt, namely, the sense of
regret and shame that individual group members experience for the group’s
moral violations (e.g., Israelis) against outgroups (e.g., Palestinians), even if
they were not personally involved in these immoral acts. Considerable social
psychological research has demonstrated that group members vary consider-
ably.101 The second attitude is tolerance of enemy collateral casualties
(TECC). During violent conflicts, uninvolved civilians (including children)
from the enemy group are often killed or injured. In the military (somewhat
euphemistically) this is called “collateral damage.” Unintended civilian casu-
alties can be the result of an unintended error, but at times a calculated
decision to hit an important military target even though uninvolved people
Chapter 5112
might be hurt as well. All this elicits ethical and moral dilemmas.102 Schori-
Eyal et al. reasoned that because PIVO entails a commitment to the security
of the ingroup, and thus greater support for aggressive measures against
enemy outgroups (i.e., greater tolerance of the outgroup’s casualties, in-
tended or unintended103), it also leads to less guilt over the harm engendered
by these violent measures. FOV, in contrast, entails a commitment to refrain
from harming enemy outgroup members, leading to opposite responses. This
attitude may thus lead to reduced TECC and a greater sense of group-based
guilt. Schori-Eyal et al.104 found that both during relative calm in the conflict
and also during an escalation in the conflict (i.e., a military operation in the
Gaza Strip), PIVO was negatively related to group-based guilt and positively
with TECC. FOV on the other hand, was positively associated with group-
based guilt and negatively with TECC.
Another construct that was studied by Schori-Eyal et al. is the sense of
moral entitlement, which is the belief that it is permissible for the ingroup to
commit morally reprehensible acts against the enemy outgroup. The authors
speculated that this sense of moral entitlement would be positively preceded
by PIVO and negatively by FOV. Furthermore, the sense of moral entitle-
ment was predicted to reduce group-based guilt and enhance TECC. In other
words, the sense of moral entitlement can be conceived as mediating the
relationship between PIVO and FOV and group-based guilt and TECC. This
indeed was found in the Schori-Eyal et al. study.105
IN CONCLUSION
The concept of victimhood is deeply rooted in Jewish collective memory and
consciousness. The enslavement and the Exodus from Egypt which consti-
tute the formative epopée of the Jewish people has given rise to three differ-
ent legacies: the first link in a chain of victimizations (i.e., “A new Pharaoh
every generation”), the core of Jewish separateness, chosenness and supre-
macy, or the origin of the moral obligation to care for the oppressed stranger
even when this is an adversary. These three legacies are entangled in Jewish
consciousness, and have been experienced in different contexts, at different
strengths at different periods and in different Jewish communities, and they
have vastly affected the ways in which the Holocaust, the most defining
event in modern Jewish history, is interpreted.
For Jewish Israelis, the Holocaust has become unavoidably entwined in
the intractable Jewish-Arab conflict, the major feature of contemporary Is-
raeli reality, initially as the antithesis of Israeli identity, and gradually as an
integral part of its essence. The Holocaust is experienced as a presence in
almost all key issues in Israeli society: Israel’s survival and resilience, its
relations with the Jewish Diaspora, its treatment of those who seek refuge at
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness 113
its gates, and even more protractedly, its dealings with the Palestinians under
its control and beyond its borders. In terms of these and other issues, the
Holocaust evokes four moral obligations (never be a passive victim, never
forsake your brothers, never be a passive bystander, and never be a perpe-
trator), which can be easily attributed to the three traditional Jewish victim-
hood legacies, and which are at times conflicting in their effects, but are also
unequal in their prominence and prevalence in Israeli society today. Many of
the dramas and upheavals in Israel public life can be characterized as a
function of the interplay between these conflicting obligations.
In 1988 an Israeli philosopher, Professor Yehuda Elkana (who as a ten-
year-old was deported to Auschwitz and survived), published an article titled
The Need to Forget in Ha’aretz that triggered a heated debate in which he
called on Israeli society to “forget” the Holocaust and turn toward the present
and the future. He wrote:
[I] wish to assert normatively that any philosophy of life nurtured solely or
mostly by the Holocaust leads to disastrous consequences. Without ignoring
the historic importance of collective memory, a climate in which an entire
people determines its attitude to the present and shapes its future by emphasiz-
ing the lessons of the past, is fraught with peril for the future of that society, if
it wants to live in relative tranquility and relative security, like all other peo-
ples.
And more particularly:
I see no greater threat to the future of the State of Israel than the fact that the
Holocaust has systematically and forcefully penetrated the consciousness of
the Israeli public, even that large segment that did not experience the Holo-
caust, as well as the generation that was born and grew up here.106
Beyond the question of whether the Holocaust indeed needs to be forgot-
ten to create a tranquil and relatively secure Israeli future, there is the ques-
tion of whether this is at all humanly and societally possible to ‘forget’ such
an event. A more realistic conclusion might be that the future of the Israeli
society is likely to be determined, to a great extent, not by its ability to forget,
but rather by its ability to deal intelligently and ethically with the often
contradictory legacies of the Jewish history and the Holocaust in particular.
