‘A False and Perverse Doctrine’

2021 ◽  
pp. 176-224
Author(s):  
Rotem Giladi
Keyword(s):  
Minority Rights ◽  
Jewish Question ◽  
Genocide Convention ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
National Autonomy ◽  
Diaspora Nationalism

Chapter 5 explores the origins of Jacob Robinson and Shabtai Rosenne’s ambivalence towards the Genocide Convention and Raphael Lemkin. At its core was their reading of the Convention as the extension of interwar protection of minority rights—in essence, as a programme of Diaspora Nationalism. The Convention was predicated on a competing model of Jewish nationalism that, following Simon Dubnow, identified the Diaspora—not Palestine—as the proper locus for Jewish national revival. It challenged Zionism’s core assumptions about the Jewish condition and the solution it prescribed to the ‘Jewish Question’. A return to minority rights, after the Holocaust, undermined Zionism’s achievement of majority status in Palestine and negated the need for a Jewish state to guarantee the protection of Jews. Both Robinson and Rosenne had previously subscribed to Dubnow’s teachings; the chapter traces their ideological transformations: from investment in to disenchantment with national autonomy, minority rights, and Dubnow’s theories.

Moshe Safdie at Yad Vashem: Architecture, Politics, Identity

Pólemos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Paolo Coen
Keyword(s):  
Initial Phase ◽  
The State ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
History Museum ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
International Reputation ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
Yad Vashem

Abstract This article revolves in essence around the contributions made by the architect Moshe Safdie to the Yad Vashem memorial and museum in Jerusalem. Both probably need at least a brief introduction, if for no other reason than the nature of the present publication, which has a somewhat different scope than the type of art-historical or architectural-historical journals to which reflections of this kind are usually consigned. The first part draws a profile of Safdie, who enjoys a well-established international reputation, even if he has not yet been fully acknowledged in Italy. In order to better understand who he is, we shall focus on the initial phase of his career, up to 1967, and his multiple ties to Israel. The range of projects discussed includes the Habitat 67 complex in Montreal and a significant number of works devised for various contexts within the Jewish state. The second part focuses on the memorial and museum complex in Jerusalem that is usually referred to as Yad Vashem. We will trace Yad Vashem from its conception, to its developments between the 1950s and 1970s, up until the interventions of Safdie himself. Safdie has in fact been deeply and extensively involved with Yad Vashem. It is exactly to this architect that a good share of the current appearance of this important institute is due. Through the analysis of three specific contributions – the Children’s Memorial, the Cattle Car Memorial and the Holocaust History Museum – and a consideration of the broader context, this article shows that Yad Vashem is today, also and especially thanks to Safdie, a key element in the formation of the identity of the state of Israel from 1967 up until our present time.

Israel's Moment

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Herf
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Cold War

Israel's Moment is a major new account of how a Jewish state came to be forged in the shadow of World War Two and the Holocaust and the onset of the Cold War. Drawing on new research in government, public and private archives, Jeffrey Herf exposes the political realities that underpinned support for and opposition to Zionist aspirations in Palestine. In an unprecedented international account, he explores the role of the United States, the Arab States, the Palestine Arabs, the Zionists, and key European governments from Britain and France to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Poland. His findings reveal a spectrum of support and opposition that stood in sharp contrast to the political coordinates that emerged during the Cold War, shedding new light on how and why the state of Israel was established in 1948 and challenging conventional associations of left and right, imperialism and anti-imperialism, and racism and anti-racism.

Minority Rights in China

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Castellino ◽  
Elvira Domínguez Redondo
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Legal Reforms ◽  
Chinese Law ◽  
The Third ◽  
National Autonomy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government

This chapter is divided into four sections. The first section seeks to provide a brief overview of the history of legal reforms in China, and underscore the changing attitude of the government to human rights. The second section identifies the groups considered minorities or ‘minority nationalities’ in China. The third section seeks to extrapolate principles of minority rights in Chinese law, drawing on the Chinese Constitution, the Law of the People's Republic of China on Regional National Autonomy, and from authoritative commentaries on the same. This is followed by various sub-sections focusing on policy and legislation over specific issues pertaining to minorities in China, such as education, religion, political participation, and economic development. The final section analyzes the remedies available and the challenges in making these effective.

scholarly journals Critical theory and holocaust

2006 ◽  
pp. 37-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Predrag Krstic
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Jewish Question ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Status ◽  
Enlightenment Project ◽  
Social Critical ◽  
Historical Theology ◽  
The Relationship

In this paper the author is attempting to establish the relationship - or the lack of it - of the Critical Theory to the "Jewish question" and justification of perceiving signs of Jewish religious heritage in the thought of the representatives of this movement. The holocaust marked out by the name of "Auschwitz", is here tested as a point where the nature of this relationship has been decided. In this encounter with the cardinal challenge for the contemporary social theory, the particularity of the Frankfurt School reaction is here revealed through Adorno installing Auschwitz as unexpected but lawful emblem of the ending of the course that modern history has assumed. The critique of this "fascination" with Auschwitz, as well as certain theoretical pacification and measured positioning of the holocaust into discontinued plane of "unfinished" and continuation and closure of the valued project, are given through communicative-theoretical pre-orientation of J?rgen Habermas?s Critical Theory and of his followers. Finally, through the work of Detlev Claussen, it is suggested that in the youngest generation of Adorno?s students there are signs of revision to once already revised Critical Theory and a kind of defractured and differentiated return to the initial understanding of the decisiveness of the holocaust experience. This shift in the attitude of the Critical Theory thinkers to the provocation of holocaust is not, however, particularly reflected towards the status of Jews and their tradition, but more to the age old questioning and explanatory patterns for which they served as a "model". The question of validity of the enlightenment project, the nature of occidental rationalism, (non)existence of historical theology and understanding of the identity and emancipation - describe the circle of problems around which the disagreement is concentrated in the social critical theory.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Rubin Suleiman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Personal Interest ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
Daily Newspaper ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World ◽  
Jewish Intellectuals ◽  
Short Essays

