The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide

The Banality of Denial examines the current attitudes of the State of Israel and its leading institutions toward the Armenian Genocide. Israel's view of the Armenians and their tragedy has special significance and deserves an attentive study, as Israel is a country composed of a people who were victims of the Holocaust. The Banality of Denial seeks to examine the passive, indifferent Israeli attitude towards the Armenian Genocide, and explores active Israeli measures to undermine attempts at safeguarding the memory of the Armenian victims of the Turkish persecution. This volume is the second part of a project that examines Jewish-Israeli attitudes toward the Armenian Genocide. The first part, The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide, was published by Transaction in 2000. Both books offer the reader an opportunity to explore a particular case of a general phenomenon that goes beyond the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish attitude: the reaction of the bystander who remains on the sidelines while known atrocities take place. The Banality of Denial also explores Israeli attitudes - past and present - toward the phenomenon of genocide in general, including an analysis of concrete case studies, such as the tragedies in Tibet, and Rwanda. In The Banality of Denial - as in Auron's previous work - moral, philosophical, and theoretical questions are of paramount importance. Such an inquiry into attempts at denial by Israeli institutions and leading figures of Israel's political, security, academic, and Holocaust "memory-preservation" elite has not merely an academic significance. It has considerable political relevance, both symbolic and tangible. Because no previous studies have dealt with these or similar issues, an original methodology is employed to analyze the subject with regard to four spheres of attitudes towards the Armenian Genocide: the political, the educational, the media, and the academic. In many regards, this book is as much about Israeli society and Jewish values as it is about the Armenian Genocide per se.