Lisa Strömbom
Docent | Universitetslektor
Israeli pre-transitional justice and the Nakba-Law
Författare
Summary, in English
Pre-transitional justice activities that expose past injustices during entrenched conflicts can incite strong reactions among actors who feel threatened by or dislike such activities, and who thus attempt to silence controversial truths. This article illuminates how attempts to silence controversial truths, in parallel with shutting down debate, can also have the unintended outcome of enlarging public discourse on previously marginalised issues. Thus, paradoxically, efforts to curb freedom of expression sometimes result instead in an expanded public capacity to debate previously silenced truths about the conflict. We conduct a case study of reactions to pre-transitional justice in Israeli society focusing on the so-called Nakba Law, enacted in 2011. Through interviews with members of the non-governmental organisation Zochrot, politicians, teachers and media persons, we first show the relationship between pre-transitional justice and enacting the Nakba Law. We then demonstrate that while the Nakba Law indeed aimed to hamper freedom of expression, it also enabled increased public knowledge about the meaning of Nakba. Our theoretical proposition regarding this paradox, in this case activated by instigating new memory laws, is highly relevant to other conflicts-in-resolution that experience pre-transitional justice processes.
Avdelning/ar
- Centrum för Mellanösternstudier (CMES)
- Statsvetenskapliga institutionen
- MECW: The Middle East in the Contemporary World
Publiceringsår
2021
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
305-323
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Israel Law Review
Volym
54
Issue
3
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
Cambridge University Press
Ämne
- Political Science
Nyckelord
- transitional justice (TJ)
- pre-transitional justice
- truth
- ontological security
- Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- Nakba
- Nakba Law
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 0021-2237