NOTES
1. I am greatly indebted to Dana Zohar for her constructive comments on this chapter.
2. See Hareven, “Victimization: Some Comments by an Israeli,” 1983: 145–55; Novick,
The Holocaust in American Life, 1999; Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nation-
hood, 2005; Zertal, “The Holocaust in the Israeli Discourse,” 2007: 307–8; Zerubavel, Recov-
Chapter 5114
ered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition, 1995; Yerushal-
mi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, 1996.
3. See Walzer, Exodus and Revolution,1985.
4. From Midrash Sifrei Bemidbar. Esau, Jacob’s twin brother is regarded the forefather of
all gentile nations.
5. These Talmudic stipulations are called the “Three Oaths.” For a scholarly account of
their nature and influence on Jewish history see Ravitzki, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish
Religious Radicalism, 1996. For an abridged description see also Klar, “From ‘Do Not Arouse
or Awaken Love Until It So Desires’ through ‘Return to Zion’ to ‘Conquest of the Land’:
Paradigm Shifts and Sanctified Reenactments in Building the Jewish State,” 2014: 87–99.
6. Rabinowitz Aaron, “When a Leading Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Urged Begin to Trade Land
for Peace,” Ha’aretz, August 9, 2017, http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.
805900.
7. Historically, the Israelite process of settling in the land was probably a slow and gradual
process, in which they did not have the power to drive out or exterminate their Canaanites
neighbors (despite the many intergroup clashes). The Bible is filled with stories about these
intergroup interactions and the religious influences of the Canaanite culture and customs. Some
examples of the lack of separation between the early Israelites and their neighbors are the facts
that King David, the founder of the Judaic kingdom was the grandson of Ruth the Moabite.
Bathsheba, the mother of David’s son King Solomon was married to Uriah the Hittite, one of
David’s generals (the Hittites were one of the Canaanite nations). King Solomon himself (who
was the builder of the First Jewish temple in Jerusalem) was known for his love for women:
“Now King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite,
Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women” (1 Kings, 1:11). The vast Canaanite influ-
ence on the daily lives and religious practices of the early Jews in the kingdom of Judea around
700 BC (more than half a millennium after the presumed “conquest of the land”) may have
motivated these extreme injunctions (e.g., “you must destroy them totally. make no treaty with
them and show them no mercy”) in the Book of Deuteronomy. This may also have prompted
the retrospective account of the alleged genocidal “conquest of the land”, described in the Book
of Joshua (for detailed analyses, see Na’aman, “The ‘Conquest of Canaan’ in the Book of
Joshua and in History,” 1995: 218–81; Rowlett, Joshua and the Rhetoric of Violence: A New
Historicist Analysis, 1996).
8. See Klar, “From ‘Do Not Arouse or Awaken Love Until It So Desires’ through ‘Return
to Zion’ to ‘Conquest of the Land’: Paradigm Shifts and Sanctified Reenactments in Building
the Jewish State,” 2014: 87–99.
9. See Steinfeld, “On the Prohibition of Dining with a Gentile,” 1989: 131–48.
10. For the concept of “chosen-ness” and its relations to nationalism see Smith, Chosen
Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity, 2003.
11. In Orot, chap. 5, article 10: 156.
12. The Jewish sage, Hillel the Elder (110 BCE–10 CE) formalized this in the statement
“What is hateful to yourself, do not to other(s)” (similar observations were made by the Greek
philosophers, Socrates and Epictetus, and Chinese thinker Confucius). It is true that this moral
obligation is applicable to all human beings. However, the Biblical insight is that liberated
victims, given their acute awareness of their own past suffering, should be more capable of
grasping the pain and suffering of others than those who have never been victims.
13. Love of Israel, see Lamm, “Some Comments on Centrist Orthodoxy,” 1986: 1–12.
14. See Frankel, Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews,
1984: 1862–1917.
15. Avinery, The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State,
2017.
16. Shapira, New Jews, Old Jews, 1997.
17. Vagner and Raz, Herzl: His Struggles at Home and Abroad, 2017.
18. See Sternhell, The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of
the Jewish State, 2009.
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness 115
19. “David Ben-Gurion: Letter to French General Charles de Gaulle,” December 6, 1967,
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ben-gurion-letter-to-french-general-charles-de-gaulle-de-
cember-1967.
20. See Shatz, Waxman, and Diament, Tikkun Olam: Social Responsibility in Jewish
Thought and Law (The Orthodox Forum Series), 1997.
21. See Segev, The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust, 2000.
22. Shapira, Walking on the Horizon, 1989: 325.
23. For detailed accounts see Libebman and Don-Yihya, Civil Religion in Israel: Tradition-
al Judaism and Political Culture in the Jewish State, 1983; Klar, Schori-Eyal, and Klar, “The
“Never Again” State of Israel: The Emergence of the Holocaust as a Core Feature of Israeli
Identity and its Four Incongruent Voices,” 2013: 125–43; Ofer, “Israel,” 1996: 839–923; “The
Past that does not Pass: Israelis and Holocaust Memory,” 2009: 1–35; Segev, The Seventh
Million: Israelis and the Holocaust, 2000; Shapira, “The Holocaust: Private Memories, Public
Memory,” 1998: 40–58; Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust: Israel after the War, 1999;
Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood, 2005.
