“We are a people, one people”: How 1967 Transformed Holocaust Memory and Jewish Identity in Israel and the US

Abstract

This paper examines how the "narrative-identities" of Jewish communities in Israel and the US were unified through the events surrounding Israel's 1967 war with Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Using a range of historical materials, I show how key elements of the two communities' identities were rearranged and untied through a new, shared narrative that linked the Holocaust, Jewish victimhood and Israel. I argue that the old Zionist narrative enabled the new one, which in turn helped bind the two communities discursively, materially and politically. Finally, I discuss the implications for our understanding of identity change and the conflict over Israel/ Palestine.

How memory survives: Descendants of Auschwitz survivors and the progenic tattoo

“…In Israel, memorialisation was dominated by public memory, principally through the Yad Vashem Law of 1953 which created the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day known as Yom HaShoah. Public commemorations such as Yom HaShoah selectively remembered uprisings and resistance rather than the victims of the Holocaust (Navon, 2015). War heroes such as the partisans who resisted the Nazis were respected, memorialised and mourned in contrast to the Nazi collaborators – the Kapos – who survived as well as the other survivors and victims who were thought of as weak – part of European Jewry that were lambs to the slaughter.…”

“…The emerging concept of trauma that came out of the trial (Stern, 2000) began to transform survivor identity into a more collective identity that was also part of the Israeli national identity. The dichotomies of either hero or victim or a hero or collaborator shifted and survival itself became reframed as something heroic (Klar et al, 2013; Navon, 2015).…”

“…This period also saw the Six-Day War in 1967, in which Israel captured territories outside of the designated boundaries of the state of Israel, occupying East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. According to Navon (2015), the Six-Day War led to an embracing of ‘a Holocaust-laden narrative of axiomatic victimhood centred on the Holocaust and the State of Israel’ (Navon, 2015: 243), and with that a new imagined diasporic community emerged as Jews in the US embraced their association with their European pasts and supported Zionism. The new narrative placed the Holocaust and Jewish persecution at the centre and in so doing triggered a rapid re-storying of collective memory where persecution occupied ‘a position of unrivalled centrality’ (Navon, 2015: 364).…”

“…According to Navon (2015), the Six-Day War led to an embracing of ‘a Holocaust-laden narrative of axiomatic victimhood centred on the Holocaust and the State of Israel’ (Navon, 2015: 243), and with that a new imagined diasporic community emerged as Jews in the US embraced their association with their European pasts and supported Zionism. The new narrative placed the Holocaust and Jewish persecution at the centre and in so doing triggered a rapid re-storying of collective memory where persecution occupied ‘a position of unrivalled centrality’ (Navon, 2015: 364). This new narrative, in which Israel and Israeli military actions could only be viewed through the lens of the Holocaust, made it impossible to imagine the idea of Israel as a state that victimised and oppressed others (Navon, 2015).…”

“…The new narrative placed the Holocaust and Jewish persecution at the centre and in so doing triggered a rapid re-storying of collective memory where persecution occupied ‘a position of unrivalled centrality’ (Navon, 2015: 364). This new narrative, in which Israel and Israeli military actions could only be viewed through the lens of the Holocaust, made it impossible to imagine the idea of Israel as a state that victimised and oppressed others (Navon, 2015).…”