The Banality of Denial

Israel and the Armenian Genocide

Julian Simon, Yair Auron

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780765808349
• eBook ISBN: 9781351305426
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: History

The Banality of Denial examines the attitudes of the State of Israel and its leading institutions toward the Armenian Genocide. Israel's view of this issue has special significance and deserves an attentive study, as it is a country composed of a people who were victims of the Holocaust. The Banality of Denial seeks both to examine the passive, indifferent Israeli attitude towards the Armenian Genocide, and to explore active Israeli measures to undermine attempts at safeguarding the memory of the Armenian victims of the Turkish persecution.

Such an inquiry into attempts at denial by Israeli institutions and leading figures of Israel's political, security, academic, and Holocaust "memory-preservation" elite has not merely an academic significance. It has considerable political relevance, both symbolic and tangible.

In The Banality of Denial--as in Auron's previous work--moral, philosophical, and theoretical questions are of paramount importance. Because no previous studies have dealt with these issues or similar ones, an original methodology is employed to analyze the subject with regard to four domains: political, educational, media, and academic.

1


The Holocaust in Jewish Identity and Memory

From Auschwitz came, in symbolic terms, two people: a minority which claims it will never happen again; and a frightened and anxious majority which claims it will never happen to us again.—Yehuda Elkana, 1998

Jewish history in the post-Holocaust era cannot be understood without an awareness of the profound and lasting influence of the Holocaust. The Second World War and the Holocaust on one hand, and the establishment of the State of Israel on the other, fundamentally changed the history of the Jews. The Jewish people experienced its greatest disaster and three years later lived to witness the birth of the Jewish state and Jewish sovereignty. In spite of the passage of time, Jewish attitudes toward the Holocaust and its implications remain today a crucial element in contemporary Jewish identity. In many respects, Holocaust awareness has increased over the years in the consciousness of Jews in Israel and the Diaspora. It is a central factor today in the attitudes of young Israeli Jews toward themselves as Jews, Israelis, and Zionists, and its influence is felt in many other aspects of their lives. The Israeli educational system also views the Holocaust as a central component of Jewish and Zionist life, as will be discussed later. Therefore, an understanding of the attitudes of Jews in Israel and abroad toward the Holocaust is essential to understanding their Jewish identity overall. Because of the crucial part the Holocaust plays in Jewish-Israeli identity, it goes without saying that it is very interesting, even essential, to understand Israel’s attitude toward other genocides. One would expect that the trauma of being a victim in a mass-slaughter like the Holocaust would reflect on the basic responses of any Jew toward other victims. But in reality things are very different and, as we will see, more complicated.

Jewish-Israeli Identity

Addressing Jewish-Israeli identity as a single-coherent identity presents numerous difficulties. Practically, it is a fragmented and divided identity and so is the educational system. It is divided into three sectors: the State secular population, which is the biggest sector, the state-religious sector, and the independent sector, which is identified with the ultra-orthodox elements in Israeli-Jewish society. This sector has been growing significantly in the last two decades. The State religious sector is Zionist, and the independent sector is not Zionist. The division by sectors of education and by religious tendencies (the two variables are virtually congruent) reveals meaningful differences with regard to most aspects of Jewish-Israeli identity. From studies on Jewish identity in Israel, it emerges that this identity could be examined from four perspectives:

1. Attitudes toward the Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora;
2. Attitudes toward the Holocaust;
3. Attitudes towards the State of Israel and Zionism; and
4. Attitudes towards the Jewish religion.¹

These are not the only aspects that form the structure of Israeli-Jewish identity, but they are the essential ones for an analysis of this identity. It should be emphasized that the identity of a Jewish citizen of Israel is neither purely Israeli nor purely Jewish; it is a synthesis of both, and the proportion between one component and the other depends on the sub-group or sub-identity. For example, the seculars tend to define themselves more as Israelis, while the religious tend to define themselves more as Jews. Likewise, a Jew living in America, for example, is usually regarded, by himself and by others, as an American-Jew or a Jewish-American.

The religious tendencies variable emerged as the most significant factor affecting Jewish-Israeli identity. Its influence is greater than that of other independent variables, including country of birth, ethnic origin, and so forth. It is possible to speak of four sub-identity models, or profiles, of the Jewish-Israeli identity:

1. The non-religious (secular) identity;
2. The traditionalist (religious-tradition oriented) identity. These two sub-identities compose the state sector population:
3. The national-religious identity (State-religious sector);
4. The ultra-orthodox identity (independent sector).

The Holocaust has turned out to be the one meaningful factor shared by all sub-identity groups in Israeli society. Moreover, today, unlike in the 1950s and 1960s, it also constitutes a major component of all sub-identities, despite variations in the specific componential aspects of attitudes towards the Holocaust.² Let us demonstrate this by briefly analyzing some significant attitudes.

