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Commemorating a Difficult Past: Yitzhak Rabin's Memorials

“…What may intensify the likelihood of a fragmented or a multivocal commemoration is the length of time that has elapsed between the events and their commemoration (Irwin-Zarecka 1994;Zolberg 1998): The longer one waits, the better the chances of a multivocal (even a consensual) commemoration. It took America almost 60 years after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated to dedicate the Lincoln Memorial (Schwartz 1997).…”

“…But time operates neither in a linear manner (Zolberg 1998) nor in an empty space and thus may qualify the effect of duration. Within this context one may understand the appearance on the public scene of events that stir much controversy hundreds and even thousands years after they took place (e.g., see Kertzer's [1988] work on Joan of Arc and the works on Massada by Y.…”

“…The interest in embarrassing pasts has become a focus of much academic work over the last decade. From Germany (e.g., see Maier 1998;Olick 1999b;Olick and Levy 1997;Young 1993), Argentina, Chile, Uruguay (Roniger and Sznajder 1999), Austria, Poland (Young 1993), the United States (e.g., see Polleta 1998;Sturken 1997;Zolberg 1998) and many other nations, the literature deals-implicitly if not explicitly-with the question posed by Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz (1991): "How is commemoration without consensus, or without pride, possible?" (p. 379).3 Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz (1991) have suggested a dissensual or, in Kertzer's (1988) terms, multivocal commemoration."…”

“…For a similar view, seeZolberg's (1998) comments on the World War I exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.25Ehrenhaus (1989) claims that had the project been initiated much earlier, an accepted narrative could in all likelihood not have been formed.…”

Memory Laws: An Escalation in Minority Exclusion or a Testimony to the Limits of State Power?

“…The collective past and how it is remembered is thus considered one of the protected interests that should be safeguarded by legal means (Fronza : 610). However, collective memory is not consensual but subject to ongoing contestation (Halbwachs, [1925]; Zolberg ) and in some cases, society is so polarized and torn by conflict, that the post‐conflict state incorporates more than one perception of the past (Dryzek ). This was the case is Northern Ireland (Rolston, “Trying to Reach the Future,” 2010), where two rival truths about the past are housed together in the post‐conflict state, and a similar model was proposed for the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict by historians (Adwan et al ).…”