9.16. Digital Memory in Gaza and Israel

The construction of collective memory on social media (SM), has attracted heightened scholarly attention in recent years, as more mnemonic actors embrace SM for their purposes. Operating on SM provides an opportunity for the dissemination of Holocaust memory among diverse publics and within multiple, sometimes unexpected contexts. At the same time, such memory manifestations are fraught with tensions and contradictions, once SM logic is intertwined with the logic of Holocaust commemoration. The encounter between these logics stands at the core of our paper: as part of a large-scale research project, exploring SM representations of Holocaust memory, we ask how the above-mentioned opportunities and tensions are addressed and negotiated in Israeli Holocaust commemorative institutions. To this end, we conducted in depth interviews with 13 individuals responsible for managing the SM activities (and in some cases entire digital presence) of nine Israeli Holocaust commemoration institutions. Some interviewees work for well established commemoration institutions, aspiring to convey a national, or even universal narrative of the Holocaust; others work for smaller institutions, catering to specific segments of Israeli society, such as the Ultra orthodox Jewish community. While a minority of interviewees are trained SM professionals, most are versed in the history of the Holocaust and its offline commemoration, but are trial and error semi amateurs, when it comes to SM memory work. Thematic analysis shows that our interviewees must navigate the competing expectations of various mnemonic stakeholders (superiors, peers, concrete and imagined audiences, and the platform algorithm), each operating according to distinct and often conflicting logics. Most interviewees wish to optimize their institutions’ SM presence, but view de contextilized SM "professionalism" as problematic when it comes to Holocaust commemoration. Finally, all participants grapple with the questions of whether and how to address current events such as the Gaza war or contemporary antisemitic

It is no secret that pro Israel voices interpreted the atrocities of October 7th, 2023 as an affirmation of historical Jewish vulnerability. Describing Hamas’s surprise attack as the “deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust,” Israeli leaders soon compared their military response to “fighting Nazis” in Gaza; for Joe Biden, supporting that response was a test of the world’s ability not to “stand by and do nothing again.” Since October 7th, the consequences of reducing Palestinian Israeli conflict to such analogies have become obvious to conscientious witnesses of Israel’s annihilation of Gazan life and society. The growing consensus of a Palestinian genocide, however, does not meaningfully confront the fact that defenses of Israeli righteousness in the present are situated in representations of a traumatic past. This paper therefore asks: How has the rhetorical currency of the Holocaust translated the destruction of Gaza into a logical, justifiable prerequisite for Jewish survival? More broadly, what does Holocaust parallelism tell us about how cultural memory is produced and mediated in the digital age? By analyzing the images, tropes, and memes of prominent Zionist influencers, this paper argues that the digital transmission of Holocaust memory has enabled the war on Gaza to become obscured, its moral ramifications suppressed, by symbols and slogans abstracted from present day violence. In the process, I consider how generational trauma achieves affective resonance on social media, how collective memory is reinforced among online communities, and how those communities use digital media to construct exclusionary narratives of suffering. My goal is not to discount the pedagogical value of Holocaust memory transmission in the digital age. Rather, I hope to invite conversation on the ethical limitations of memory activism effected in service of brutality and how a more introspective memory politics can create new possibilities towards a lasting and just peace.

This paper examines how Mizrahi memory activists in Israel employ digital memory work to claim the right to memory, and what strategies emerge in their efforts to preserve and transmit collective memory within online environments. Mizrahim, Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent, comprise nearly half of Israel’s Jewish population, yet their histories and cultural narratives remain structurally marginalized within dominant Israeli memory politics. In recent years, Mizrahi memory activists have used digital platforms to resist erasure and reclaim cultural authority. Grounded in the “right to memory” (Tirosh & Reading, 2023), this study treats memory as an ethical and socio-legal entitlement tied to democratic participation. Israel’s mnemonic landscape marked by conflicts, ethnic hierarchies, and polarized politics shows how Mizrahi memory work operationalizes memory rights, challenging hegemonic narratives while fostering justice, inclusion, and resilience. The study applies a mixed-methods approach. First, it systematically maps Mizrahi memory activism across key digital platforms, (Facebook Instagram, X,TikTok). Second, it conducts semi-structured interviews with approximately thirty activists engaged in these spaces. Using qualitative content analysis and thematic coding, the research investigates how activists construct narratives, address silenced histories, and frame their practices as memory rights in action. Preliminary insights show that digital tools function as crucial infrastructures for intergenerational transmission of memory, enabling younger audiences to engage with cultural heritage while resisting erasure in mainstream narratives. Mizrahi activists mobilize memory rights through storytelling, visual culture, and online campaigns to reclaim marginalized histories and assert recognition. This study provides richer empirical evidence of how Mizrahi memory work develops new strategies of resistance, justice, and inclusion within deeply contested mnemonic landscapes.

This paper theorizes “Elicited Memory”, a phenomenon and practice situated between commemorative and non-commemorative memory, between the purposeful, ritualized use of memory during official commemoration and the omnipresence of memory in everyday life. On the one hand, Elicited Memory carries the magnitude of commemorative memory: current discourse is saturated with reflections on the past, official voices are heard and echoed. On the other hand, Elicited Memory timing is not predetermined: it arises as a reflexive cultural response to contemporary tragedy, and its primary momentum is bottom-up, as the public invokes memory and spreads analogies. Thus, Elicited Memory is particularly apparent in the digital era, when users can mobilize memory and circulate it widely, often across collapsed contexts, where diverse audiences encounter and negotiate these invocations simultaneously. To better understand the dynamics of elicited memory, we are analyzing Hebrew-language X platform discourse across two pivotal episodes: the first 100 days of the 2023 protests against the Israeli government’s planned judicial overhaul and the first 100 days following the October 7, 2023. Hamas attack and subsequent Gaza war. The study revealed how historical trauma is mobilized, diffused, and intensified in digital public spheres. It did so via a two-phase, platform-attentive design: first, quantitative extraction of posts using Holocaust-term bigram queries; and second, a qualitative mapping of directionality, temporality, and vernacular markers as mnemonic affordances. Research questions focused on the conditions, actors, and rhetorical-ethical functions under which X users invoke Holocaust memory, with comparative attention to protest and wartime dynamics. Findings indicate a steady baseline, “white noise”, of Holocaust references punctuated by crisis-related spikes. During protests, ironic shorthand and satire dominate; in wartime, the repertoire of Holocaust-related inferences consolidates into moral indictment, producing a shift from permissible analogy to imperative accusation.