Silenced Heritage: Israel’s Heritage Plan Vis-à-Vis Non-Jewish History

Abstract

Cultural heritage (e.g., historic buildings, memorials and museums) has been used to construct and negotiate various identities and meanings in the present, specifically in the context of nation-states. In transforming the past into heritage, however, States may disregard other histories—ones which deviate from the historical narratives they promote. In this paper, I discuss the case of the Heritage Plan, Israel’s official cultural heritage policy. Specifically, by using the discursive approach, I expose and assess cases of silencing competing histories which would challenge the history promoted by the Heritage Plan. My findings suggest that, in addition to privileging Jewish heritage, the Heritage Plan is used as a mechanism for erasing competing, non-Jewish histories. This article presents three case-studies of silencing: the first investigates the Druze heritage center; the second inquires into Israeli heritage practices in the West Bank; the third examines the Castel national heritage site associated with the 1948 war. The analysis of these cases reveals how the Heritage Plan is guided by ethnic and religious factors, whereby heritage assets are not necessarily promoted according to their full historical value, but are instead used to sustain current power structures.

Notes

1 Israel Supreme Court, Bagatz 1541/21. Jerusalem, 2022. https://supreme.court.gov.il/Pages/fullsearch.aspx.

2 Israel Prime Minister’s Office, Government decision 1412. Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, 2010. https://www.gov.il/he/departments/policies/2010_des1412.

3 Israel Supreme Court, Bagatz 1541/21. Jerusalem, 2022. https://supreme.court.gov.il/Pages/fullsearch.aspx.

4 H. Silverman and D. F. Ruggles, eds., Cultural Heritage and Human Rights (Singapore: Springer Singapore Pte, 2008).

5 O. Yiftachel, Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

6 Israel Prime Minister’s Office, Tamar—Action Outlines for Preservation and Empowerment of National Heritage Infrastructures—Executive Summary (Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, 2010), 1.

7 Y. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

8 Israel Prime Minister’s Office, Tamar—Strategical Plan (Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, 2014).

9 M. Grever and C. van Boxtel. “Introduction: Reflections on Heritage as an Educational Resource,” in Heritage Education: Challenges in Dealing with the Past, edited by C. van Boxtel, S. Klein and E. Snoep (Amsterdam: Erfgoed Nederland, 2011), 9–13.

10 C. Boxtel, M. Grever, and S. Klein, Sensitive Pasts: Questioning Heritage in Education (New York: Berghahn, 2016); G. Savenije and P. De Bruijn, “Historical Empathy in a Museum: Uniting Contextualization and Emotional Engagement,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 23, no. 9 (2017): 832–45.

11 M. Carretero and B. V. Nicolás, Constructing Patriotism: Teaching History and Memories in Global Worlds (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Pub, 2011); G. Savenije, Sensitive History Under Negotiation: Pupils’ Historical Imagination and Attribution of Significance While Engaged in Heritage Projects (PhD dissertation, Erasmus University of Rotterdam, 2014); Jeremy D. Stoddard, “Learning History Beyond School: Museums, Public Sites, and Informal Education,” in The Wiley International Handbook of History Teaching and Learning, edited by S. Metzger and L. John Harris (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2018), 631–56.

12 J. Tunbridge and G. J. Ashworth, Dissonant Heritage: The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict (Chichester: Wiley, 1996).

13 Interview, June 2, 2021.

14 T. J. Anastasio, K. A. Ehrenberger, P. Watson, et al. Individual and Collective Memory Consolidation: Analogous Processes on Different Levels (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012); J. V. Wertsch, “Collective Memory,” in Memory in Mind and Culture, edited by P. Boyer and J. V. Wertsch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 117–37.

15 J. Assmann and J. Czaplicka, “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity,” New German Critique 65, no. 65 (1995): 125–33.

16 P. Connerton, “Seven Types of Forgetting,” Memory Studies 1, no. 1 (2008): 59–71.

17 N. Tirosh, “Reconsidering the ‘Right to Be Forgotten’—Memory Rights and the Right to Memory in the New Media Era,” Media, Culture & Society 39, no. 5 (2017): 644–60.