24. See Novick, The Holocaust in American life, 1989.
25. See Wyman, and Rosenzveig, The World Reacts to the Holocaust, 1996.
26. Both these two counts ignore the fact that if Rommel’s German armies had not been
stopped by the British army at El Alamein, Palestine would have been swiftly conquered by the
Germans and the fate of the Jewish Yeshuv (community) there would have not be much
different than that of the other Jewish communities in Europe.
27. Segev, The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust, 2000.
28. See Segev, The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust, 2000; Shapira, “The Holo-
caust: Private Memories, Public Memory,” 1998: 40–58; Yablonka, The State of Israel vs.
Adolf Eichmann, 2004.
29. Segev, The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust, 2000: 351.
30. See Ofer, “The Past that does not Pass: Israelis and Holocaust Memory,” 2009: 1–35.
31. See Milner, Kiray Avar: Biografia, Zahut Vezikaron Basiporet Hador Hasheni [Past-
Present: Biography, Identity and Memory in Second-Generation Literature], 2003; Vardi, Me-
morial Candles: Children of the Holocaust (The International Library of Group Psychotherapy
and Group Process), 1992.
32. E.g., Milner, Kiray Avar: Biografia, Zahut Vezikaron Basiporet Hador Hasheni [Past-
Present: Biography, Identity and Memory in Second Generation Literature], 2003.
33. Gutfreund, Our Holocaust,2007.
34. Shapira, “The Holocaust: Private Memories, Public Memory,” 1998: 40–58; see also
Brog, “Victims and Victors: Holocaust and Military Commemoration in Israel Collective
Memory,” 2003: 65–99; Navon, in this volume.
35. See Oren, Six Days of War,2002.
36. Shapira, “The Holocaust: Private Memories, Public Memory,” 1998: 41.
37. Zuckerman, Shoah in the Sealed Room,1993.
38. Porat, Israeli Society, the Holocaust and Its Survivors,2008.
39. E.g., Benny Morris, “The Second Holocaust,” The New York Sun, January 22, 2007,
https://www.nysun.com/opinion/second-holocaust/47111/.
40. Peter Herschberg, “Netanyahu: It’s 1938 and Iran Is Germany; Ahmadinejad Is Prepar-
ing Another Holocaust,” Ha’aretz, October 18, 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/news/
netanyahu-it-s-1938-and-iran-is-germany-ahmadinejad-is-preparing-another-holocaust-1.
205137. For some examples see Jonathan Lis, “Netanyahu: World Must Stop Iran from Con-
ducting Second Holocaust,” Ha’aretz, October 18, 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/netanyahu-
world-must-stop-iran-from-conducting-second-holocaust-1.409063; Ari Rabinovitch, “Netan-
yahu Defends Comparison of Iran, Nazi Holocaust,” Reuters, April 19, 2012, https://www.
reuters.com/article/us-israel-iran-netanyahu/netanyahu-defends-comparison-of-iran-nazi-
holocaust-idUSBRE83H1EF20120418; Paul Bedard, “Netanyahu Warns of Second Holocaust
from Iran,” Washington Examiner, April 15, 2015, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/
netanyahu-warns-of-second-holocaust-from-iran/article/2563105; Toi Staff, “Iran ‘Preparing
Another Holocaust,’ Netanyahu Charges,” The Times of Israel, May 15, 2016, https://www.
timesofisrael.com/iran-preparing-another-holocaust-netanyahu-charges/.
Chapter 5116
41. Editorial, “Netanyahu the Hasmonaen,” Ha’aretz, October 11, 2017, https://www.
haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/netanyahu-the-hasmonean-1.5457024.
42. E.g., Yair, “Israeli Existential Anxiety: Cultural Trauma and the Constitution of Nation-
al Character,” 2014: 346–62.
43. Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem, 1989.
44. Two “grand dichotomies” governed public stances about the Holocaust during the
1950’s and 1960’s in Israel. The first was Shoah and Gvura (“Holocaust and Heroism”), see
Klar et al., “The “Never Again” State of Israel: The Emergence of the Holocaust as a Core
Feature of Israeli Identity and Its Four Incongruent Voices,” 2013: 125–43; Ofer, “The Past that
Does Not Pass: Israelis and Holocaust Memory,” 2009: 1–35; Stauber, The Holocaust in Israeli
Public Debate in the 1950s: Ideology and Memory, 2007; Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the
Politics of Nationhood, 2005, which differentiated between the vast majority of ostensibly
passive Holocaust victims and the small number of Ghetto fighters and Jewish partisans who
actively fought the Nazis (the latter embodying the “proper Israeli response”). The second was
Shoah and Tkumah (“Holocaust and Rebirth”) referring to the building of the State of Israel out
of the ashes of the Holocaust.
45. Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust, 2002: 67.
