The Hermeneutic Underpinning of Ethnic Brutality: The Jewish Israeli Case

Abstract

Memory of historical events is necessarily collective, but it acquires personal characteristics that are of the same nature as individual memory in general. This idea is illustrated through memories of an Israeli child, struggling to get to grips with the ungraspable Holocaust. The mnemonic construction of the Holocaust is then connected to the ethos of military strength in Israeli society, which ethos undertakes to transform the historical marking of the Jews as victims, sacrificed by the nations on the altar of ethnic power. Following the mythical suggestions of the story of the binding of Isaac, the narrative of Jewish national renewal builds upon the unconscious theme of victim conversion, from Isaac to the lamb. This is where the Palestinians enter the unconscious Israeli narrative, occupying, as it were, the place of the lamb and allowing the movement of the Jew away from the position of the sacrificed. The theme of sacrifice conversion marks itself in historical events such as the Naqba and the recent attack on Gaza. The paper examines the manner in which these themes feed into personal memory systems and reconstructs the workings of memory through the entire historical cycle. Finally, the paper contextualizes the unconscious themes in a particular political reality, as well as in an ethical construction of the Jewish Israeli subject.