The Lessons of the Holocaust

Ideological movements endeavor to learn lessons from historical events, especially the most important historical events, and usually want to incorporate them into their historical collective memory in a way that fits their ideologies.³ There can be no doubt that the Holocaust is perceived as a watershed event that has had a decisive effect on the destiny of the Jewish people in the recent past, the present, and has profound implications for its future. This is how the Zionist movement and its leaders perceived the Holocaust as it occurred and in the years that have since passed. The same is true in the Jewish religious world, both Zionist and non-Zionist.

As a terrible and complex tragedy in the recent history of the Jewish people, the Holocaust raises many poignant questions. One way to confront such an event is to try to learn “lessons” from it. Even when the Israeli educational system did not teach the Holocaust as a subject in the curriculum, in the first decades (as we will see later) it was deemed very important to commemorate it and teach its lessons, in order to prepare students to take their place in Israeli society. Undoubtedly, the Israeli political and educational systems tried to influence the young Israelis’ attitude toward the Holocaust in a Zionist direction. Some would even go so far as to charge that the Israeli educational system’s preoccupation with the Holocaust was intended to serve the needs and interests of the State.

The Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance (Yad Vashem) Law of August 19, 1953, which defined the function of Yad Vashem as the State Memorial Authority, is one of the most important laws adopted by the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) on this subject. One of the functions and responsibilities of Yad Vashem, according to Article 2, Paragraph 1 of the law is: “To collect, examine and publish testimony of the disaster and the heroism [of the Jewish people during the Holocaust] it called forth, and to bring home its lesson to the people.” The Law implies that there is only a single lesson and does not say what the lesson of the Holocaust is. It is clear from a reading of the debates in the Knesset at the time that this was not an accidental omission.

“Lesson” means, in this context, drawing conclusions from the experience of the past, in order to be aided by it in the present and the future.⁴ It is noteworthy that people tend to talk about the lessons of the Holocaust, but not about the messages or significance of the Holocaust. Ruth Firer sums up her study of the lessons of the Holocaust as they appear in various Israeli textbooks, as well as the changes in them from 1948 to 1988, as follows: “I believe it is possible to turn the textbooks from “purveyors of lessons” into “purveyors of significance.”⁵ Nonetheless, the intended lesson of the Holocaust in Yad Vashem Law is the Zionist one (see below).

But is there really only one lesson of the Holocaust? The answer is an unequivocal no. The Holocaust can provide lessons, meanings, messages, and different interpretations. The fact is that different personalities and circles in Israeli society, in the Jewish Diaspora, and in the world disagree over the lessons and significance to be found in the Holocaust.

Generally the lessons can be divided into three categories, which are not necessarily exclusive: Zionist, Jewish, and Universal. The Zionist lessons could include:

1. Every Jew in the Diaspora must immigrate to Israel;
2. There is no security for Jews in the Diaspora;
3. Israel is the safest place for Jews to live; and
4. There is a vital need for the existence of a strong, secure, sovereign State of Israel.

The first two lessons are Zionist in the extreme, going far beyond the other two. They express the doctrine known as “negation of the Diaspora,” or more precisely the “negation of Exile” (“Diaspora” is a chosen situation whereas “exile” is a forced situation). There are Zionists who see the Holocaust as the most extreme manifestation of the failure of the Diaspora. Consequently they preach eliminating the Diaspora with slogans just like the first two above. The lesson that “Israel is the safest place for Jews to live” is far more moderate and relative than “there is no security in the Diaspora,” while the fourth lesson would be accepted by most Jews in the Diaspora, including those who do not see themselves as Zionist or even pro-Zionist.

The Jewish lessons, not necessarily connected to Israel, include:

1. Jewish solidarity, self-defense, and reliance on ourselves alone are essential; and
2. We must be on our guard for any manifestation of anti-Semitism and fight it as soon as it appears.

The universal lessons, related neither to the specific Jewish nor to the Israeli-Jewish reality, but to the general human condition, include:

1. The Holocaust teaches us about the baseness and dangers that are part of human nature;
2. Anti-democratic phenomena and racism must be fought; and
3. The rights of minorities must be protected throughout the world.

Studies conducted in Israel indicate that few young Israelis see the most important lesson of the Holocaust as a universal one. We can assume that these Israelis would be more sensitive to other genocides than the ones leaning towards the Jewish or Zionist “lessons,” but this issue was never examined. It was found that young Israelis’ conclusions regarding the Holocaust lean much more to the Zionist “lessons” than to Jewish ones, and even less to universal ones. For the most part, young Israelis reach Zionist conclusions: the need for the existence of a strong and sound Jewish state, the lack of security in the Diaspora, that Israel is the safest place for Jews, and that every Jew in the Diaspora must immigrate to Israel.⁶

In this context, it is worth quoting one sentence from “In Praise of Forgetting,” a controversial article by Israeli philosopher Yehuda Elkana, himself a survivor of the Holocaust, which appeared in the Hebrew daily newspaper Ha’aretz, (March 2, 1988). Elkana wrote: “From Auschwitz came, in symbolic terms, two peoples: a minority which claims ‘it will never happen again,’ and a frightened and anxious majority which claims ‘it will never happen to us again.’” Between these two versions, in the tension between particularism and universalism, fluctuates Israeli society, and the public debate within it. Realizing and understanding this tension is very significant to our issue in this study.