46. See Bar-Tal & Antebi, “Siege Mentality in Israel,” 1992: 251–75; Elon, The Israelis:
Founders and Sons, 1971; Hareven, “Victimization: Some Comments by an Israeli,” 1983:
145–55; Yair, “Israeli Existential Anxiety: Cultural Trauma and the Constitution of National
Character,” 2014: 346–62.
47. Ilse Posselt, “Never Again: Israel Marks Holocaust Remembrance Day 2017,” Bridges
for Peace, April 24, 2017, https://www.bridgesforpeace.com/2017/04/never-israel-marks-
holocaust-remembrance-day-2017/.
48. Aronson, “Israel’s Security and the Holocaust: Lessons Learned, but Existential Fears
Continue,” 2009: 65–93; Freilich, “National Security Decision-Making in Israel: Processes,
Pathologies, and Strengths,” 2006: 635–63.
49. Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, 1998; Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel, America and the
Bomb, 1991.
50. Twenty-seven years later, in 2007, Israel also destroyed a military Syrian nuclear reac-
tor.
51. Nili, “The Nuclear (and the) Holocaust: Israel, Iran, and the Shadows of Auschwitz,”
2011: 51.
52. As noted by Ben-Amos, and Hoffman, “We Came to Liberate Majdanek,” 2011:
331–54.
53. Feldman, Above the Death Pits, Beneath the Flag: Youth Voyages to Poland and the
Performance of Israeli National Identity, 2008
54. Ben-Amos, and Hoffman, “We Came to Liberate Majdanek,” 2011: 331–54.
55. 2007, “The Holocaust in the Israeli Discourse,” 2007: 307–8.
56. Zertal, “The Holocaust in the Israeli Discourse,” 2007: 307–8.
57. Adiv Sterman, and Raphael Ahren, “Netanyahu Blames Jerusalem Mufti for Holocaust,
Is Accused of ‘Absolving Hitler,’” The Times of Israel, October 21, 2015, https://www.
timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-accused-of-absolving-hitler-for-holocaust/.
58. See Porat, The Blue and the Yellow Star of David: The Zionist Leadership in Palestine
and the Holocaust, 1939–1945, 1990; Segev, The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust,
2000.
59. Arieh O’Sullivan, “IAF Jets Fly over Auschwitz: Commemorate Holocaust Victims”,
The Jerusalem Post, September 4, 2003, http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/israel/history/f15-jets-
over-auschwitz.htm.
60. For some examples see “Top Rabbi: Jews’ Assimilation in Europe ‘Worse Than Holo-
caust,’” Jewish News, March 31, 2014, http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/top-rabbi-jews-
assimilation-europe-worse-holocaust/.
61. Dror Idar, “We Are Here: The Cry of American Jewry,” Israel Ha’yom, March 6, 2018,
http://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/540461.
62. E.g., Firer, Sokhnim shel ha-Lekakh [Agents of Holocaust lesson], 1989.
63. E.g., Elon, The Israelis: Founders and Sons, 1971.
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness 117
64. See Orkaby, “Israel’s International Squadron and the ‘Never Again’ Mentality,” 2015:
83–101.
65. See Segev, The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust, 2000: 398. However, this
humanitarian gesture has been contrasted with the behavior of other nations toward Jews
attempting to flee from the Nazis. PM Begin continued: “We all remember the ships with
Jewish refugees in the 1930s that wandered the surface of the seven seas, asking to enter a
specific country, or any number of countries, only to encounter rejection. Today, there exists
the state of the Jews. We have not forgotten. We will behave with humanity. We will bring
these unfortunate people, refugees saved by our ship from drowning in the depths of the sea, to
our country. We will provide them shelter and refuge,” See Murray Teitel, “Lessons from
Begin: Is Rescue No Longer a Jewish Imperative?,” The Canadian Jewish News, June 23,
2017, http://www.cjnews.com/perspectives/rescue-no-longer-jewish-imperative.
66. It is worthwhile to note that in Israeli collective memory, “infiltrators” are the Palestin-
ians who in the 1950s surreptitiously crossed the border and committed sabotage and harm, see
Morris, Israel’s Border Wars, 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Count-
down to the Suez War, 1997.
67. Melanie Lindman, “10 Key Questions about Israel’s African Asylum Seeker Controver-
sy,” The Times of Israel, February 2, 2018, https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-israels-new-plan-
to-deport-africans-details-abound/.
68. Toi Staff, “Holocaust Survivors Urge Netanyahu Not to Deport African Asylum Seek-
ers,” The Times of Israel, January 25, 2018, https://www.timesofisrael.com/holocaust-
survivors-urge-netanyahu-not-to-deport-african-asylum-seekers/.
69. Gideon Levy, “Israeli Pilots Must Refuse to Fly Expelled Asylum Seekers toward Their
Deaths,” Ha’aretz, December 14, 2017, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-israeli-
pilots-must-refuse-to-fly-expelled-asylum-seekers-to-their-deaths-1.5628618.
70. Ruth McCambridge, “Anne Frank Home Sanctuary Movement Takes Off in Israel,” Non
Profit News, January 18, 2018, https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2018/01/18/anne-frank-home-
sanctuary-movement-takes-off-israel/.
