Cultural Struggle and Memory: Palestine-Israel, South Africa and Northern Ireland in Historical Pespective

Abstract

Mordechai Vanunu and a former Israeli Attorney General, Michael Ben-Yair, have characterised Israel as an apartheid state. Their concerns were anticipated by Edwin Montagu, a British Jew who was a member of Lloyd George's cabinet and who courageously opposed the Balfour Declaration. After discussing these three critics of Zionism, I consider how cultural struggle in Palestine-Israel, South Africa and Northern Ireland has expressed itself through the Arts, through journalism, through constant historical research and a constant articulation of the cultural memory. The essay goes on to argue that such a struggle is imaginative and spiritual, and must not be apprehensive of appealing to the resources of the imagination to make its overwhelming case against the apartheid policies practiced by Israel and passively supported or colluded with by so many people.