Human rights NGOs in Israel: collective memory and denial

Abstract

This article discusses the complex interrelations between human rights, memory, forgetting and denial by analysing the discourses and practices of Israeli human rights organisations with respect to the past of the Palestinian people, particularly the events that took place in 1948. It examines how and why Israeli organisations dialectically remember and repress elements of the local past, and align themselves with the prevailing national silencing of the discussion on the Palestinian refugees' future rights, particularly their right of return. The article concludes by exploring the implications of these practices on the organisations' capacity to significantly impact the Israeli-Palestinian future.

Human Rights in Argentina: Between Family Memories and Political Identities

“…To conceptualize struggles of memory as struggles between two categories of people, neatly separated from each other, one embodying memory and one embodying forgetting, is problematic. While I agree with both Portelli and Stern, I would argue for the need to identify strategies of amnesia and denial (Zvika & Golan, 2014). Ricoeur (2004) speaks of forgetting as a strategy of avoidance, arising from a desire not to know, not to be informed about, and not to inquire into atrocities committed in one's backyard.…”

Strategy, local sociology, political philosophy: Analysis of strategy of Non‐Governmental Organizations under radical intellectual leadership

“…Israeli scholars who specifically focused on Bimkom provided structural and rational reasons for the existence of this NGO, such as those presented above, adjusting for local geographic–political circumstances. Orr and Golan () view the emergence of Bimkom as natural, given that minorities with less power, in particular Arab, increasingly suffer from deprivation and exclusion. According to these authors, to change these conditions, Bimkom criticizes the Israeli government without adopting a radical stance, as such a stance could compromise its legitimacy: “[Bimkom] did not want to be perceived as extremists by the Jewish public in Israel or take action on an issue so remote from the consensus of this public” (Orr & Golan, , p. 80).…”

“…A substantial divide within this population is the growing contention between religious and secular communities, which has escalated to a level of a “dormant culture war” (Kimmerling, ). Over the years, this divide has increasingly correlated with the strife between the conservative and the progressive community, to which Bimkom belongs (Greenspan, ; Orr & Golan, ).…”

Human rights litigation and the transition from policing to warfare: the case of Israel and its governance of the West Bank and Gaza in the Al-Aqsa Intifada

“…The resistance posed by Israeli human rights NGOs has its limits. These organisations' discourse and practices have often set aside questions relating to the Nakba and the rights of Palestinian refugees (Orr and Golan 2014). Similarly, the right to self determination, which has some potential of challenging the settler colonial structures, has not, by and large, entered into these NGOs' discourse (Allen 2013) and court petitions.…”