History and peace education in Israel/Palestine: a critical discussion of the use of history in peace education

摘要

This article discusses the role of history in peace education in the Israeli-Palestinian context. Israeli and Palestinian histories are vital parts of the conflict between the two collectives aiming at the destruction of the collective memory of the Other. Nevertheless, history's role in peace education is rarely discussed from a theoretical and philosophical perspective but only from a realist and representationalist perspective. Israeli and Palestinian history underwent a remarkable revision during the 1990s and the new histories that appeared were labelled 'New History' and were generally considered 'leftist' and 'peace oriented'. In this article it is claimed that the new Israeli history uses history in basically the same manner as Zionist history - namely, in order to install a mobilising regime in service of 'truth', 'justice' or ideologies of what constitutes the good. The new Israeli historians replace 'Israel' with 'Palestine', thereby inverting the hitherto hegemonic Zionist historical order without questioning 'historical orders' or 'historical truth' as such. Peace education seems to be more reflexive in its perspective on history but, it is claimed in this article, its focus on recognising the collective memory of the Other fails to recognise the effect of histories on the Self before the Other. Inspired by Nietzsche's understanding of history for purposes of Life, this article suggests a new look at the uses of history in peace education.