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A State on Trial: Hannah Arendt vs. the State of Israel
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Journal Article
A State on Trial: Hannah Arendt vs. the State of Israel
2007
Overview
It is noteworthy that the Israel of the early 1960s, when the trial was held in Jerusalem-still under the spell of the authoritarian rule of Ben-Gurion and with the prevailing cult of national unity and unanimity she had dreaded since the inception of statehood-represented for her the potential danger of sliding down the slope toward a totalitarian regime.3 JUDGING ISRAEL The challenging and judging of the state of Israel while it was implementing the highly symbolic act of putting on trial the Nazi archcriminal was performed by Arendt in a series of public acts: first as the figure-or in the disguise-of the observer that she took upon herself throughout the trial itself, then as the writer of the report of the trial, and finally as an active participant in the controversy her report raised. In doing so she consciously acted as the Jewish pariah who embodied the conscious outcast qualities.4 With regard to the trial and the prosecuting body-Israel-she acted as an analyst as well as a survivor of Jewish history, and as a feminine and perpetual refugee figure within the context of the nation-state's patriarchal-masculine self-image and public display of sovereignty, authority, and control.5 Surely, she came to Jerusalem not to submerge herself into the unified, embracing togetherness that the trial melted out of the pell-mell of diasporas, cultures, languages, and political faiths that comprised the Israeli society; neither was she inclined to assimilate herself into the hegemonic discourse of power that the spokespersons of the trial yielded.
Publisher
Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, New School for Social Research,Johns Hopkins University Press,New School for Social Research
Subject