71. Melanie Lindman, “Holocaust Survivors Urge Netanyahu Not to Deport African Asy-
lum Seekers,” The Times of Israel, February 2, 2018, https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-israels-
new-plan-to-deport-africans-details-abound/.
72. See Terry, Golden Rules and Silver Rules of Humanity: Universal Wisdom of Civiliza-
tion, 2004.
73. Roccas, Klar, and Livitan, “The Paradox of Group-Based Guilt: Modes of National
Identification, Conflict Vehemence, and Reactions to the In-Group’s Moral Violations,” 2006:
698–711; Wohl, Branscombe, and Klar, “Collective Guilt: Emotional Reactions When One’s
Group has Done Wrong or Been Wronged,” 2006: 1–37.
74. Schori-Eyal, Klar, Roccas, and McNeill, 2017a; Wohl, and Branscombe, “Remembering
Historical Victimization: Collective Guilt for Current Ingroup Transgressions,” 2008:
988–1006.
75. Gideon Spiro, “Similar Situations [Letter to the Editor],” Ha’aretz, 2008, http://
www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1037100.html.
76. As a consequence, critiques of Israeli policies toward Palestinians tend to use euphe-
misms such as “it is reminiscent of dark periods in history” see for example, Daniel Blatman,
“1932 is Already Here”, Ha’aretz, December 26, 2010, http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/
opinion/1932-is-already-here-1.332974.
77. Benski, and Katz, “Women’s Peace Activism and the Holocaust: Reversing the Hege-
monic Holocaust Discourse in Israel,” 2016: 93–113.
78. See Sa’ar Tsafy, “They Will Not Stand Idly by Like the Germans,” Ha’aretz, May 1,
2008, https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/1.3370485.
79. Justvision, Interview with Yehuda Shaul, 2008, http://www.justvision.org/he/ portrait/
76159/highlights, See also Klar et al., “The “Never Again” State of Israel: The Emergence of
the Holocaust as a Core Feature of Israeli Identity and Its Four Incongruent Voices,” 2013:
125–43.
80. Chayut, The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust: A Memoir, 2013.
Chapter 5118
81. Noam Chayut, The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust: A Memoir, 2013, https://www.
versobooks.com/books/1424-the-girl-who-stole-my-holocaust.
82. For example, Major General Amiram Levin. See Isabel Kershner “Israeli Veterans’
Criticism of West Bank Occupation Incites Furor,” The New York Times, December 23, 2015,
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/world/middleeast/israeli-veterans-criticism-of-west-
bank-occupation-incites-furor.html, and retired Israel Police Major General Alik Ron and Shin
Bet security services chief Major General Ami Ayalon and Yuval Diskin, former head of the
Shin Bet. See “Two New Defense Brass Join in Support for Breaking the Silence,” Ha’aretz,
Dec 22, 2015, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-two-new-defense-brass-join-
support-for-breaking-the-silence-1.5380575.
83. Toi Staff, “Breaking the Silence Director Announces Her Resignation,” The Times of
Israel, February 14, 2017, https://www.timesofisrael.com/breaking-the-silence-director-
announces-her-resignation.
84. Toi Staff, “Stormy Debate Erupts over Bill to Ban Breaking the Silence from Schools,”
The Times of Israel, December 28, 2016, https://www.timesofisrael.com/stormy-debate-erupts-
over-bill-to-ban-breaking-the-silence-from-schools.
85. One such event that sparked widespread public debate in Israel was a shooting incident
(on March 24, 2016) when a Palestinian assailant who stabbed an Israeli soldier was later shot
in the head by an IDF soldier, as he lay wounded and “neutralized” on the ground.
86. Saxe, et al., Jewish Futures Project. The Impact of Taglit-Birthright Israel: 2012 Up-
date, 2012: 1.
87. Saxe, et al., Jewish Futures Project. The Impact of Taglit-Birthright Israel: 2012 Up-
date, 2012.
88. More recently, in March 2018, PM Netanyahu defined the influx of African migrants as
more dangerous than terrorism, Almog Ben Zachary, “Netanyahu: If It Were Not for the Fence,
There Would be Terrorism from Sinai, and, Worse, Infiltrators,” Ha’aretz, March 20, 2018,
https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/1.5930609.
89. Refael Minnes, “Expelling Illegal Infiltrators from Israel – Legal and Moral,” Mida,
January 30, 2018, https://en.mida.org.il/2018/01/30/expelling-illegal-infiltrators-israel-legal-
moral/.
90. Noor, Shnabel, Halabi, and Nadler, “When Suffering Begets Suffering: The Psychology
of Competitive Victimhood Between Adversarial Groups in Violent Conflicts,” 2012: 351–74.
91. See Klar, “From ‘Do not Arouse or Awaken Love Until it so Desires’ through ‘Return to
Zion’ to ‘Conquest of the Land’: Paradigm Shifts and Sanctified Reenactments in Building the
Jewish State,” 2014: 87–99; Klar, and Naor, “You Should Understand Who Is Temporary Here
and to Whom This Country Belongs To: The New Religious Zionism and the Palestinians,”
2017.
