Using the Holocaust to Bash Israel at UCLA

by Winfield Myers  •  Mar 14, 2011 at 1:36 pm

http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2011/03/using-the-holocaust-to-bash-israel-at-ucla

Joseph Rosen

Concordia University (Montreal) professor Joseph Rosen spoke recently at UCLA's Center for Near Eastern Studies, and Eric Golub reported on the lecture for Campus Watch. Golub found Rosen's talk, "Traumatic Memory Discourses in Israel: Holocaust History, Territory and Self-Critique," unconvincing. Here's the beginning of Golub's article, which appears today at FrontPage Magazine:

In the never-ending quest amongst Middle East studies academics to demonize Israel, a trendy new approach has appeared: employing the Holocaust.

A recent lecture co-sponsored by UCLA's Center for Near Eastern Studies, "Traumatic Memory Discourses in Israel: Holocaust History, Territory and Self-Critique," fit the pattern. It was delivered by Joseph Rosen, a postdoctoral fellow in Montreal at Concordia University's department of history & the Centre for Ethnographic Research and Exhibition in the Aftermath of Violence.

Rosen's emphasis on the "cultural production of the memories of violence in relation to contemporary sites of suffering and oppression" was intended to explain the Arab-Israeli conflict from a psychological standpoint. Stated briefly, it holds that Israelis are so paranoid about a second Holocaust that they exaggerate the nature of threats and, in response, overreact. As a result, Israeli self-defense is conditioned not by facts on the ground, such as terrorism or openly genocidal enemies, but by irrational fear.

To read the rest of this report, please click here.

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