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Religion, Culture, and Public Life
The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History
In this groundbreaking book, leading Arab and Jewish intellectuals examine how and why the Holocaust and the Nakba are interlinked without blurring fundamental differences between them. While these two foundational tragedies are often discussed separately and in abstraction from the constitutive historical global contexts of nationalism and colonialism, The Holocaust and the Nakba explores the historical, political, and cultural intersections between them. The majority of the contributors argue that these intersections are embedded in cultural imaginations, colonial and asymmetrical power relations, realities, and structures. Focusing on them paves the way for a new political, historical, and moral grammar that enables a joint Arab-Jewish dwelling and supports historical reconciliation in Israel/Palestine.
This book does not seek to draw a parallel or comparison between the Holocaust and Nakba or to merely inaugurate a “dialogue” between them. Instead, it searches for a new historical and political grammar for relating and narrating their complicated intersections. The book features prominent international contributors, including a foreword by Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury on the centrality of the Holocaust and Nakba in the essential struggle of humanity against racism, and an afterword by literary scholar Jacqueline Rose on the challenges and contributions of the linkage between the Holocaust and Nakba for power to shift and a world of justice and equality to be created between the two peoples. The Holocaust and the Nakba is the first extended and collective scholarly treatment in English of these two constitutive traumas together.
This book does not seek to draw a parallel or comparison between the Holocaust and Nakba or to merely inaugurate a “dialogue” between them. Instead, it searches for a new historical and political grammar for relating and narrating their complicated intersections. The book features prominent international contributors, including a foreword by Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury on the centrality of the Holocaust and Nakba in the essential struggle of humanity against racism, and an afterword by literary scholar Jacqueline Rose on the challenges and contributions of the linkage between the Holocaust and Nakba for power to shift and a world of justice and equality to be created between the two peoples. The Holocaust and the Nakba is the first extended and collective scholarly treatment in English of these two constitutive traumas together.
424 pages, Paperback
Published November 13, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 23, 2019
‘The Holocaust and the Nakba’ is a dialogue on trauma and understanding its complexities. A seemingly impossible task considering the histories of those who have suffered at the hands of their oppressors. While I can’t agree with every line I read, there is so much incredible detail in this book, that for me it is necessary reading for anyone interested in both these atrocities.
The editors of this collection rightly frame both these traumas in a longer history of colonialism and racism, one that was predominantly perpetuated by European powers - their collective traumas are rooted here:
“...the West in general have, as a product of modern rational discourse, engaged in mass violence, terrible exploitation, Colonial subjugation, policies of repression and torture, and racism; this attests to the fact that even the liberal democratic state and the enlightenment tradition are not immune from such crimes, which the West seeks to forget and for which it tries to avoid taking responsibility.” [p.4]
The authors do not deny how the respective traumas of the Holocaust and the Nakba are distinct from one another, but do attempt to find a common grammar that can assist us in thinking of both, without denying each. At the same time, as Amnon Raz-Krakotzin describes, they can also never be separated:
“The Holocaust cannot be separated from the State of Israel and is therefore inextricable from the question of Palestine, especially when it is used to reject the memory of the Nakba and any form of Palestinian resistance.” [p.79]
The details in this book are amazing. It tells the story of the Holocaust survivors Genya and Henryk Kowalski, who refused the home of a forcibly removed Palestinian. It also tells of Najati Sidqi who objected to Nazism based on his faith - redressing the claim that Palestinians were inclined to Nazism en masse.
I benefitted a great deal from this book, will be talking about it for a while.
