An announcement of a lecture next Monday night at the New School in New York:

THE NEW SCHOOL HISTORY DEPARTMENT PRESENTS: AMOS GOLDBERG The Holocaust and the Nakba: Traumatic Memories and (Bi)National Identities in Israel-Palestine The Jewish Holocaust and the Palestinian Nakba fundamentally shape two peoples’ identities. Memories of each function as exclusionary “Myths of Origin,” at once demanding acknowledgement by the other, while denying recognition of the other. Deeply polarizing, the Jewish and Palestinian national narratives become irreconcilable, inhibiting prospects for a political settlement. Amos Goldberg will offer a framework – influenced by Arendt, Agamben, and LaCapra — for establishing an egalitarian public sphere for Jews and Palestinians which will enable both catastrophes to be told on shared ground. Dr. Amos Goldberg is a senior lecturer of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of Trauma in the First Person: Diary Writing During the Holocaust (2012). October 29, 6-8pm 80 5TH Ave, Room 529

Wow, we’re living in amazing times. It’s great that Americans and Israelis are talking about the Nakba– and that a scholar wishes to have the Palestinian narrative “on shared ground” in a binational social sphere. So he has idealistic political notions of what might arise from the opening to Palestinian suffering. But one quick point: I have not heard Palestinians denying the Holocaust; and as for my country, for 40 years Americans have embraced knowledge of the Holocaust, and sought to memorialize it to make humanity better. The New School itself was founded on the noble wreckage of European Jewish refugees. There is, by contrast, widespread denial of the Nakba in this country and dishonor of its refugees. Goldberg refers to Arendt. Well 50 years ago she was writing about the Eichmann trial in The New Yorker. No parallel cultural process has taken place involving the Nakba.