In this paper, I will explore the potential perils of adopting the Holocaust as a paradigmatic focal point within global memory studies and education, exploring specifically the implications of this approach within the politically and historically charged arena of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Recent years have seen Holocaust and memory studies move towards increasingly indirect and interdisciplinary forms of analysis, expanding to incorporate traumatic events outside of the Holocaust itself, and moving beyond the necessity of familial, geographical, or ethno-religious links. Perhaps the most well known example of such thinking is Michael Rothberg's Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Yet whilst Rothberg's notion of multidirectional memory functions positively in specific circumstances, the unique historical continuum that runs between the Holocaust and contemporary Israel creates complications, transforming what may otherwise be a productive form of connective memorialisation into one that calls for moral duties that oppose one another at every turn. To give a streamlined example, Rothberg's claim that the 'demand to disobey unjust laws [is] one of the most significant imperatives of post-Holocaust consciousness' may seem like a logical and straightforward proposition. However, when applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this same proposition is seen to call simultaneously for the continued illegal construction of Israeli settlements, in the name of Israeli self-defence against Palestinian anti-Semitism, as well as for the illegal attacks on such settlements, in the name of Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation. Both the existence and construction of settlements and the attacks on these settlements are illegal and should be condemned, yet despite the fact that such actions directly oppose one another, both can be perceived as justified when viewed through the lens of post-Holocaust consciousness. Informed by academic works by authors and theorists such as Rothberg, Edward Said, and Gilbert Achcar, this paper will explore the complicated relationship between the memory of the Holocaust, and its invocation in modern day Israel and Palestine. Thereafter, through analysing both Israeli and Palestinian works of literature, film, and art, by individuals such as Susan Abulhawa, Noam Chayut, Ari Folman, and Emile Habibi, I will outline the shortcomings of Holocaust-focused connective memory studies when applied to this particular terrain, demonstrating the ways in which such approaches ultimately obscure the specificities of both events, and in doing so tend to complicate, rather than elucidate.