The editors of this collection rightly frame both these traumas in a longer history of colonialism and racism, one that was predominantly perpetuated by European powers - their collective traumas are rooted here:
“...the West in general have, as a product of modern rational discourse, engaged in mass violence, terrible exploitation, Colonial subjugation, policies of repression and torture, and racism; this attests to the fact that even the liberal democratic state and the enlightenment tradition are not immune from such crimes, which the West seeks to forget and for which it tries to avoid taking responsibility.” [p.4]
The authors do not deny how the respective traumas of the Holocaust and the Nakba are distinct from one another, but do attempt to find a common grammar that can assist us in thinking of both, without denying each. At the same time, as Amnon Raz-Krakotzin describes, they can also never be separated:
“The Holocaust cannot be separated from the State of Israel and is therefore inextricable from the question of Palestine, especially when it is used to reject the memory of the Nakba and any form of Palestinian resistance.” [p.79]
The details in this book are amazing. It tells the story of the Holocaust survivors Genya and Henryk Kowalski, who refused the home of a forcibly removed Palestinian. It also tells of Najati Sidqi who objected to Nazism based on his faith - redressing the claim that Palestinians were inclined to Nazism en masse.
I benefitted a great deal from this book, will be talking about it for a while.
December 22, 2019
Quite frankly one of the best books about the Nakba and/or the Holocaust that I have read. Would suggest it to anyone who is interested in intergenerational trauma and the Israel/Palestine conflict.
April 22, 2019
This is a difficult book to read but one which I've found particularly enlightening. I will hopefully write a review when I'm done, but I can already highly recommend it
August 18, 2025
Really excellent. Does the very difficult task of avoiding mythologizing, singularizing, or equating the two foundational traumas of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Fair warning though--it's very much an academic text; if you want something that's accessible and easily digestible then this probably isn't for you.
August 19, 2024
Absolutely recommendable. Enlightening. It offers several respectable, well-discussed points of view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its origin in the trauma caused by two catastrophic events, different from each other, but inherently linked by a seemingly invisible thread. It's not an easy book, but it's worth the effort
January 22, 2025
Reading this book really opened my eyes to how the Holocaust and Nakba continue to shape Jewish and Palestinian identities. The way trauma from these events is passed down through generations and politicized is both powerful and unsettling. I was struck by how both sides use their histories of victimhood to justify actions in the present. While the theoretical analysis of trauma is insightful, I found the academic language dense, which made it difficult for me to fully grasp all the concepts being discussed.
What I felt was missing was a deeper focus on personal survivor stories. These accounts could have added emotional depth to the theoretical discussions, making the book more engaging. Additionally, I think the book could have done more to connect these historical events to the political dynamics of today, especially the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The most compelling argument for me was the idea that breaking the cycle of trauma is nearly impossible if descendants of survivors continue to carry that pain. This made me reflect on how difficult it is to heal when trauma is passed down through generations. Overall, while the book offers an important perspective on the lasting effects of trauma, I believe it could have been more accessible and impactful by focusing more on personal experiences and the real-world political consequences.
What I felt was missing was a deeper focus on personal survivor stories. These accounts could have added emotional depth to the theoretical discussions, making the book more engaging. Additionally, I think the book could have done more to connect these historical events to the political dynamics of today, especially the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The most compelling argument for me was the idea that breaking the cycle of trauma is nearly impossible if descendants of survivors continue to carry that pain. This made me reflect on how difficult it is to heal when trauma is passed down through generations. Overall, while the book offers an important perspective on the lasting effects of trauma, I believe it could have been more accessible and impactful by focusing more on personal experiences and the real-world political consequences.
June 1, 2025
Un estudio desde el punto de vista académico e histórico, haciendo una serie de similes entre el Holocausto y la Nakba.
Los autores, Bashir Bashir, filósofo palestino, y Amos Goldberg, historiador israelí y especialista en el Holocausto, no intentan quitarle importancia a ninguno de los dos traumáticos acontecimientos, sino que intentan establecer un espacio para el diálogo, no equiparándolos, pero subrayando la importancia de ambos.
Los autores, Bashir Bashir, filósofo palestino, y Amos Goldberg, historiador israelí y especialista en el Holocausto, no intentan quitarle importancia a ninguno de los dos traumáticos acontecimientos, sino que intentan establecer un espacio para el diálogo, no equiparándolos, pero subrayando la importancia de ambos.
October 7, 2024
The different essays and reflections were interesting, and the book was clearly constructed with a lot of nuance and care. I would rate this a 5 out of 5 stars, but the text was often very dense, which made it hard to read at times.
interested-in
January 8, 2025Rec: Francesca Albanese https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCAdgY...