The Israeli writer Boaz Evron, in a sharp criticism, wrote the following in 1983:

Two catastrophes have hurt the Jewish people in the twentieth century: the Holocaust and the lessons drawn from it. And today, illogical and antihistorical interpretations of the genocide of the Jews are being used, either deliberately or out of ignorance, as propaganda, in the non-Jewish world, the Jewish Diaspora, and within Israel’s own Jewish nation. This propaganda has now become one of the most serious threats to the Jewish people and the State of Israel.⁷

Evron refers to the claim about the uniqueness of the Holocaust, as well as to the fact that the Holocaust is taught in Israel (in his view), as an instrument of Zionist education.

The ideas of most Israelis are different from views such as that of Elkana and Evron. This is indicated clearly in a survey conducted for Yad Vashem in November 1999 about the Holocaust and its significance to Jewish-Israeli society, with the participation of 508 persons chosen from a national sample of the adult Jewish population in Israel.⁸

To the question “What is the importance that we have to relate to the Holocaust in Israeli identity?” a great majority (81 percent) answered “very great importance,” much less (16 percent) answered “great significance,” and very few (less than 3 percent) answered “little significance,” “no significance,” or “I do not know.”

Another way to examine the impact of the Holocaust upon Israeli society is by analyzing, although briefly here, the three contexts of the Holocaust significance and memory that are widespread in Israel:

1. Holocaust and rebirth—the connection between the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel;
2. Holocaust and heroism; and
3. Holocaust and redemption—the view that the Holocaust is a stage in the Jewish redemption by God, which is limited to some of the religious viewpoints.

The first two contexts, which are much more widespread, can be seen clearly in the discussions around the laws of the Knesset: the Memorial Day for the Holocaust and the Ghetto Rebellion Law of 1951; the Yad Vashem Law of 1953; and the Memorial Day for the Holocaust and the Heroism Law of 1959.⁹

The Israeli and Jewish viewpoint obliged Yad Vashem to convey the heroism and spiritual courage of the Jews to future generations and to teach the lessons (or practically, the lesson) of the Holocaust, although there were no definitions of what those lessons might be. The laws had to formulate the patterns of remembrance for Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day), which would then pass from Israel to the Jewish communities in the Diaspora as well. By law, Yad Vashem had also to grant all the Jewish victims of the Holocaust “Israel memorial citizenship,” a symbolic status created to connect the victims to the State of Israel. This was a very unusual assignment, laden with emotional and ideological meaning. Yad Vashem was also charged with taking the lead in cooperating with other Jewish (and perhaps non-Jewish) institutions that commemorated the victims of the Holocaust and representing Israel on the different international commemoration projects that might arise. James E. Young, in his comprehensive book The Texture of Memory, about the Holocaust memorial and its meaning, described the end of the exhibition in Yad Vashem’s museum (a new museum is presently being built).¹⁰

In fact, as we exit the last room of the exhibition, the hall of names, we pass alongside the Baal Shem Tov’s [the founder of the Hassidic Movement] words, gilded in gold lettering, a distillation of this memorial’s raison d’être on Israel: “Forgetting lengthens the period of exile! In remembrance lies the secret of deliverance.” With these words in mind, we walk outside into the blindingly bright light of Jerusalem, the present moment. The memorial message [exile] is reinforced further still: “That has all come to this,” the museum seems to be saying. “That was the galut, where Jews had no refuge, no defense only death and destruction; this is Israel, its people alive.”

Members of the Knesset who took part in the deliberations about the laws emphasized certain principles in accordance with their own political inclinations. The presentation of the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel—Shoah Utekumah (Holocaust and Rebirth)—in the context of cause and effect (Israel was created “because” of the Holocaust, “thanks” to or “despite” the Holocaust) illuminated the main agreements and differences between the speakers of the various parties.

The final ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. The Holocaust in Jewish Identity and Memory
• 2. Denials of the Armenian Genocide
• 3. Israel-Turkey Relations
• 4. Genocide and Israeli Politics
• 5. The Armenian Genocide’s Recognition by States: The Israeli Aspect
• 6. Genocide Education in Israel
• 7. A Moralistic-Humanistic Attitude: Sarid’s Statement, 2000
• 8. The Sphere of the Media
• 9. The Israeli Academy and the Armenian Genocide
• 10. Conclusions
• Appendix A: The Speech Made by Yossi Sarid, Minister of Education of Israel, at the Armenian Memorial Gathering, the Morning of April 24, 2000
• Appendix B: The Armenian Genocide Resolution Unanimously Passed by the Association of Genocide Scholars (AGS) of North America
• Appendix C: Statement by Concerned Scholars and Writers, April 24, 1998
• Appendix D: 126 Holocaust Scholars Affirm the Incontestable Fact of the Armenian Genocide and Urge Western Democracies to Officially Recognize It
• Appendix E: Statement of Scholars, Rabbis, Teachers, Community Leaders, and Students of Jewish Heritage
• Bibliography
• Index
• Illustrations appear after page