Negotiating the Past Online: Holocaust Commemoration between Iran and Israel

Abstract

abstract:This study explores how marginalized groups negotiate the past and partake in building collective memory online. Using examples drawn from a large-scale ethnographic study, I show how members of the Persian community in Israel (Israelis of Iranian origin) reaffirm and oppose excluding dominant Israeli collective memory narratives of the Holocaust through rereading historic Iranian-related stories of Holocaust occurrences. The article thus aims to both discuss the ongoing struggle of Mizrahi communities to criticize exclusionary practices within Israeli sociocultural discourses and reflect on the research opportunities and limitations social media create in studying collective memory construction online as a whole and in the context of minority groups in particular.