18 Herdis Hølleland and Joar Skrede, “What’s Wrong with Heritage Experts? An Interdisciplinary Discussion of Experts and Expertise in Heritage Studies,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 25, no. 8 (2019): 825–36; B. Timm Knudsen, J. R. Oldfield, E. Buettner, and E. Zabunyan, eds., Decolonizing Colonial Heritage: New Agendas, Actors and Practices in and Beyond Europe (London: Routledge, 2022); Silverman and Ruggles, Cultural Heritage and Human Rights.

19 L. Smith, Uses of Heritage (London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2006).

20 V. Vinitzky-Seroussi, and C. Teeger, “Unpacking the Unspoken: Silence in Collective Memory and Forgetting,” Social Forces 88, no. 3 (2010): 1103–1122.

21 James Paul Gee, Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses, 4th ed. (Abingdon: Oxon, 2012).

22 K. Emerick, Conserving and Managing Ancient Monuments: Heritage, Democracy, and Inclusion (Newcastle: Boydell & Brewer, 2014); R. Harrison, Heritage: Critical Approaches (Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge, 2013); H. Silverman, E. Waterton, and S. Watson, eds. Heritage in Action: Making the Past in the Present (Switzerland: Springer, 2016); Smith, Uses of Heritage.

23 Smith, Uses of Heritage.

24 Due to ethical considerations, the interviews included in this article have been anonymized. All interviews were conducted by the author in Hebrew and have been translated verbatim into English by the author. The interview guide, recruitment process and all other issues concerning the participation of humans in this research were authorized by McGill University’s ethics board committee.

25 Mary‐Catherine E. Garden, “The Heritagescape: Looking at Landscapes of the Past,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 12, no. 5 (2006): 394–411.

26 Judith Mair, and Joanne Mackellar, “Participant Observation at Events: Theory, Practice and Potential,” International Journal of Event and Festival Management 4, no. 1 (2013): 56–65.

27 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 2015).

28 Ibid., 28.

29 Y. Conforti, Shaping a Nation: The Cultural Origins of Zionism 1882–1948. (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi [Hebrew]), 2019.

30 Zerubavel, Recovered Roots.

31 R. Greenberg, and Y. Hamilakis, “Whitening Greece and Israel: Nation, Race, and Archaeogenetics.” In Archaeology, Nation, and Race: Confronting the Past, Decolonizing the Future in Greece and Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 109–150.

32 R. Kletter and G. Sulimani, “The Destruction That Can Be Studied, Israeli Archaeology and the Deserted Palestinian Villages,” in History, Archaeology and the Bible Forty Years after Historicity, edited by I. Hjelm and T. L. Thompson (Milton Park: Routledge, 2016), 174–204.

33 H. Ghanim, “WHere is Everybody!.” Zmanim: A Historical Quarterly. 138 (2017): 102–115 [Henrew].

34 See also M. Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); N. Kadman, Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015).

35 Israel Prime Minister’s Office, Government decision 1412. Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, 2010, 1. https://www.gov.il/he/departments/policies/2010_des1412.

36 Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage. A Call for Participation in the Third Phase of the Heritage Plan (Jerusalem: Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage, 2021), 1.

37 Established in Russia and Romania in the early 1880, Hibbat Zion was a Jewish movement which embraces the idea that Jews were a nation involves ethnic ties. This movement was an early version of Zionism.

38 Zvi Ilan, “Laurence Oliphant and ‘the Land of Gilad,’” Cathedra: For the History of Eretz Israel and Its Yishuv 27 (1983): 141–162. [Hebrew].

39 N. Mesica, “Documentation File of Oliphant House at Daliyat al-Karmel.” The council for conservation of heritage sites in Israel, 2011.

40 Robert Brenton Betts, The Druze (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).

41 Chad Kassem Radwa, “Assessing Druze Identity and Strategies for Preserving Druze Heritage in North America” (MA Thesis, University of South Florida, 2009).

