Sources on the Holocaust's effect on Zionism and the founding of Israel
Sources that are about the Holocaust specifically say nothing or next to nothing about this aspect. Nevertheless, the GA reviewer suggested to add some content about this to the Holocaust article, but I'm struggling to find sources that would be good to cite. On the off chance that you know of any I'm asking here. Thanks in advance, (t · c) buidhe 04:31, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
- Id guess Nishidani or Zero0000 would have better recommendations, but Wistrich: Israel and the Holocaust Trauma would be a decent source for an avowedly Zionist view. But Zionism predates the Holocaust, Palestine had been honed in on as the place to establish that state before the Holocaust, and like Wistrich says the major impact on Zionism was that it wiped out a huge portion of what would have been the largest source of Jewish immigrants to the new state. I think I can find sources that say it added a new imperative to it, and that it largely muted what had been some quite active Jewish anti-Zionism as groups that had been opposed to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, for whatever reason, dropped their opposition in the face of the destruction of European Jewry. nableezy - 12:44, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
- This is constantly mentioned but en passant, perhaps also because it requires a counterfactual historiography (had the holocaust not taken place would the state of Israel have come into being?), which because it is speculative, is pointlessly unhistorical. That the holocaust was a critical factor, as opposed to a hypothetical sine qua non is, nonetheless, unchallengeable. Zionism is one of those curious things, an ideology void of a fixed ideology, consisting in an extremely pragmatic, flexible praxis, which grabs at any new idea which furthers its simple aim, and discards effortlessly notions hitherto functional when they have reached their use-by date, and this affects the ways scholars within its framing tradition approach the past. Even the holocaust was ignored until the 1980s, the premise being Zionism's 'incremental' momentum of statehood by the stealth of numbers growth (shem ha-meforash) rendered the culmination of statehood inevitable). I don't buy that: one factor always missing is that the war of 1948 was effectively decided by the massive devastation of Palestinian society and its powers of self-defense by the British Army in 1936-1939, a war which played an important role at the same time in the regularization of the Haganah along modern lines under British auspices (ignoring this allows the '48 war, particularly in the pushover destruction of Palestinian villages and the disappearance of 13,000 Palestinians, look more heroic than it was). An ideology as thin as Zionism, in any case, now has the holocaust to fill the void of its rhetoric. By 2005, Idith Zertal (Idith Zertal, Israel's Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood, Cambridge University Press 2005 ISBN 978-0-521-85096-4) appeared at times to be virtually saying Israel's identity had become so inextricably interwoven with it that it is unimaginable otherwise. The Holocaust does now form the basso ostinato of justifications for the state of Israel, perhaps because that crime was, and remains so monstrous, that the collateral effects of 1948 (the nakba) will always look in the only opinion that counts, Western impressions, (not mine, if that need noting) trivial, petty, marginal whinging by the people who were dispossessed by it, and ironically, turned into metaphorical Jews, fellow 'Semites' who now must undergo what in Zionist myth, Jews underwent for 2,000 years, a diaspora of desperation and nostalgia.
- Specifically, however, you might profit from reading (if you haven't) Abraham J. Edelheit , 'The Holocaust and the Rise of Israel: A Reassessment Reassessed,' Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 12, No. 1/2 (Spring 2000), pp.97-112. Though I remain unconvinced, it is far better than Wistrich. Nishidani (talk) 14:53, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Edit
I hope that you have been keeping well. I noticed in the Dayr Aban article, under the section "Ottoman period," where the most-recent edit there should be emended to read as follows:
- In 1838, Deir Aban was noted as a Muslim village, located in the el-Arkub District, south west of Jerusalem.[1] (End Quote)
If you'll agree to the revised edit (improvements), I'll go ahead and made the edit.Davidbena (talk) 03:31, 13 June 2023 (UTC) Davidbena (talk) 03:31, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
- Think this is fine under your AN ban which exempted things not related to the modern conflict. Anything in that article from the start of the mandate is off limits though. nableezy - 03:41, 13 June 2023 (UTC)