The memory of the Holocaust and the
Arab-Israeli conflict
Lecture by Professor Idith Zertal
Institute of Jewish Studies, University of Basel
March 13, 2007
Idith Zertal is one of the so-called "New Historians" who have challenged conventional beliefs about Israeli history, delving into the archives of the Israeli Defense Forces and political leaders such as David Ben-Gurion.
In her lecture at UMass Amherst, Professor Zertal discussed the ways Israel has organized its memory of the Holocaust and used that "official memory" to define and constitute itself, and to legitimize its existence and politics.
She spoke about the symbiosis between the Holocaust and Israel's politics of power, its perception and handling of the conflict with the Palestinians and the Arab world, as well as its justification.
Idith Zertal is currently professor of contemporary history at the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Basel (Switzerland). She is an Israeli historian and essayist, the author of many books and articles on Jewish, Zionist and Israeli history.
Zertal has taught history and cultural studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. She has been a visiting professsor at the University of Chicago and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and a senior research fellow at research institutes in the United States, Europe and Israel.
Among Zertal's many publications are From Catastrophe to Power, Holocaust Survivors and the Emergence of Israel (1996, 1998, 2000), Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (2005), and co-authored with Akviva Eldar, The Lords of the Land: Jewish Settlements in the Occupied Territories 1967-2006.
This lecture was presented by the department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies
and cosponsored by the Office of Jewish Affairs.
