Antisemitism, Racism, & Peace in Palestine: Lessons from History.
For peace to happen there needs to be a political solution, & that will require negotiation by actors on both sides who are willing to listen to each other's grievances. But we are not there yet. So what can history teach us about why we are not there yet, & what psychological stumbling blocks stand in the way?
A couple of years ago, (Candice) Breitz, whose art deals with issues of race and identity, and Michael Rothberg, who holds a Holocaust studies chair at the University of California, Los Angeles, tried to organize a symposium on German Holocaust memory, called “We Need to Talk.” After months of preparations, they had their state funding pulled, likely because the program included a panel connecting Auschwitz and the genocide of the Herero and the Nama people carried out between 1904 and 1908 by German colonizers in what is now Namibia. “Some of the techniques of the Shoah were developed then,” Breitz said. “But you are not allowed to speak about German colonialism and the Shoah in the same breath because it is a ‘levelling.’ ”
Masha Gessen, In the Shadow of the Holocaust, The New Yorker.