These four short essays, written over a twenty-year period, are pièces de circonstance, each one linked to a specific occasion: the publication of a book by a young author, an op-ed piece for a daily newspaper, a symposium on Israel organized by left-wing Jewish intellectuals, the appearance of a film that would become revered around the world. Beauvoir’s essays here are modest efforts, in two cases simply brief prefaces to a much longer work; but read consecutively, they offer an excellent glimpse into the evolution of French public discourse about the Holocaust and about Israel. They also show Beauvoir’s own unwavering commitment to thinking about the implications and consequences of the major atrocity of the twentieth century, as well as her personal interest in the Jewish state....

Zionism Reconsidered

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-43
Author(s):  
Jerome Slater
Keyword(s):  
Arab World ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Religious Claim

In some ways, Zionism is legitimate and persuasive, but in other ways it has undermined the possibilities of Israeli peace with the Arab world. The argument that the history of murderous anti-Semitism, culminating in the Holocaust, justified the creation of a Jewish state, somewhere, was strong. However, the arguments that the Jews had an eternal right to Palestine were weak. The religious claim that God gave Palestine to the Jews is challenged by Christian and Islamic counterclaims. The argument that 2,000 years ago the Jews were predominant in Palestine until they were driven out by the Romans has long been shown by archaeologists and historians to have little foundation. Even if true, it would be irrelevant to establishing a convincing claim for exclusive Jewish sovereignty today. Likewise, the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate to Britain, the basis for the Zionist claims based on modern history, were simply colonialist impositions.

Ofira Seliktar. Divided We Stand: American Jews, Israel, and the Peace Process. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002. xvi, 272 pp.

AJS Review ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 412-413
Author(s):  
Harold M. Waller
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Jews ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Israeli Government ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Run Up

Israel, and before that the idea of a Jewish state in the traditional homeland, has long captured the imagination of many, if not always most, American Jews. The close connection between Jews in Israel and the United States intensified as the events of the last century unfolded, especially the Holocaust, the struggle for Israel's independence, and then the unending effort to safeguard that independence and ensure security. The 1967 Six-Day War, the run-up to which conjured up images of another calamity, had a profound effect in the Diaspora, driving home the reality of Israel's precarious security and the state's central importance in modern Jewish life. That watershed produced a relatively short-lived period when it seemed that American Jews were united in their support for Israel. But, since 1977, that “sacred unity” has been called into question as sharp divisions have appeared—exacerbated by controversial Israeli government decisions and the pressures of the peace process since 1991.

Identity Building and the Holocaust: Roma Political Nationalism

1997 ◽  
Vol 25 (02) ◽  
pp. 269-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Slawomir Kapralski
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Community Development ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Identity Constructs ◽  
The Right

It is significant that, at a time in which violent nationalisms are re-entering the European political stage, one of the basic aims of Romani elites in the area of human rights is to be recognized as a nation, a fact marked symbolically by the attention being paid to national emblems. Of course, other issues (equal civil rights, minority rights, political representation or community development) are also among the objectives of Roma organizations (PER Report, 1992, p. 7). However, in the case of these latter issues, the question can be asked, to whom are these basic human rights to be granted? In other words, Romani elites seem to realize that the most important right for which they should strive is the right to have a commonly accepted and externally recognized self-definition as a group which should be granted consequent rights. In the present circumstances, especially in Eastern Europe, there is little doubt that the elected self-identification by the Romani people will be a national one, since this is perceived as stronger and more respectable than other identity-constructs such as ethnic minority.

ZEEV STERNHELL, The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State, trans. David Maisel (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997). Pp. 432. $18.95.

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 633-635 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Peretz
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Professional Historian ◽  
Israeli Government ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Professional Field ◽  
Political Realities

The principal focus of Zeev Sternhell's screed is Labor Zionism, although like other Israeli so-called new historians, he touches on relations with the country's Arabs, tensions between the Ashkenazi elite and Sephardi under-class, the Yishuv and the Holocaust, and attitudes toward and perceptions of Diaspora Jewry. The author, whose professional field has been European history, mainly France and Italy, was motivated to undertake this study by “serious doubts” (p. ix) about the generally accepted ideas sanctioned by Israeli historiography and social science. Using his skills as a professional historian, he probed Zionist and Israeli government archives and reread original texts to compare what he perceived as social and political realities with the ideology guiding policies. Sternhell is critical of traditional Israeli historiography because of the damage it has caused by separating Jewish history from general history. The consequences, he asserts, are “truly appalling” (p. x), resulting in paralysis of any real critical sense and perpetuation of “myths flattering to Israel's collective identity” (p. x). This has led many historians of Zionism “to lock themselves up in an intellectual ghetto” (p. x), leading to ignorance and emotional blindness.

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