From victims to perpetrators: Cultural representations of the link between the Holocaust and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Abstract

Abstract This article proposes a reading of films and literary works of Jewish–Israeli directors and writers that represent a link between the Holocaust and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Based on LaCapra’s ‘acting out’ and Hirsch’s ‘postmemory’ it examines the way artists reflect the complex political blend of the Holocaust and the Israeli– Palestinian conflict. The article shows that, alongside a right-wing narrative that represents the Arabs as the Nazis’ successors, Hebrew literature and cinema, especially in the last decade, reflect mainly the opinions of the left and extreme left wing in Israel, who do not accept this equation, but create what can be called a ‘counteracting-out’ – a reversed equation in which the resemblance between the Holocaust and the Nakbah and/or Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers and Nazis is represented. The fact that the politicization of the Holocaust is tossed from one political side to the other reflects the confusion and ambivalence in Israel’s postmemory of the Holocaust, and indicates the struggle between different memory agents on the collective memory of the Holocaust.