92. For example, the late Hanan Porat, one of the ideological leaders of the religious-
nationalist right, raised a story that originated in the Jerusalem Talmud regarding the choices
given by Joshua Ben-Nun to the Canaanites. Porat said that the Palestinians should be offered
to fight the Jews (and then their fate would be like the fate of the ancient Canaanites), to go far
to another country and thus to free themselves from the rule of the Jews, or to surrender to the
Jews, acknowledge the Jewish exclusive eight to the land, and willingly be subjugated to them
(Hanan Porat in Makor Rishon 29.8.2014). Similar proposals were made also by other political
and religious leaders. For example, in response to the publication of statistical estimates in
March 2018, that the number of Palestinians in western Land of Israel is already greater than
the number of Jews, Knesset Member Bezalel Smotrich said in a radio interview: “This means
that one of the sides has to get up and leave, of course we will not do it, that means the other
side will have to go” (in Kaan, Reshet B, 27.3.2018). Several weeks earlier, in early February
2018, Rabbi David Dudkevitch, a religious leader one of the west-bank settlements, said at a
funeral to a fellow settler who had been murdered by a Palestinian: “We are not the guests
here . . . an entire nation has risen up against us . . . we are the owners here. It is not one
Mohammed, it is a nation that lives on its sword against a nation that increases the good in the
world. They are not partners to this land, they are completely strangers. We have returned home
in justice and in mercy. It would be proper for us to cut off this murderous nation”, Nir Hasson,
“Hundreds Attend Funeral for Israeli Slain in Stabbing Attack as Manhunt Widens,” Ha’aretz,
Historical Victimhood and the Israeli Collective Consciousness 119
February 6, 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/hundreds-attend-funeral-for-rabbi-
slain-in-stabbing-attack-1.5791428.
93. Nir Hasson, “We Israelis Are Turning Our Backs on African Refugees,” Ha’aretz,
March 20, 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-we-israelis-are-turning-our-
backs-on-african-refugees-1.5918136.
94. Schori-Eyal, Klar, and Ben-Ami, “Perpetual Ingroup Victimhood as a Distorted Lens:
Effects on Attribution and Categorization,” 2017a: 180–94; Schori-Eyal, Klar, Roccas, and
McNeill, “The Shadows of the Past: Effects of Historical Group Trauma on Current Intergroup
Conflicts,” 2017b: 538–54
95. Schori-Eyal, Klar, and Ben-Ami, “Perpetual Ingroup Victimhood as a Distorted Lens:
Effects on Attribution and Categorization,” 2017a: 180–94, Schori-Eyal, Klar, Roccas, and
McNeill, “The Shadows of the Past: Effects of Historical Group Trauma on Current Intergroup
Conflicts,” 2017b: 538–54.
96. Schori-Eyal, Klar, Roccas, and McNeill, “The Shadows of the Past: Effects of Historical
Group Trauma on Current Intergroup Conflicts,” 2017b: 538–54; see also Klar, et al., “The
‘Never Again’ State of Israel: The Emergence of the Holocaust as a Core Feature of Israeli
Identity and its Four Incongruent Voices,” 2013: 125–43; Klar, “Four Moral Obligations in the
Aftermath of Historical Ingroup Victimization,” 2016: 54–58.
97. Rozin, Haidt, and McCauley, “Disgust,” 2008: 757–76.
98. Schori-Eyal, et al., “The Shadows of the Past: Effects of Historical Group Trauma on
Current Intergroup Conflicts,” 2017b: 538–54.
99. Klar, Yom Tov, Unpublished Data.
100. Schori-Eyal, et al., “The Shadows of the Past: Effects of Historical Group Trauma on
Current Intergroup Conflicts,” 2017b: 538–54.
101. E.g., Doosje, Branscombe, Spears, and Manstead, “Guilty by Association: When One’s
Group Has a Negative History,” 1998: 872–86; Roccas, Klar, and Liviatan, “The Paradox of
Group-Based Guilt: Modes of National Identification, Conflict Vehemence, and Reactions to
the In-Group’s Moral Violations,” 2006: 698–711; Zimmermann, Abrams, Doosje, & Man-
stead, “Causal and Moral Responsibility: Antecedents and Consequences of Group-Based
Guilt,” 2011: 825–39.
102. E.g., Roblyer, “Beyond Precision: Morality, Decision Making, and Collateral Casual-
ties,” 2005: 17–39; Wolfe, and Darley, “Protracted Asymmetrical Conflict Erodes Standards
for Avoiding Civilian Casualties,” 2005: 55–61.
103. To test TECC, participants in the Schori-Eyal et al. study, “The Shadows of the Past:
Effects of Historical Group Trauma on Current Intergroup Conflicts,” 2017b: 538–54, were
presented with a vignette depicting a hypothetical dilemma facing the IDF during the military
conflict in Gaza to assassinate a Hamas militant leader by firing rockets from an attack helicop-
ter. However, this military goal was associated with the risk of also killing civilians in the
vicinity. Participants were presented with a table showing the trade-off between the number of
likely collateral casualties and the probability of a successful assassination of the target and
were asked to decide on the magnitude of the missile based on the resulting expectancy of
success/collateral casualties. The response scale ranged from 1 (40 percent chance of success,
no civilian casualties) to 5 (100 percent chance of success, up to twenty civilian casualties).
