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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Concordia University University of California, Los Angeles

Winfield Myers

Winfield Myers is managing editor of the Middle East Forum and director of its Campus Watch project, which reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North American universities. He has taught world history and other topics at the University of Michigan, the University of Georgia, Tulane, and Xavier University of Louisiana. He was previously managing editor of The American Enterprise magazine and CEO of Democracy Project, Inc., which he co-founded. Mr. Myers has served as senior editor and communications director at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and is principal author and editor of a college guide, Choosing the Right College (1998, 2001). He was educated at the University of Georgia, Tulane, and the University of Michigan.