ABSTRACT
In his best-selling account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Antony Loewenstein (2009) expresses how in the context of Israel the Holocaust, as the apotheosis of a history of anti-semitism, continues to unfold in the process of its own aftermath:
The establishment of a Jewish state was Zionism’s solution to the problem of anti-Semitism. The Holocaust, ‘the Jewish catastrophe in World War II’, and the refugees left in its wake made the need for a Jewish state virulent and provided the leverage for its political realisation (Zertal 2005: 164). From the beginnings, the Holocaust has been used as political argument in the service of the state. By doing so, Israel has perpetuated the notion that the Holocaust is not over. This is one aspect of the Holocaust’s aftermath. The history of the creation of the State of Israel in the Middle East is one of suffering and atrocity – acknowledged and unacknowledged. This is another aspect of how the Holocaust continues to unfold in the process of its own aftermath. In this chapter I use the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a case study of an aftermath culture (as described by Ross Chambers and discussed in Chapter 1), and of an example of what aftermath can mean, and the role of representation within aftermath. The most important aspect of aftermath is that violence and atrocities, ‘the same or another – can always happen again’ (Chambers 2004: xx). ‘That is what we need to know and acknowledge’ argues Chambers (2004: xx, emphasis in original). This is the context of what I mean by Holocaust temporality not being over; a context informed by the spectre of racism and violence that continues to haunt that culture.