104. Schori-Eyal et al., Schori-Eyal, Klar, Roccas, and McNeill, “The Shadows of the Past:
Effects of Historical Group Trauma on Current Intergroup Conflicts,” 2017b: 538–54.
105. Schori-Eyal, Klar, Roccas, and McNeill, “The Shadows of the Past: Effects of Historical
Group Trauma on Current Intergroup Conflicts,” 2017b: 538–54.
106. Yehuda Elkana, “The Need to Forget,” Ha’aretz, March 2, 1988, http://web.ceu.hu/
yehuda_the_need_to_forget.pdf.
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211
About the Editor and Contributors
The Editor
Ilan Peleg (PhD, Northwestern, 1974) has served as President of the Associ-
ation for Israel Studies and is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of Israel Studies
Forum, the scholarly journal of the Association (published now under the
title Israel Studies Review). Currently the Charles A. Dana Professor of
Government and Law at Lafayette College, he has taught courses on Israel in
the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in suburban Philadelphia for about
twenty years. A visiting scholar at Cambridge (St. Antony), Harvard (Human
Rights Program), Penn (Jewish Studies), and Princeton (Middle East), and a
scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, Peleg is the author or
editor of ten volumes including Begin’s Foreign Policy, 1977–1983: Israel’s
Move to the Right (1987), The Emergence of Bi-National Israel: The Second
Republic in the Making (with Ofira Seliktar, 1989), and Patterns of Censor-
ship Around the world (1993). His more recent books include two volumes
published by Cambridge University Press, Democratizing the Hegemonic
State (2007) and Israel’s Palestinians: The Conflict Within (2011, with Dov
Waxman). Professor Peleg’s expertise includes Israeli politics (especially
foreign policy), US foreign and security politics, and international relations
in general (especially conflict and human rights). He is a frequent speaker in
a variety of forums on these issues.
The Contributors
Ruth Amir is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Science and
Multi-Disciplinary Social Science at Yezreel Valley College. Ruth’s research
focuses on the intersection of law, history, politics, and society. She has
authored books and articles on the politics of victimhood, transitional justice,
About the Editor and Contributors212
and genocidal forcible child transfers. Among her most recent publications
are the volumes titled Who is Afraid of Historical Redress: The Israeli Vic-
tim-Perpetrator Dichotomy (2012); The Politics of Victimhood: Historical
Redress in Israel (2012, in Hebrew); Critical Insights: Anne Frank, the
Diary of a Young Girl (co-edited, 2017); and Forcible Child Transfers in the
Twentieth Century: Killing them Softly (forthcoming). Among her recent
articles are “Transitional Justice Accountability and Memorialization: The
Yemeni Children Affair and the Indian Residential Schools” (2014); “Killing
them Softly: The Forcible Transfer of Indigenous Children,” (2015); “Sup-
pression and Dispossession of the Armenian Village of Athlit: A Différend”
(2017); “Canada and Cultural Genocide: It Did Happen Here!” (forthcoming
2018); and “Law Meets Literature: Raphael Lemkin: the Totally Unofficial
Man” (forthcoming 2018).
Yael S. Aronoff (PhD, Columbia University; Political Science) is the Mi-
chael and Elaine Serling and Friends Chair of Israel Studies and the Director
of the Jewish Studies Program at Michigan State University, as well as an
associate professor of international relations in MSU’s James Madison Col-
lege. Dr. Aronoff’s book, The Political Psychology of Israeli Prime Minis-
ters: When Hard-Liners Opt for Peace (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
has received positive reviews. Her current book project is The Dilemmas of
Asymmetric Conflicts: Navigating Deterrence and Democratic Constraints.
This book, focusing on the experiences of Israel and of the United States,
explores the tensions faced by democracies fighting long-standing asymmet-
ric wars, as they juggle traditional military doctrines with the restraint needed
to maintain domestic and international legitimacy.
Moshe Berent (PhD, Cambridge University, 1994, where he studied, among
others, with Ernst Gellner) teaches Political Science at the Open University
of Israel. He is writing on Israeli identity and the history of Zionism. Among
is publications are A Nation like all Nations: Towards the Establishment of
an Israeli Republic (2015), published originally in Hebrew and translated
into English, and The Interest of the Jews: An Introduction to a Different
Israeli History (forthcoming in Hebrew by Carmel Publishing House, Jerusa-
lem, 2018). He also co-authored a book with Professor Joseph Agassi and
Professor Judith Buber Agassi under the title of Who is an Israeli, published
by Kivunim in Rehovot, Israel.
