Transformative Justice: Israeli Identity on Trial (review)

Leora Bilsky in her book Transformative Justice: Israeli Identity on Trial combines an outstanding grasp of historical subject matter and an original insight into the role four outstanding trials played in shaping Israeli collective identity. The book is engaged with four trials: the Kastner trial (1954–58), the Kufr Qassem trial (1956–57); the Adolf Eichmann trial (1960–62), and the Yigal Amir trial (1996). She describes these trials not as show trials but as political trials where there is a presence of an "element of risk to the authorities." Even though the book is devoted to the analysis of Israeli society, this work is a thought-provoking contribution which can be valuable for a philosopher, literary critic, or political scientist as well as legal practitioner. The main question she addresses in the book is, "Can Israel be both Jewish and democratic?" She writes, "This book will trace the constant tension between the Jewish and democratic values in Israeli society through four dramatic political trials that helped shape the Israel collective identity and memory over a period of forty years." Bilsky's book reflects a renewed interest in the foundational myths of the State of Israel as the Jewish State faces a new crisis of identity over redefinition of physical, social, and psychological borders between Jews and Arabs which started with the Oslo process in 1993 and has just passed another test with the evacuation of Jewish residents of the Gaza Strip.

The book also reflects on the subject of collective memory of Holocaust in Israel as recently published important books Death and the Nation: History, Memory, Politics by Idith Zertal and In the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Struggle Between Jews and Zionists in the Aftermath of World by Yosef Grodzinsky indicate. In her book Bilsky does not flinch from exploring what would be for a young Israeli nation the most painful and traumatic public encounters with witnesses, collaborators, and perpetrators of Holocaust. This issue was prominent in Israeli courts in the 1950s as a result of the passage of the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, in 1950.

In the beginning, the author focuses on the Kastner and Eichmann trials. Although Bilsky describes the Kastner trial as an "almost forgotten trial," it has not been forgotten by subsequent writers: it makes an appearance in Arendt's Eichmannin Jerusalem; it features prominently in Tom Segev's The Seventh Million (1991); Yehuda Bauer's Jews for Sale? (1994) attempts to defend Rudolph Kastner and to refute the charges against him; and it inspired two novels—Amos Elon's Timetable (1980) and Neil Gordon's cerebral thriller The Sacrifice of Isaac (1995). Further, Bilsky focuses on two trials (the Kfur Qassem trial, which involved a murder of forty-nine Arab civilians by Israeli Border Police, and Yigal Amir's trial over the assassination of Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin in 1995) that reflect an identity crisis in Israeli society caused by a clash of two incongruent visions of the state of Israel, one vision inspired by an ethno-national view of the character of the state and the other informed by ideals of Western liberal democracy.

As an analytical tool Bilsky employs the transformative justice approach; as she points out, "A central issue that the book addresses is the ability of a trial to serve as a consciousness-transforming vehicle: what kind of politics is advanced by it and how can it be used to promote the formation of a democratic society." She juxtaposes a binary or adversarial character of the Israeli court system, based on the Anglo-Saxon model, with societal and political contexts which court decisions produce. Bilsky stresses societal aspects of a court as a scene of personal drama where historical and political discourses collide. She skillfully highlights the importance of the philosophical and literary works these trials inspired. In particular the author focuses on Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem and the famous (in Israel) poetic response of a national Israeli poet Nathan...