Historical Memory as a Political Weapon
Hegemony is not forged through brute force alone; often, it is first crafted in minds through a selective narration of the past — recycled in media, education, politics, and diplomacy until it becomes an “imagined truth” with real-world effects. Researchers of memory call this the politics of memory: the transformation of certain historical events into a moral reference point that justifies present-day choices and grants particular actors symbolic and political immunity (Halbwachs; Olick; Assmann).
The approach we adopt here carefully distinguishes between criticizing ideology, politics, and institutions on one hand, and generalizing against religious or ethnic groups on the other. Our goal is to analyze how modern memory — particularly around Europe and World War II — became an instrument for codifying Israel’s official narrative, how this has affected the positioning of Muslims and Arabs in Western consciousness, and how it legitimized violence as “legitimate self-defense.”
(1) From Theology to Politics: A Qualitative Shift in the West
For centuries, the image of Jews in traditional Christian consciousness was charged with the accusation of “killing God,” deeply rooted in theology and popular traditions. But after World War II, a striking theological–political shift occurred: the Nostra Aetate document (Second Vatican Council, 1965) rejected moral generalization and opened a path to historical reconciliation.
This was followed by the rising centrality of the Holocaust in Europe’s moral memory, along with an exaggerated sensitivity — at times — that disrupts any criticism of Israel’s contemporary policies (Carroll 2001).
This shift was not purely religious; it intersected with Cold War priorities and the building of a new Euro–Atlantic identity. Thus, the locus of hostility in Western political imagination shifted from “the Jews” to “the Eastern/Muslim enemy,” while Israel was promoted as an advanced outpost of civilization in a “turbulent East” (Huntington 1996; Said 1979).
(2) The Holocaust: From Human Tragedy to Political Reference
There is no dispute that the Holocaust was a crime. Yet the politicization of memory — as Norman Finkelstein argued — produced what he called “the Holocaust Industry”: an institutional use of remembrance that created political, economic, and legal immunity, going beyond legitimate moral sympathy to justifying aggressive policies in Palestine and the region (Finkelstein 2000).
Hannah Arendt, in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), showed that turning ethics into bureaucratic procedures can normalize violence and render it “ordinary.” This lesson reminds us that if memory is not universalized, it can be mobilized to strip new victims of their humanity.
Mechanisms of Modern Memory-Making
A political “truth” is manufactured through selective focus and high-intensity repetition across multiple platforms. The main tools can be summarized as:
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News and entertainment media: Repetition of frames that present Israeli power as “self-defense,” while framing the Palestinian victim as an “existential threat.”
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Education, museums, and laws: Curricula and institutions that entrench the centrality of one memory while excluding parallel narratives.
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Diplomacy and lobbying: Networks that convert a memory narrative into standards of international conduct, making criticism politically and economically costly.
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Securitization: Shifting moral issues into the field of security, where accountability shrinks and the powers of force expand.
Through these tools, the roles of “victim and oppressor” are re-scripted, and public opinion — especially in Western democracies — is nudged to accept extreme measures as “existential necessities.”
(3) From Theological Narrative to the “Alternative Enemy”: Muslims Under the Spotlight
Since the 1990s, Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” thesis put Islam at the center of identity tensions. After September 11, the image of the Muslim — Arab or otherwise — settled into that of a “threat” requiring taming or deterrence.
In this context, Israel’s official narrative is easily marketed: every act of resistance is framed as terrorism, and every objection to force is demonized as “anti-Semitism.”
Here, the manufacturing of fear intersects with the politicization of memory, rearranging morality: the suffering of an occupied people becomes a mere “security detail,” while power is sanctified as a “shield against repeating the tragedy.”
(4) The “New Hitlerism”: Logic, Not Analogy
When we describe some of Israel’s current policies as “new Hitlerism”, we are not equating victims or making arbitrary historical projections. Rather, we are pointing to a specific logic that historian Ian Kershaw identified in his reading of Hitler: obsession with power, dehumanization of the opponent, and turning security exceptions into permanent norms (Kershaw 2008).
Applied to occupied land and civilian populations, this logic moves the state from the realm of “legitimate defense” into a project of organized repression, legitimized by a politically invested memory.
(5) How Can Politics of Memory Be Confronted?
Politicized memory is not countered by absolute counter-speech, but through building a resilient alternative ethical memory, with strong tools:
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Systematic documentation of international law violations (legal files; digital archiving of testimonies).
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Critical education that integrates the region’s history and victims’ narratives into global curricula.
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Professional cultural and media production (cinema, documentaries, investigative journalism) that tells the human story without slogans.
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International academic and legal alliances that raise the cost of denying violations and reawaken global conscience.
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Alternative economic and political frameworks (e.g., an Arab common market) that place the narrative within the vessel of interests rather than the margin of sentiment.
In this way, memory shifts from a shield that justifies violence into a universal mirror that reminds us justice is indivisible, and that yesterday’s victim cannot be used to justify producing new victims.
Conclusion
Politics of memory are not a cultural luxury; they are an infrastructure of hegemony. The ability of right-wing Israeli governments — in certain periods — to invest in these politics explains how violence is recycled as “necessary” and how moral critique is trapped under the charge of “denying tragedy.”
The way forward is not to negate the memory of tragedies, but to liberate it from political use and re-universalize it morally: no Holocaust justifies the oppression of another people, and no security can legitimize erasing the humanity of the occupied.
Here begins the condition of just politics.
