ISRAEL/PALESTINE TERRITORY: A TIMELINE (CONT.)


Camp David summit commences, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak lays out some non-negotiable “red lines”: • Israel will not give up the territory gained in the Six Days War (or thereafter).


• East Jerusalem must remain under Israel’s rule. • Israel is entitled to annex settlements in the West Bank. • Israel will not accept any (legal or moral) responsibility for the Palestinian refugee crisis. Meanwhile, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat seeks Israeli withdrawal from large parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (including East Jerusalem) and the establishment of an


TRAUMA IN COLLECTIVE MEMORY


At the center of If I Forget is an examination of the role trauma plays within the collective consciousness of a community. In this case, it is the Holocaust. A traumatic event or tragedy can deeply impact and even transform the identity of the community affected. There have been many examples in history of groups of people whose very understandings of themselves were fundamentally altered by a scarring event.


THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE


The Great Irish Famine, often colloquially known as the “Irish Potato Famine,” took place between 1845 and 1852. In the 1840s, a devastating disease known as potato blight swept across Europe, ravaging crops and causing food shortages in all affected countries. However, Ireland was disproportionately affected by this blight. In 1845, around two- fifths of Ireland’s population was solely reliant on the potato as a food and income source, and as a result approximately one million people died and another million emigrated from Ireland. This caused the population of Ireland to fall by between 20-25% during this period.


Understandably, the legacy was


enormous. In some ways it was a turning point in the history of Ireland. Histories are often written as “pre” and “post” famine. As described by historian Christine Kennealy, the famine was neither “inevitable” nor “unavoidable”; its scale was in part due to the failings of the British government.


16 ROUNDABOUT THEATRE COMPANY


independent Palestinian state within the contested territory. These conflicting demands make a compromise near- impossible, and the talks ultimately fail to satisfy either side.


2000 - 2005: The second intifada. Far more violent than the first, the intifada claims some 1,000 Israeli and 3,200 Palestinian lives. Israeli forces, believing Palestinians are no longer willing to work towards peace, increase their control over occupied areas. In 2002, construction of the Separation Barrier (a wall separating Israel and the West Bank) begins.•


Whether or not these failings were deliberate, they galvanized anti-British sentiment, which led to the Irish home rule movements a couple of decades later. Most importantly, the famine became a cornerstone of the Irish identity.


SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES


Collective trauma can be triggered by an event, but it also can exist in the form of systematic oppression. Slavery in the United States has had a profound impact on African- American identity. Slavery formally ended in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation, but systematic oppression of African-Americans even today has a direct link to slavery. Contemporary author Ta-Nehisi Coates captures this perfectly in his book, Between the World and Me. He argues that, as the United States was built on the back of slavery, the very ideals of the American Dream are systems of white supremacy and subjugation of African-Americans. Coates says that the “racist violence that has been woven into the American culture” is impossible to undo, because of the history of race relations in the USA. Coates argues that white Americans are enabled by and largely ignorant of their history of privilege and suppression. Therefore, a culture of white supremacy continues to inflict trauma on African- American communities. He argues that every time there is racialized violence on African-Americans, for example a black man being killed by a police officer, the event itself is not "evil" but is just a physical infliction of the legacy of the United States. As a result of this, racism can only be understood viscerally; it is not something that can be discussed away as it inflicts pain on black bodies. Therefore, Coates advocates a constant confrontation and awareness of this legacy and for African-American bodies to be protected and protect themselves in a world of violence around them.•


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