On the Liberation from the Tyranny of the Past: Arabs and Jews in Israel

How much historical memory do we need? As much as we can get, seems to be the current widespread answer. The idea that societies need to remember their past is a totem of sorts. Societies are praised for remembering the past and for keeping the memory alive. An open, democratic society is expected to confront its past, to face it, and to come to terms with it. These contemporary notions are now essential to the way we understand democracy, while fifty years ago they were not at all common.

It sounds worthy, and sometimes it is. But precisely because remembering became a totem of sorts it demands critical thinking. Societies are reflexively eulogized for keeping a memory alive, but what of the value of keeping it at bay? Memory is now viewed as an ethical obligation, but what of the crimes that are perpetrated in the name of memory? In other words, what of the dangers of too much memory?

I argue for the benefits, indeed the need, of getting over the past—not by forgetting it, but by rejecting the notion that it has any sort of authority over our life in the present. I do not argue for forgetting, but for acknowledging the limits of memory. We cannot allow the past to achieve an a priori privilege, indeed entitlement, over our lives, needs, and everyday existence. Distancing the past is fundamental to saving the present and especially the future.

Consider the case of the Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel. What happens when two national groups, locked in one state, have inimical memories? The memory of the crucial year 1948 represents for Palestinians the Nakba, the catastrophe of the loss of Palestine and their dispossession, while for Jews 1948 represents national independence. These memories are commonly seen as players in a zero-sum game, where sympathy to the memory of one group is viewed as undermining the memory of another. Under these circumstances, the injunction to remember seems hollow because the memory of one group is based on the erasure of the other. The question, then, is not simply how much historical memory do we need, but for what ends? How to recognize the homeland memory of the other without feeling that it undermines your own homeland memory? Is this game of memories at all possible?

A scene from Israel: Birth of a Nation (History Channel, 1997).

The place of the Arab minority in Israel is as contested as it is constantly discussed. At the heart of the matter is the discrimination of Palestinian citizens of Israel, their national sentiments, and their relations with the state. Since the 1990s the political context of the peace process and its failure brought into the open issues that had been buried for a long time. At the same time, larger social and cultural trends in Israeli society brought changes to the Arab minority, which is 1.2 million strong and comprises about 20% of the population. A process of Israelization has taken place in Arab society, whereby Arabs are part of, and tempted to enjoy more of, Israeli democracy and consumer culture. Still, the structural discrimination of Israeli Arabs has remained, as education, allocated funds, and access to resources are unequal compared to what Jews enjoy.

A recent book entitled Who's Land Is This? A Quest for Jewish-Arab Compact in Israel (Israel Democracy Institute, 2006) and edited by Uzi Benziman tells the story of a group of Jewish and Arab academics and public figures who got together regularly between January 1999 and January 2001 in an attempt to write an agreement defining the relations of the Jewish majority and Arab minority in the state of Israel. Meeting at the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem, the group discussed how Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel might achieve a sense of togetherness in a state with which both groups can identify. Ultimately, the attempt failed. The crux of the issue turned out to be whether it is possible to reconcile Israel's definition of itself as both...