The architecture of moral amnesia
JVL Introduction
Adam Raz provides a short but powerful account of Israeli ignorance and how it is systematically cultivated and encouraged by the state.
As he makes clear, you can only forget or deny what you have already come to know.
But ignorance is cultivated: “not only a self-inflicted mutilation by Israelis, but also a deliberate action by the state”.
In terms of official documentation, there are about 17 million files in the State and the IDF Archives. According to Israeli law, 36 percent of the files in the former and 29 percent in the latter should be open to the public: in reality those actually accessible in early 2026 were less than 4% of the former and 1% of the latter!
And that excludes the archives of the Shin Bet security service, Mossad, and the Atomic Energy Commission which are all closed to the public.
Raz remarks:
“One of the clearest outcomes of this policy of concealment is that many Israelis are incapable of believing what foreign media and Haaretz are saying about their country. Denial has become a sort of collective Pavlovian conditioning, crying “antisemitism” in response to any criticism of Israel, thereby cheapening the concept and directly harming Jews living abroad.”
This article was originally published by Haaretz on Tue 21 Jul 2026. Read the original here.
The architecture of moral amnesia: Israelis can't forget what they never knew
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But isn’t the younger generation curious about events in their history? It’s harder to brainwash your population since the internet laid bare some secrets, and the natural rebelliousness of youth might lead them to reject their parents’ and grandparents’ opinions? This article really made me think; if this level of ignorance and lack of interest in their history is truly universal, we are in big trouble.
It never ceases to amaze me just how ignorant the Zionist supporters are wherever they live but particularly so if they actually live within Israel. Their ability to deny or claim long well recorded events as false, or exaggerated or being only half the actual ‘truth’ ( according to Zionist sources).
They will never acknowledge reporting from Ha’aretz, Rabbis for Peace, BT’selem or any other Israeli Jewish based source and so similar organisations outside Israel are all subsumed under the heading of being propaganda sources for Hamas.
Recent examples have included the denial that the massacres at Deir Yassin and Tantura ever happened or that the IDF concerted attack on the USS Liberty happened in the way described by the American sailors who experienced it.
Anything to do with the Israeli use of Hamas as a tool to prevent discussions of Peace and the setting up of a Palestinian State is regarded as being nothing more than a myth as is their denial that Israel had any pre-knowledge of what was going to happen in the October 7th ‘break out’. That, of course, includes subsequent IDF actions and the complete denial of the use of the Hannibal Directive.
Perhaps the actioning and expansion of the ICC charges might make these sadly ignorant supporters more likely to question their world view created by the constantly repeated lies about what has , is and will no doubt continue to happen on the road to the creation of Greater Israel and make them see the way in which they have been deceived for the whole of their lives?
Lets look at the German history. In the late 1940’s and 50s Germans were worried about food, work and that half the country was under Russian control. They weren’t interested in knowing what had hapened during the war. Then the Adolf Eichman trial in 1962 hit the headlines and a new generation of Germans learnt what happened, and they started asking their parents and grandparents what they had done during the war. That is when Germans changed and realised what they had done and wanted to know more.
Maybe in 20 years time something will happen in Israel, maybe a trial or other event and people will start asking questions.
Jeffrey: But it’s worse than terrible that Germany is now compounding the reasons for the State’s guilt by backing to the hilt the on-going Israeli genocide. Second only to the US government, with the UK and much of the world’s governments tagging along behind. For the people of those pro-Israel governments it’s a different story.
Re. Israeli citizens ignorance it’s surely only the Daily Mail reader style of Israeli who can’t/won’t see/hear what is happening.