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History’s Wound: Collective Trauma and the Israel/Palestine conflict Item Type Thesis Authors Ottman, Esta T. Publisher University of Bradford Rights <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by- nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel="license" href="http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Licence</a>. Download date 09/10/2021 06:02:33 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10454/17398 HISTORY’S WOUND: COLLECTIVE TRAUMA AND THE ISRAEL/PALESTINE CONFLICT E.T.OTTMAN PHD 2018 History’s Wound: Collective Trauma and the Israel/Palestine conflict Esta Tina OTTMAN Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Division of Peace Studies and International Development Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities University of Bradford 2018 Abstract Esta Tina Ottman History's Wound: Collective Trauma and the Israel/Palestine conflict Keywords: Israel, Palestine, collective memory, collective trauma, cultural trauma, political trauma In considering the Israel-Palestine conflict, focus has remained on conventional major issues: borders, settlements, Jerusalem, Palestinian refugee rights and water. Should there be one binational state, or two states for two peoples? Yet this is a conflict that is sustained by factors more profound than the dispute over limited resources or competing nationalisms. The parties’ narratives, continually rehearsed, speak of a cataclysmic event or chain of events, a collective trauma, which has created such deep suffering and disruption that the rehearsers remain ‘frozen’ amid the overarching context of political violence. This study offers a critical analysis of the concept of collective trauma together with the role of commemorative practices, including core contemporary canonical days of memory, and asks to what extent they may hinder progress in the resolution of an intractable conflict, such as the Israel/Palestine conflict. Without addressing the powerful traumatic current that underpins a chronic conflict, no amount of top-down formal peace-making is likely to be sustainable. i Acknowledgements This project would never have come to fruition without the vision, experience and untiring support of Professor Jim Whitman; it is to him that I owe my most profound thanks for all his years of guidance, patience and encouragement. Thanks also to Professor Caroline Hughes, for taking me on at a critical juncture, and for her stimulating input; and to Dr. Afshin Shahi, for doing so much from afar to see me to the finish line. Gratitudes are also due to Professor Marie Thorsten, for her careful reading and constructive advice, and to my mentor, Professor Betty Reardon, for setting me on the road to peace so long ago. I would also like to express my thanks to Michele Mozley, who was of tremendous assistance over the years. To colleagues Felicity Greenland, Julia Harper, Sally McLaren, Susan Pavloska, Lisa Rogers, peers Lubna Kidwai and Tony Sabella, you too have been pillars of strength and founts of advice in this long journey. Finally, thanks to my family for their love and forbearance throughout it all, especially my partner Koby and my brother Simon and sister-in-law Michal Hillman. This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of our late father, Harvey (Harold) Ottman. ii Table of Contents Abstract ……………………………………………………….………….………….i Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………...…………ii Table of Contents ……………………………………………….…………….……iii List of Figures……………………………………………..……….………………...v List of Tables ………………………………………………………..………………vi Chapter One: Introduction ……………………………………….………………1 1.1 Historical emergence of trauma …………………………………………..…..9 1.2 War Trauma …………………………………………………….………..……18 1.3 Growth of medical models: Empirical evidence for trauma ……………....25 1.4.Trauma and war: Further psychological manifestations …………....…….31 1.5 Further psychological battlegrounds ………………………………………..38 1.6 Quantitative measures ……………………………………….……………….41 1.7 The APA and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals of Mental Disorders………………………………………………………………………..42 1.8 The DSM, ICD and traumatic stress diagnosis …………………………....50 1.9 Conclusion …………………………………………………….……………….60 Chapter Two: The concept of experiential collectivities ………….………62 2.1 Introduction ………………………………………………….…………………62 2.2 Forms of Identity and allegiance as collective experience: Social frameworks of memory ……………………………………..………………..64 2.3 Conceptual challenges to tropes of collective memory: Individual versus collective memory ………………….... ……………………..…………….… 73 2.4 Collective memory versus history …………………………………………...77 2.5.Ethical challenges for history and memory: counter-memories ………….86 2.6 Methodological challenges for collective memory………………………….90 2.7 Contemporary challenges for collective memory: Temporal, spatial and cultural dimensions of memorialization ………………………….