A Tale of Two Narratives

Download or read book A Tale of Two Narratives written by Grace Wermenbol and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-27 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Holocaust and the Nakba are foundational traumas in Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian societies and form key parts of each respective collective identity. This book offers a parallel analysis of the transmission of these foundational pasts in Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian societies by exploring how the Holocaust and the Nakba have been narrated since the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords. The work exposes the existence and perpetuation of ethnocentric victimhood narratives that serve as the theoretical foundations for an ensuing minimization – or even denial – of the other's past. Three established realms of societal memory transmission provide the analytical framework for this study: official state education, commemorative acts, and mass mediation. Through this analysis, the work demonstrates the interrelated nature of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the contextualization of the primary historical events, while also highlighting the universal malleability of mnemonic practices.