Academic historiography

Questions raised about the academic legitimacy brought Zionist historiography in a new direction. The establishment of the Zionist historiography in Hebrew University of Jerusalem did not matter in the first place and was lacking in terms of topics and ads in university. The Zionist historiography was developed over two generations outside of academia. Throughout the 1930s, Hebrew university observed the historians suspiciously and was trying to prevent their ideas being complex academically and ideologically in university.
In this period all historiographical researches were done and published outside of academia .only in early 1960s, Zionist movement and Bishvu's studies penetrated in Hebrew university and therefore they entered other younger universities as well.
Academic studies and research on the history of Bishvu put researchers and history-makers in front of each other. Many Saga Heroes were still alive and had many excellent posts and jobs in various centers. Younger researchers, who put the issue to the forefront of their research, increased public awareness in this regard. In addition, they performed a critical analysis of official and unofficial histories written outside of academic centers. They and their supervising professors were educated in the shadows of public awareness. However, they believed that the liberation activities is slow and still inadequate. After that gradually willingness in Western historiography deeply affected Zionism studies as a sample and goal and a history research approach.
Zionist histories which were already written in mythical style and in a romantic way like Leopold von Ranke or Jules Michelet, in this regard, were written by the concepts and values of the historiography of Western that increasingly had their notions from social sciences according to their historiography school.
In this connection, Israel Kulat, pioneer and forerunner of research and teaching Bishvu started summarizing parts of Zionism historiography and researches about history of Bishvu and Zionism movements written in early 1970s.
He described creating links between Zionist historiography that had infiltrated the universities and had caused the wider changes of academic generation of Israel and predictable academic research problems.
Kulat predicted almost a generation before the contrasts about pre-Zionist era and condemning Zionism by some neutral historians. He related the actions with Arabs' anti-Zionist propaganda and beliefs of Americans and Europeans believing in left parties. The researcher also identified a wide gap between the dominant concepts in Western universities and the roots of the phenomenon of Israel. He also examined the unique communication between Judaism and Jewish nationalism, the land of Israel and the people living on it, the international character of the Jewish presence and close ties of Jewish residents of other countries with state of Israel.
Kulat along with defiance of ideology challenge between Zionism and its competitors raised the need for reconciliation between Jewish history and current trends in Western historiography.
A generation later, observations of Kulat and his predictions on the development of Zionist historiography under pressure of the social sciences, the press and mass media, the impact of Western historiography and the influence of postmodernist tendencies become apparent.
Growth and development of research on the history of Bishvu was dependent on opening the archives of political parties, such as the kibbutz and other movements, organizations, institutions and individuals and Center Documents of Zionist, Israeli state's archives and I.D.F archives.
The opening of documents in public following of register in Great Britain enabled researchers to study the UK's relations with the Zionists. They were able to understand the policy of the Palestinian government and the Cabinet of London as well as influencing considerations in Great Britain's policies in Palestine. Naturally, the result was the interaction of ideas about the vision of the role of Great Britain during the Mandate. Scholars such as Bernard Vassar Stein, Gabriel Cohen, Michael Cohen and Ron Zweig were influenced by these ideas.
Until the opening of the archives and even a little later, the researchers of history of Bishvu relied on history makers. Not only they were directly influenced by studying history, which was possible through publishing memories and daily notes, but they were indirectly influenced by the characters by transferring the events to historians in small community such as Israel.
It is worth noting that very few national histories are organized based on oral history. Israel is one of the countries that has made wide use of oral history to achieve their goals and their legitimacy. Despite these efforts, illegal immigration of Jews to Palestine, the secret activities of Jews, the Haganah's actions and other things have made history of Bishvu full of confusing in information.
Psychological researches have mainly focused on criteria of memories quantity based on the point that how much memories do people still remember.
However, different issues including accuracy, effect of external factors, distorting the facts and so on are raised in these researches and the result of the psychological researches has shown that the link between memory and the truth is doubted and cannot be encouraged.
In this connection, according to micro historic studies in areas without documents and records relating to little matters such as small-scale settlements or military or tribal organizations, communities to tribes and families to small-scale or military organizations are not accurate about tribal communities and families that traditionally deployed based on oral history. These cases despite mentioned cases, oral traditions because of lack of substitute evidence for matching and identification, are inevitably important. In this regard, Daniel Gotwin examined criticism of Israel and Zionist historiography based on individual Jewish collected memories. He said despite Jews' personal memories which has formed a part of Israel's history, does Israel take all Jews or does it included other non-Israeli tribes? He also rose a question about those who continually and adding to this collection, including youth and new immigrants. He noted that who can recognize which memories should be recorded books or which ones should not be collected? Government? Mass media? Or university?
