| Abstract | Raz-Krakotzkin writes metahistory, as if the events of the last two centuries, with all their agonies and tribulations, did not happen. The alienation which -- according to most testimonies --- was the formative experience of Jewish life in the diaspora, especially in Eastern Europe, and which still exists to a certain extent even in today's open, assimilatory societies, takes in his writings the form of ethical-theoretical social criticism and loses the tragic, existential dimension that in fact characterized it. The Jew as victim becomes an ideal. The aspiration, according to him, is "to renew the sense of exile here in Israel, without forgetting those still in a state of real exile, the oppressed of the Third World, the inhabitants of the refugee camps."(32) In other words, galut existence as a metaphor of moral sensitivity and openness to the other is a positive attribute -- which is not the case of real exile, unless a different rule applies to the Jew than to other people...He presents the historiography of Yitzhak Baer and Ben Zion Dinur, which emphasizes historical continuity and Jewish history as national history, as "adopting the historical model of the victors." The concept of "negation of Exile," he contends, "prevented relating to the collective aspirations of the local Arab population and its viewpoint," and thus, "the Arab presence did not create openness to a dialogue that could serve as a formative basis for Jewish self-awareness, and no attempt was made to adapt Zionist ideals to the local population and its culture."(33) This assertion is truly ludicrous: how could Zionist ideals be adapted to the local population unless the Jewish newcomers relinquished their aspirations for a Jewish entity? And what possible connection was there between the obvious animosity between settlers and natives in Palestine and the "negation of Exile"? Raz-Krakotzkin presents the "negation of Exile" as the reason for the refusal to acknowledge the tragedy that the establishment of Israel brought upon the Palestinians. In his opinion, the question of "who is to blame" for the war is posed from the perspective of the victors, while the true question should be who the victim was. Hence, the question is not "what really happened?" but rather how the memory of the past molds the present.
(7) See Ram, "Post-Zionist Debate" and "Post-Zionist Ideology." See also Yonah Hadari-Ramaj, "There Is No History, There Are Historians" (interview with [Ilan Pappe]), Yediot Aharonot, 27 Aug. 1993 (in Hebrew) (hereafter Pappe, "Interview"); Ilan Pappe: "The Influence of Zionist Ideology on Israeli Historiography," [Davar], 15 May 1994; "The Claim to Objectivity"; and "The New History of the 1948 War," Teoriyah u-Vikoret, no. 3 (1993): 99-112 (all in Hebrew).
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