Museumizing trauma: Social politics and memory after the 2005 evacuation of the Jewish communities of Gaza

摘要

A provocative example of the relation between memory/memorializing and social transformation in a conflict area, the Museum of Gush Katif in Jerusalem is a private institution with the mission of memorializing the settlement-communities of the Gaza Strip (known to its residents as Gush Katif) and their evacuation by the Israeli Defense Forces in the summer of 2005. The museum presents an alternative narrative to that of the government and mainstream Israeli society, aims to foster sympathy for the evacuees and aspires to lead the viewer to identify with the settlements in order to prevent future evacuations. Its activities, both educational and political, bring it into contact with both religious and secular elements of Israeli society, as well as internationally, turning the museum into not only a site of cultural and political resistance but a cultural symbol in and of itself. This article explores the museum, and the process of remembering that it embodies, from a number of viewpoints. One, the way the museum evokes authoritative symbols from multiple and contrasting sources in order to frame contemporary eventsand at the same time affecting the way those symbols are understood; two, the social makeup of the museum's founders and organizers, seen as an expression of the changing alliances and political stances of cultural subgroups in Israeli society and thus the continued evolution of strategies of remembering; and three, the role of the Museum of Gush Katif as an alternative museum seen in the light of comparison with other examples of the category, certainly a provocative example, sometimes corroborating and sometimes complicating the term.