April 19, 2016, 4:00pm – 6:00pm
Furman Hall 118
245 Sullivan Street
New York, NY 10012
RSVP for the talk here.
About the Talk
A dramatic transformation took place in the landscape and demography of Israel after the 1948 war, as hundreds of Palestinian villages throughout the country were depopulated, and for the most part physically erased. How has this transformation been perceived by Israelis? Noga Kadman suggests some answers, based on a research that systematically explores aspects of the Israeli discourse concerning the depopulated Palestinian villages. The talk focuses on the most ordinary, everyday encounters of Israelis with the memory of the villages, their representations and their physical remains: Using place names, utilizing a map, travelling around the country, and living in rural communities established in the sites of depopulated Palestinian villages.
Based on a variety of sources, including archival documents, official maps and a comprehensive field survey of the sites of 230 villages, the research findings reveal a consistent pattern of marginalization of the depopulated Palestinian villages in the historico-spatial discourse in Israel: The names of most of the villages are kept out of the official onomasticon of Israel, and the rest were Hebrewized; Many villages are not marked on official maps, while those which are – appear in a manner which blurs their identity; Tourism authorities disregard most of the villages located within their sites in information provided to the public, and in the few instances where they do mention a village – its identity, history and circumstances of depopulation are suppressed; Jewish communities established on depopulated villages live peacefully with the dispossession of the former residents, rarely referring to the villages’ history, the circumstances of their depopulation, the fate of the refugees and the moral question of using their homes and properties.
The speaker will discuss these findings, providing statistics and original quotes, showing photos and maps, and putting it in the context of the formation of collective memory and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
About the Speaker
Noga Kadman is an Israeli researcher in the field of human rights and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whose main interest is to explore the encounter between Israelis and the Palestinian presence in the landscape and history of the country. She is also a licensed tour guide who deals mostly with the hidden Palestinian layers of the landscape in Israel. Noga is the author of the recently published Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Village of 1948, and co-editor of Once Upon a Land: A Tour Guide to Depopulated Palestinian Villages and Towns (in Hebrew and Arabic).
See Amazon Link here.