Narrating Death, Surviving Life: Memory and Palestinian Mothers Who Lost Their Children in the Second Intifada

The cause of Palestinian children’s deaths in the second intifada (2000-2006) is a matter of dispute in the memory of some Palestinians and Israelis today. Mainstream Israeli media and political narratives often say that the Palestinian parents sacrificed their children in the name of religion. Some of this misunderstanding comes in response to the Palestinian mothers who memorialize their sons’ death as beautiful and an act of strength. However, a reading of the mothers’ narratives that is grounded in memory studies and contemporary Palestinian history disrupts the notion the Palestinians embrace ‘an industry of death.’ The mothers recall the death as an honorable sacrifice for Palestine to not only find individual solace from a traumatic past, but also to share in a collective narrative with national meanings. This paper uses oral histories to explore the politics of individual and collective memory in Palestine today.