The Experiment
IN 2005 the Franco-Jewish writer, Cécile Winter, asked her readers to conduct a basic mental experiment. This exercise involved using one's imagination to view
“Israel as it is, and its trajectory over the last half-century, ignoring the fact that Jews came there stigmatised by the signier of the absolute victim, and thus beyond moral reproach. What we get, in that case, is a standard story of colonisation.”
She is correct, of course. Now, call me delusional, but I find it incredibly difficult to believe that other people don't think in such terms all the time. As far as I'm concerned, Jewish persecution at the hands of the Third Reich is completely unrelated to the political, social and economic realities of the Israeli regime. In a more tangible sense, that is, as Winter's ‘mental experiment’' clearly demonstrates. However, by asking us to remove a piece of the historical jigsaw puzzle she effectively helps to reinforce the fabricated connection between Jewish suffering and the State of Israel itself. After all, once we cease using our imagination to see things as they really are we inevitably return to things as we are told they are.
Rather than have a piece missing, therefore, as is invariably the case with jigsaw puzzles, Cécile Wilson clearly has a piece that some of us have never even required to complete the full picture.