January 12, 2026
mostly incredibly collection with one or two essays that felt comparatively weak or out of place
September 7, 2024
Definitely an interesting and important book. Two stars might be a bit harsh and definitely doesn't reflect its importance and ambition. It mainly reflects its length, repetitions and at times extreme difficulty which as I progressed in my reading made it hard to get through and less enjoyable. But more educated readers might not meet the same difficulties as me.
This book takes on the challenge of describing the links between the Holocaust and the Nakba, the catastrophes of the Jewish and Palestinian people respectively, without equating them or blurring their differences. The mission of the book seems to be that the narratives of Israel and Palestine on each side exclude the narrative of the other - or distort them at least - and thereby destroy the possibilities for reconciliation. As it's written in the book: ”Even if a willingness to embrace the other side's pain exists at certain times, the thick boundaries of collective nationalistic sentiment and the fear of its trembling do not allow this willingness to develop. The existential fear and alienation cause the two communities to be trapped in a repetitive nonprocessing traumatic mourning that exluces each from the other.” The book attempts to provide ”the grammar of a new narrative”.
A noble and interesting pursuit in my opinion. I had little knowledge of the Nakba until recently, and that might be natural – at least the book offers some explanations on how the history of the Nakba has been suppressed over the years. So in that sense the book was quite informative for me. The atrocities of the Holocaust, of course, is well known to me.
The book consists of 15 essays divided in four parts. Some of them are very interesting. The first chapter by Mark Levene, describing how the European model of nation-state building has shaped the conflict between Israel and Palestine in a toxic way. Honaida Ghanims anlysis of the poem ”Love and the Ghetto” where a Holocaust survivor named Yaffa meets a survivor of the Nakba in the city of (J)Yaffa and deals with the possibilty of love between two people which is shut down by the realities they live in, is quite gribbing. The essay on the Kowalskis – a couple of Holocaust survivors who arrive in Israel in 1949 and are given the keys to a house where a Palestinian family used to live before they had to flee their home, but return the keys since they cannot make themselves live in the house as the image of the abandoned house reminds them of their own story as refugees from the Nazis - is very emotional too.
There are other interesting essays. But there's also some that are overly complicated to read. A dictionary would be useful but even with that some of the writing is so complex and inaccessible that it's quite difficult to understand. Especially in part III. The reader also need to be quite informed on the history of Israel and Palestine to fully appreciate it. Not a lot of explanations and background is given. And a good tip would be to read Elias Khoury's ”Children of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam” before reading this book since the last three essays deal exclusively with interpretations of this book – we are given ad hoc descriptions of the storyline in the book but still it's a little uninteresting when you haven't read it yourself.
So...some good essays and some bad ones. But my main critique would be that the entire book brings to bear a point that could have been made in a much shorter book. That ”unless we can hold these two moments [the Holocaust and the Nakba] in our hearts and minds as part of the same story, there can be no moving forward in the seemingly unmovable conflict that is Israel-Palestine”. I got this point after a few chapters, so getting the same point served in 15 different ways was a bit tedious.
Still, I do acknowledge that the reasons for a bit of repetition is also to showcase through different perspectives the links between the two moments and by the numerous examples achieve the ”empathetic unsettlement” required, according to Bashir and Goldman, to disrupt the current status quo. The stories and testimonies help us do this – to empathise with that which is alien or even in opposition to us. This challenge goes for both Jews and Palestinians but especially to Jews, as the authors write, who ”after decades of colonial denial, negation, erasure and misrecognition, they should look in the face of the Palestinian...and see in them the radical others of Zionism, a reflection of their own history, and seek a way to recognize the suffering they have inflicted upon them”. In that sense the length of the book serves this purpose.
This book takes on the challenge of describing the links between the Holocaust and the Nakba, the catastrophes of the Jewish and Palestinian people respectively, without equating them or blurring their differences. The mission of the book seems to be that the narratives of Israel and Palestine on each side exclude the narrative of the other - or distort them at least - and thereby destroy the possibilities for reconciliation. As it's written in the book: ”Even if a willingness to embrace the other side's pain exists at certain times, the thick boundaries of collective nationalistic sentiment and the fear of its trembling do not allow this willingness to develop. The existential fear and alienation cause the two communities to be trapped in a repetitive nonprocessing traumatic mourning that exluces each from the other.” The book attempts to provide ”the grammar of a new narrative”.