42 Ilana Kaufman, “A ‘Covenant of Blood’ Between Druze and Jews: Two Narratives,” Zmanim: A Historical Quarterly 92 (2005): 44–53. Special Issue: Muslims and Others in Palestine and in Africa [Hebrew].

43 Kais Firro, The Druzes in the Jewish State (Leiden: Brill, 1999).

44 Amal Aun, “Israeli Education Policies as a Tool for the Ethnic Manipulation of the Arab Druze: Israel and the Occupied Syrian Golan” (MA thesis, Cornell University, 2018). https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/57398; Ilana Kaufman, “Ethnic Affirmation or Ethnic Manipulation: The Case of the Druze in Israel,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 9, no. 4 (2004): 53–82.

45 L. Ginat-Noimark, “Connection Center Between the Druze Community and the State of Israel: The Druze Yad Labanim Compound in Daliya al-Karmel” (Maase Shimur, 2018).

46 N. Mesica, “Documentation File of Oliphant House at Daliyat al-Karmel.”

47 The renovated site can be understood as a continuation of the previous presentation in the Jewish context. As such, prior to the renovation of the Oliphant house, the Druze fallen soldiers' hall was decorated with Jewish characteristics. The monument description is as follows: “At the center of the hall, on top of a black platform, [stands] an iron-made memorial torch. On the wooden walls of the hall hung the fallen soldiers' photos and names, in between the rows of photos stands a black pole caring the words 'Yizkor' [i.e. remember in Hebrew] as well as memorial details. Further down the wall [inscribed] a sentence from David's Elegy for Saul and Jonathan, including its translation into Arabic” (see: Yzkor website, https://www.izkor.gov.il/en_10dd8e4b5989259ce68ff3bd4e7d7071).

48 Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage, Action Outlines for Preservation and Empowerment of National Heritage Infrastructures (Jerusalem: Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage, 2018).

49 At the time of writing this article, the Oliphant House was still under renovation. The description is taken from policy documents, presentations, and illustrations of the site.

50 See N. Gordon, Israel’s Occupation (London: University of California Press, 2008); G. Shafir, A Half-Century of Occupation: Israel, Palestine, and the World’s Most Intractable Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017); Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (London: Verso, 2007).

51 Nadia Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).

52 Y. Hamilakis, The Nation and Its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology and National Imagination in Greece (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); P. L. Kohl and C. Fawcett, eds., Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); B. Trigger, “Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist,” Man 19, no. 3 (1984): 355–370.

53 Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground.

54 M. Feige, “Introduction,” in Archaeology and Nationalism in Eretz-Israel, edited by M. Feige, Z. Shiloni and S. de Boker. (The Ben. The Ben Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism [Hebrew], 2008), 1–18.

55 Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground.

56 Ziv Stahl, Appropriating the Past Israel’s Archaeological Practices in the West Bank (Emek Shave and Yesh Din, 2017), 23. https://emekshaveh.org/en/wpcontent/uploads/2017/12/Menachsim-Eng-Web.pdf

57 Ibid.

58 Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage, Action Outlines for Preservation and Empowerment of National Heritage Infrastructures, 18.

59 O. Bartov, “Introduction: Lands and Peoples: Attachment, Conflict, and Reconciliation,” in ISRAELPALESTINE Lands and People, edited by O. Bartov (New-York: Berghahn, 2021), 1–20.

60 Kadman, Erased from Space and Consciousness, 34.

61 Yiftachel, Ethnocracy.

62 Israel State Archive. The West Bank of Judea and Samaria—The official name change in July 1968. In Levi Eshkol Commemoration Project. https://catalog.archives.gov.il/chapter/west-bank-or-judea-and-samaria/.

63 Interview, June, 23 2021.

64 Interview, May 19, 2021.

65 Interview, May 5, 2021

66 UNESCO, Nomination 1565: Executive Summary (Paris: UNESCO, 2021).

67 According to Jewish tradition this is the burial site of Jewish patriarchy which includes Abraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov and its matriarchy Sarah, Rivka and Leah.

