Rewriting Israeli History

in Israel during the 1980s, strongly criticizing Israeli history and society. Coming from diverse
backgrounds and using different methodologies, nonetheless they all shared a highly critical
approach towards mainstream historians and sociologists, and, more importantly, towards
key moments and issues in Israel’s history. These thinkers blamed the Zionist establishment for
ignoring the distress of the European Jews during the Holocaust, committing war crimes against
the Arab population during the 1948 War, and abusing immigrants in the years after the state’s
independence. These claims raised passionate debates between mainstream and critical scholars,
which strongly affected Israeli society. This paper examines the processes that led to the emergence
of these thinkers, the novelty of their historical narratives and interpretations, and analyzes the
specific terminology they employed, as well as their opponents’ criticisms, which their research
provoked.