ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses shifts away from the detailed deconstruction of trauma per se and towards the subject that dominates Jewish post-Holocaust narrative like none other: that is, Israel. Israel, the state founded in the immediate aftermath of World War Two as a kind of compensation by the world to Jews for what they had suffered during the Nazi years, is far from being "just" a state. The author contemplates ordinary Jews' (post-Holocaust) position in relation to Israel with one main premise in mind. This concerns the psychological experience of conflict: more especially, conflict that is unresolved. The author suggests, both a manifestation of Israel's unresolved state concerning its own Holocaust inheritance, and a condition which distracts diaspora Jews from freely exploring their own relationship with the Holocaust and their own future in a diaspora world in which the Holocaust happened. Both circumstances act to perpetuate a traumatic legacy.