Maya Kahanoff has over a decade’s experience as an academic consultant
and evaluator for conflict transformation, dialogue, and reconciliation-aimed
programs run by various institutions and peace-building NGOs. Her fields of
interest include: psychological aspects of prolonged conflicts; dialogue and
recognition in social conflicts; reconciliation and peace education. Her book,
About the Editor and Contributors 213
“Jews and Arabs Encounter their Identities: Transformations in Dialogue,”
was published in April 2016, by Lexington Books, in cooperation with the
Jerusalem Van-Leer Institute Press. Kahanoff’s study takes us beyond the
surface level of intergroup encounters to examine the dynamics that take
place between and within each group, as well as those that occur within
individual participants’ consciousness. Her analysis demonstrates dialogue’s
potential for transformation as well as its limitations.
Irit Keynan chairs the graduate program for Education, Society and Culture,
and the Institute for Civic Responsibility, at the College for Academic Stud-
ies in Or Yehuda, Israel. She previously taught at Tel Aviv University and at
Haifa University, was a visiting professor at UCLA, and a research scholar at
NYU, UMass Lowell, and UCL. Irit is the author of four books, two of them
award-winning. Her book Like a hidden wound – war trauma in Israeli
society won the Association for Jewish Studies’ Shapira award for best book
in Israel Study for 2012. Irit’s teaching and research interests combine inter-
disciplinary aspects of historical and current dilemmas in the fields of war
trauma, collective memory, social justice and ethnic reconciliation. She has
published extensively in both academic and professional journals. She holds
a PhD in History from Tel Aviv University.
Yechiel Klar is the Head of the Social Psychology Program at the School for
Psychological Sciences at Tel Aviv University. He has taught and conducted
research at several universities in North America (including the University of
Connecticut, the University of Kansas, Carleton University, and Lehigh Uni-
versity). He has won research awards from the Society for Experimental
Social Psychology (SESP) and the Society for Judgment and Decision Mak-
ing (JDM). He has also worked on “Social Psychological Dynamics of His-
torical Representations in the Enlarged European Union.” His main research
interests center on judgment, choice and decision making, as well as moral
and political discourse in societies affected by enduring ethno-political con-
flicts (such as in Israel and Palestine) and the roles of historical memory in
these conflicts. Yonat Klar (1953–2016), to whom this chapter is dedicated,
was a performing artist, stage director, activist, Holocaust educator, and be-
loved life-long partner. Her precious insights on the presence of the Holo-
caust in life in Israel today (e.g., Klar, Y., Schori-Eyal, N. & Klar Yonat,
2013) permeate this chapter.
Itamar Lurie (PhD) is a training psychoanalyst and a teacher at the Israeli
Psychoanalytic Society. His clinical practice involves treating people of the
various communities in Jerusalem. He was involved in introducing certain
aspects of psychoanalytic thinking and training practices into the Israeli edu-
cational system. He is also one of the founders of the Bi-National Psycho-
About the Editor and Contributors214
therapy School at the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem where Palestinian and
Israeli mental health professionals are trained in psychotherapeutic interven-
tions with children and their families. He has co-authored several books with
Flora Mor, among them The Bearers of the Trauma: Long Term Interven-
tions with Trauma Victims in Schools (in Hebrew, 2008) and Growing Within
Relationships: Psychodynamic Education in Schools. Ashalim Press (in He-
brew, 2014)
Shafiq Masalha (PhD) is a clinical psychologist and supervisor. He is one of
the first Arab clinical psychologists in Israel. He is a senior lecturer at the
College for Academic Studies in Or-Yehuda and at the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem. Dr. Masalha has researched several areas including: Children and
War, Cross-Cultural Parenting, and Cross Cultural Psychopathology and
Psychotherapy. He serves as the president of ERICE, an NGO that aims to
advance mental health of children in war areas, especially in the Middle East.
He and Dr. Esti Galilee of Hadassah have been running a training program in
psychotherapy as part of the Bi-National School of Psychotherapy. His train-
ing in psychotherapy and in group work helps him in performing mediation
using professional skills. Leading groups in conflict has taken place in many
of his work areas, including in academic and in clinical settings. He has been
teaching a course on group processes at the Hebrew University for fifteen
years.
Daniel Navon is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Cali-
fornia, San Diego, where he is also a faculty affiliate in Science Studies. He
received his PhD in sociology from Columbia University in 2013 and was a
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar at Harvard University from 2013
to 2015. His work focuses on the social studies of science and medicine,
comparative-historical sociology and social theory. Recent papers include
“Looping genomes: Diagnostic change and the genetic makeup of the autism
population” (American Journal of Sociology, 2016 (with Gil Eyal)) and
“Truth in Advertising: Rationalizing ads and knowing consumers in the early
twentieth century US” (Theory & Society, 2017). His book Mobilizing Muta-
tions: Human Genetics in the Age of Patient Advocacy (2019) examines the
way researchers and advocates have used knowledge about genetic mutations
to carve out novel categories of human disease and difference over the last
half-century.
Ido Zelkovitz is the Head of Middle East Studies Division in the Max Stern
Yezreel Valley College and a Policy Fellow at Mitvim- the Israeli Institute
for Regional Foreign Policy. Dr Zelkovitz is also a Research Fellow at the
Ezri Centre for Iran and the Persian Gulf Studies in the University of Haifa
and teaches at IDC Herzliya. Dr. Zelkovitz was the Schusterman Visiting
