Holocaust, Rebirth, and the Nakba

Yair Auron is professor at the Open University of Israel. He has published nearly forty books on Genocide, Holocaust, Jewish and Israeli Identities, and Israeli-Palestinian relations.

• Preface to the English EditionPreface: The “Presence” of the Holocaust in Israel in 1948Introduction: Facing the TruthChapter 1: 1948: Historical Research from the Israeli PerspectiveChapter 2: The Militant ForcesChapter 3: The Encounter between Holocaust Survivors and the YishuvChapter 4: The Treatment of Arabs, from the Early Zionist Era to the 1948 WarChapter 5: The Influence of the Holocaust on the Treatment of Arabs by Jewish Combatants in the 1948 WarChapter 6: Massacres in the Independence War Chapter 7: The Debate about the Return of the Palestinian RefugeesChapter 8: The Battle Pages: From the Gates of Vilna to the Gates of AshdodChapter 9: The War Stories of Yizhar SmilanskyChapter 10: The Arabs, the Germans, and the HolocaustConclusion: Morality and War: A Comparative View

In a series of related essays, Auron (Open Univ. of Israel), an Israeli professor specializing in genocide, warfare, and the moral dilemmas and justifications involved, stresses the mutual sense of victimhood in interpretation and consequent memory of the Holocaust and the Nakba. Both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs have developed and internalized these events as pivotal and fundamental causes in their own national identities and personal perceptions. Citing extensive evidence largely from Israeli documentary and secondary sources and including his own analyses of these, the author suggests that the Nakba was not genocide (deliberate killing of a specific people), as some have argued, but was more like ethnic cleansing (forced migration), as some have rejected. He urges the necessity to escape the blind spot of victimhood to recognize the suffering of the other. There is no possibility for compromise and for peace without the understanding of the Holocaust as a Jewish tragedy and of the Nakba as a Palestinian one. For libraries concerned with Israeli studies, and more generally with issues of rationalizations and justifications in ethnic and religious conflicts. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above