SAGE Memory Studies Journal & Memory Studies Association Outstanding First Book Award, Honorable Mention, 2019
Set in Israel in the first decade of the twenty-first century and based on long-term fieldwork, this rich ethnographic study offers an innovative analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It explores practices of "memory activism" by three groups of Jewish-Israeli and Arab-Palestinian citizens--Zochrot, Autobiography of a City, and Baladna--showing how they appropriated the global model of truth and reconciliation while utilizing local cultural practices such as tours and testimonies.
These activist efforts gave visibility to a silenced Palestinian history in order to come to terms with the conflict's origins and envision a new resolution for the future. This unique focus on memory as a weapon of the weak reveals a surprising shift in awareness of Palestinian suffering among the Jewish majority of Israeli society in a decade of escalating violence and polarization--albeit not without a backlash.
Contested memories saturate this society. The 1948 war is remembered as both Independence Day by Israelis and al-Nakba ("the catastrophe") by Palestinians. The walking tour and survivor testimonies originally deployed by the state for national Zionist education that marginalized Palestinian citizens are now being appropriated by activists for tours of pre-state Palestinian villages and testimonies by refugees.

motw/Memory Activism_ Reimagining th - Yifat Gutman.pdf

United States, United States of America

Apr 04, 2017

producers:
Adobe PDF Library 15.0

Memory of the World Librarian: Slowrotation

Source title: Memory Activism: Reimagining the Past for the Future in Israel-Palestine

Set in Israel in the first decade of the twenty-first century and based on long-term fieldwork, this rich ethnographic study offers an innovative analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It explores practices of "memory activism" by three groups of Jewish-Israeli and Arab-Palestinian citizens--Zochrot, Autobiography of a City, and Baladna--showing how they appropriated the global model of truth and reconciliation while utilizing local cultural practices such as tours and testimonies.
These activist efforts gave visibility to a silenced Palestinian history in order to come to terms with the conflict's origins and envision a new resolution for the future. This unique focus on memory as a weapon of the weak reveals a surprising shift in awareness of Palestinian suffering among the Jewish majority of Israeli society in a decade of escalating violence and polarization--albeit not without a backlash.
Contested memories saturate this society. The 1948 war is remembered as both Independence Day by Israelis and al-Nakba ("the catastrophe") by Palestinians. The walking tour and survivor testimonies originally deployed by the state for national Zionist education that marginalized Palestinian citizens are now being appropriated by activists for tours of pre-state Palestinian villages and testimonies by refugees.
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Cover 1
Title Page 4
Table of Contents 8
Acknowledgments 10
Introduction: The Logic and Practice of Memory Activism 16
1. The Activist Tour as a Political Tool 42
2. The Activist Archive of Survivor Testimonies 57
3. Similar Practices, Higher Stakes: Palestinian Memory Activism in Israel 78
4. The Shift: The Nakba Law and the Memory War on 1948 105
5. From Reconciliation without Truth to Truth without Reconciliation 127
Conclusion: The Future of Reimagining the Past 158
Notes 168
References 180
Index 198

Set in Israel in the first decade of the twenty-first century and based on long-term fieldwork, this ethnographic study offers an analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It explores practices of "memory activism" by three groups of Jewish-Israeli and Arab-Palestinian citizens ... Zochrot, Autobiography of a City, and Baladna ... showing how they appropriated the global model of truth and reconciliation while utilizing local cultural practices such as tours and testimonies

2025-10-27