He does not know Zionist Israeli myth that conceals unrelated events reliable. According to him, where we talk of true success and victory for the Zionists, there is no legend mentioned. Legends and myths are formatted and promoted by various groups such as those involved in making target history, and the events of the press, biographers, poets, drama writers, journalists, fiction writers, filmmakers, designers and teachers, and the productions of radio and television. Recently, the Internet has become an important tool for the creation of new and old legends and plays an important role in the growth of Information Empire. Historians have recently been involved in changes in the old legends to give them a new form based on their needs and use them practically.
History is not similar or synonymous with memories, whether personal or collective memories. Zionist history is not an exception in the meantime. Classification of resources such as memories and oral evidence and covering them by group media and arts tell us how those events became memorable and are honored, but they cannot tell us how the events happened.
However, Israeli historians have used these kinds of invalid sources and take advantage of them as a historic evidence to prove their presence.
Zoe Shilwatch is one of the historians of the third generation, who has published a book called "a great land for a great nation" in Hebrew in May 1970, which has been republished for several times.
Let us take a look at some paragraphs if the book:
In the two thousand years that we were exiled of our homeland, only Judaism protected the existence of Jews. In the nineteenth century the foundation was ruined and Jewish Nationalism was replaced by religion; the enlightening nationalism…the six days war has waked up the sleepy Jewish forces…and when they woke up, they rediscover their land again. A revived promise between Israelis and the land of Israel can be a source of passion and inspiration and worshiping high ideals of Zionism. Revival of Jewish people has gained enough power so that the country wants to be a partner in Middle East by equal rights. We, Jews, have returned to our birth place, to the east, to a land located between "the great sea and Iran"… this is the basic change happening after the six days war: "the Fertile Crescent" or the giant desert in the middle of it is the place that the land of Israel owes to itself to be a part of it. There must be divisions between Israel and Arabs in "the Fertile Crescent" –Northern part of federation between Israel and Jordan and Kuwait. The three countries will have five million citizens: in terms of numbers, now Jews are half of the population of it, but in terms of science, technology and military power the Jews are stronger than the other two countries and it will be even stronger by the return of all Jews out of Palestine… the real peace will force "the Southern federation" to accept more and more Jewish residents in the whole land in a way that the federation can be called "united states of middle east". The peace road is a long way but one point shall be considered: the true peace should be founded based on boarders created during the six days war and are the least boarders that we can accept now… hence we shall accept a true peace can only be signed in Baghdad. The peace will terminate the myth of existence of an Arab nation whose country is from Gibraltar to Persian Gulf. Philosophy and reasons of the extremist political nationalist is like the old classical geographical philosophy of Nazi Germany (national-socialist). The book is full of these thoughts and ideas and advices.
Holocaust is the other subject of Zionism historians and writers of the third generation. The authors are trying to empower two vital principals in the framework of Jew-burning:
1. Jew-burning shows a unique historical event.
2. Jew-burning expresses the peak of irrational and constant hatred of non-Jews for Jews.
Jerzy Kosinsky is one of the writers who wrote the book "the colored bird" about Jew-burning. He is Poland immigrant and this is a book which is considered as the main book of Jew-burning. The book was a well-selling one and won a prize and it was translated to several languages and was among high school and university lessons. Finally, Kosinsky was exposed by a research publication. Since he was under full support of New York Times press, the press claimed that Kosinsky was victim of a communist press.
Bemjamin Wilcomiresky has adapted confusing and untrue matters from "the colored bird" book and used them in his book "a few memories". "a few memories" is a real deceiving book and is a perfect sample of memories of Jew-burning. The narration begins in Nazis' detention. All the guards are crazy monsters and harassment people who enjoy smashing the skull of Jewish babies. The book is known as a written work in Jew-making literature. The book has been translated to twelve languages and it won the prize of "the national book of Jews" and prize of "Jew-burning memorial". Israel Guttmann, manager of "Yad Vashem" museum and speaker of Jew-burning in Hebrew university is one of those who defend Wilco Miresky. Guttmann says:
It does not matter if the book "a few memories" is a deception. Wilco Mirsky wrote a story that has deeply experienced. There is no doubt in this case ... he is not a scam. He is the one who keeps the story alive in the depths of his soul and those are his real pains.