68 Call: Hebron 2018.

69 Interview, June 23, 2021.

70 Haynes, as quoted by Ben-Zeev 2011, 127.

71 Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 223–236.

72 Maarive, “The Castel Mount Was Declared a National Heroism site,” May 5, 1980. [Hebrew].

73 Israel Rosenson and Yossi Spanier, On the Way to Jerusalem: Shaʼar HaGai as a Site of Memory (Carmel: Jerusalem, 2017), 277. [Hebrew].

74 Efrat Ben-Ze’ev, “The Politics of Taste and Smell: Palestinian Rites of Return,” in The Politics of Food, edited by Lien, Marianne E, and Brigitte Nerlich (Oxford: Berghahn, 2004), 141–160.

75 See also A. Madmony “Constructive Vagueness? Visitors, Landscape and Heritage at Ein Hemed National Park and the Castel National Site” (M.A. Thesis, Ben-Gurion University, 2018), 38–39. [Hebrew].

76 Walid Khalidi, All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992), 311.

77 Several studies have investigated the erasure of Palestinian histories and memory, see M. Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Efrat Ben-Ze’ev, “The Politics of Taste and Smell: Palestinian Rites of Return,” in The Politics of Food, edited by Marianne E. Lien and Brigitte Nerlich (Oxford: Berghahn, 2004), 141–160; Kadman, Erased from Space and Consciousness; Uri Ram, “Ways of Forgetting: Israel and the Obliterated Memory of the Palestinian Nakba,” Journal of Historical Sociology 22, no. 3 (2009): 366–395.

78 The Jerusalem convoy memorial is an installation made out of several remnants of armored trucks located next to the road leading to the entry of Jerusalem. Together with the Castel and other memorial sites such as Khan Sha’ar Hagai, these memorials commemorate the battles on the Jerusalem front during the 1948 war (see Israel Rosenson and Yossi Spanier, On the Way to Jerusalem: Shaʼar HaGai as a Site of Memory (Carmel: Jerusalem, 2017). [Hebrew]).

79 Gili Izikovich, “The National Heritage Plan: Zvi Hauzer, Its Executor,” Haaretz (2010) April 19.

80 T. Nayzer and A. Stoloro Melichi. The Castel: Walking in the Values Trail, Guiders’ Guide—Instruction Kit for Activity in the New Castel Site (Israel Nature and Parks Authority, 2016), 2. [Hebrew].

81 Y. Shilo, “On the Road to Jerusalem,” in The Land’s Road (Beshvil Ha’aretz) (Israel Nature and Parks Authority, 2011), 20, 18–21. [Hebrew].

82 Shilo, “On the Road to Jerusalem,” 18.

83 Nayzer and Stoloro Melichi, The Castel, 6.

84 Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

85 Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 164. For more on the Plan Dalet scholarly debate, see Walid Khalidi, “Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine,” Journal of Palestine Studies 18, no. 1 (1988): 4–19. ; Pappé Ilan, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947–51 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1992), 54–55, 89–94.

86 Jaap C. Bosma, “Plan Dalet in the Context of the Contradictions of Zionism,” Holy Land Studies 9, no. 2 (2010): 209–227.

87 Kadman, Erased from Space and Consciousness.

88 Ibid., 139.

89 A. Seltzer, N. Eben, and G. Gertel, “Instruction File: Castel National Site, Mevaser Et Zion,” Israel Nature and Parks Authority, 2002, 33. [Hebrew]

90 Israel Prime Minister’s, Tamar—Strategical Plan, 8.

91 Kaufman, Ethnic Affirmation or Ethnic Manipulation.

92 Smith, Uses of Heritage.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec-Société et Culture.

Notes on contributors

Rudy Kisler

Rudy Kisler is a Lady Davis post doctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology at the Hebrew University. His research lie at the intersection of cultural heritage, political ideology and education.