……….…94 2.8 Conclusion ………………………………………………………….………….99 Chapter Three: Clarifying the concept of collective trauma…………….100 3.1 Introduction ………………………………………….……….………………100 3.2 Acknowledging controversies ………………………………………………102 3.3 The Armenian Genocide (1895-1923) ………………………………….…115 3.4 Refusing recognition ………………………………………………..…….…119 3.5 Enduring impact …………………………………………...….……………..127 3.6 New entrants to trauma ……………………………………….…….………128 3.7 The Holocaust ………………………………………………….……….……131 3.8 Avoiding recognition …………………………………….….…………….…133 3.9 Turning points ……………………………………………….…………….…138 3.10 The banality of evil …………………………….…………….…….….……140 3.11 Challenges to collective trauma interpretation: The universal, the unexceptional and the particular ……………………………….…………145 iii 3.12 Conclusion …………………………………………………….……………152 Chapter Four: The politics of collective trauma: Israel ….….………..…156 4.1 Methodological approaches to collective memory and trauma: The Israel- Palestine conflict …………………..………………………..………….……156 4.2 Israel – a history of collective traumas ……………………..….………….162 4.3 Immigration as trauma ……………………………………….….……….…163 4.4 Holocaust survivors’ trauma ………………………………….………….…164 4.5 Trauma as historical narrative and constant condition – days of remembrance in Israel ………………………………………………………172 4.6 Educating towards remembrance ………………………………….………179 4.7 The IDF and the Shoah …………………………………..…………………183 4.8 Yom HaShoah and some further political uses of collective trauma .….189 4.9 Conclusion …………………………………………………….……..………200 Chapter Five: Palestine and the politics of collective trauma ………….204 5.1 Palestine: Empirical evidence of historical trauma …….………..….……204 5.2 A human geography of trauma ……………….……………………………207 5.3 The naming of suffering ………………………………….…………………213 5.4 The correspondence with cultural trauma …………..……………….……215 5.5 Palestine – trauma as historical narrative and lived condition: The construction of memorial days …………….…………………………….…228 5.6 Encroaching upon memory: Collective trauma and the politics of return ……………………………………………………….…………………241 5.7 The Great March of Return: Acute trauma politics ………………………245 5.8 Concluding remarks …………………………………………………………259 Chapter Six: Reconsidering collective trauma: Israel and the Palestinians ……………………………………..………………263 6.1 Introduction: Factoring in collective trauma ………………...….…………263 6.2 Pressing for peace …………………………………………….….…………265 6.3 The implications of the Arab Peace Initiative ……………..….……….….266 6.4 Conclusion: Toward peacebuilding mechanisms and the politics of recognition ………………………………………………..….………….……278 6.4.1 The therapeutic framework………………………………………….…….279 6.4.2 Transforming remembrance ……………………………………….……..288 Chapter Seven: Conclusion ………………………..…………………………295 References ………………………………………………………….……………303 Notes …………………………………………………..…….……………………431 iv List of Figures Fig. 1 A clinical taxonomy of psychological traumas, Type 1, after Kira (2001)…………………………………….……………….……..103 Fig. 2 A clinical taxonomy of psychological traumas, Type 2, after Kira (2001).…………………………………………..…………….…104 Fig. 3 Developmental pathways of collective trauma…………………………106 Fig. 4 Map of the Armenian Genocide …………………………………………115 Fig. 5 Red district where [earlier Hamidian] massacres occurred, after Bliss, Turkey and the Armenian Genocides (Bliss, 1896, p. vi) ……………………116 Fig. 6 Armenian population by country (in thousands). (Kentronhayastan). ………………………………………………………………………...........118 Fig. 7 Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin (Beate Müller, 2012, reproduced with her permission) …………………………………143 Fig. 8 Yad Vashem interior, Jerusalem (Esta Tina Ottman, 2011)….………144 Fig. 9 Children’s memorial at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem (Esta Tina Ottman, 2011) ……………………………………….………………………………144 Fig. 10. Soldiers, hold your fire! Israeli media campaign by B’Tselem. [Source: B’Tselem, 2018b] ………………………………..……………257 Fig. 11 ‘Gaza sends messages of peace to Israelis.’ [Source, Gershon Baskin, Facebook, 2018a] ……………………..…………………..……………258 Fig. 12 Gaza peace doves initiative. [Source, Gershon Baskin, Facebook, 2018b] …………………………………………………..….……….……258 Fig. 13 AlGhad TV: Gaza Peace Doves. [Source, Gershon Baskin, Facebook, 2018c] ……………………………….………………………259 v List of Tables Table 1: The three levels of memory (after Assman, 1995) ……………….….75 Table 2: Collective history and memory (after Wertsch, 2002, p. 45) …….....79 vi History’s Wound: To what extent does the concept of collective trauma hinder progress in the resolution of the Israel/Palestine conflict? Chapter 1: Introduction The traumatic impact of war and violence on
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