A noble and interesting pursuit in my opinion. I had little knowledge of the Nakba until recently, and that might be natural – at least the book offers some explanations on how the history of the Nakba has been suppressed over the years. So in that sense the book was quite informative for me. The atrocities of the Holocaust, of course, is well known to me.
The book consists of 15 essays divided in four parts. Some of them are very interesting. The first chapter by Mark Levene, describing how the European model of nation-state building has shaped the conflict between Israel and Palestine in a toxic way. Honaida Ghanims anlysis of the poem ”Love and the Ghetto” where a Holocaust survivor named Yaffa meets a survivor of the Nakba in the city of (J)Yaffa and deals with the possibilty of love between two people which is shut down by the realities they live in, is quite gribbing. The essay on the Kowalskis – a couple of Holocaust survivors who arrive in Israel in 1949 and are given the keys to a house where a Palestinian family used to live before they had to flee their home, but return the keys since they cannot make themselves live in the house as the image of the abandoned house reminds them of their own story as refugees from the Nazis - is very emotional too.
There are other interesting essays. But there's also some that are overly complicated to read. A dictionary would be useful but even with that some of the writing is so complex and inaccessible that it's quite difficult to understand. Especially in part III. The reader also need to be quite informed on the history of Israel and Palestine to fully appreciate it. Not a lot of explanations and background is given. And a good tip would be to read Elias Khoury's ”Children of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam” before reading this book since the last three essays deal exclusively with interpretations of this book – we are given ad hoc descriptions of the storyline in the book but still it's a little uninteresting when you haven't read it yourself.
So...some good essays and some bad ones. But my main critique would be that the entire book brings to bear a point that could have been made in a much shorter book. That ”unless we can hold these two moments [the Holocaust and the Nakba] in our hearts and minds as part of the same story, there can be no moving forward in the seemingly unmovable conflict that is Israel-Palestine”. I got this point after a few chapters, so getting the same point served in 15 different ways was a bit tedious.
Still, I do acknowledge that the reasons for a bit of repetition is also to showcase through different perspectives the links between the two moments and by the numerous examples achieve the ”empathetic unsettlement” required, according to Bashir and Goldman, to disrupt the current status quo. The stories and testimonies help us do this – to empathise with that which is alien or even in opposition to us. This challenge goes for both Jews and Palestinians but especially to Jews, as the authors write, who ”after decades of colonial denial, negation, erasure and misrecognition, they should look in the face of the Palestinian...and see in them the radical others of Zionism, a reflection of their own history, and seek a way to recognize the suffering they have inflicted upon them”. In that sense the length of the book serves this purpose.
December 21, 2025
This has been on my list for a long time. Had I read it when it came out in 2019, I think I would have loved it. Post-October 7, I’m not sure my heart is open any longer to these ideas, to the sometimes subtle, sometimes not-so-subtle manifesto for a one-state solution.
The book brings together scholars to explore the complex relationship between the Holocaust and the Nakba, examining how these two events can be understood in relation to each other without diminishing either. The essays grapple with questions of memory, trauma, and the possibilities for a shared future, ultimately advocating for mutual recognition and coexistence.
The book brings together scholars to explore the complex relationship between the Holocaust and the Nakba, examining how these two events can be understood in relation to each other without diminishing either. The essays grapple with questions of memory, trauma, and the possibilities for a shared future, ultimately advocating for mutual recognition and coexistence.
Want to read
February 7, 2025___________________________________
FROM BOOK:
- Questa terra è nostra da sempre. Israele e Palestina (Arturo Marzano)
- Il suicidio di Israele (Anna Foa)
FROM BOOK:
- Questa terra è nostra da sempre. Israele e Palestina (Arturo Marzano)
- Il suicidio di Israele (Anna Foa)
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews