Like many nation states born out of war, Israel must re-evaluate its past in order to move forward, argues Mark Mazower*

[The Financial Times, 24 May]:As the violence escalated in the Middle East, it waseasy to miss last week's announcement by Limor Livnat,the Israeli education minister, that the country'schildren would henceforth be required to receive aJewish-Zionist education. Commenting that schools werepart of the internal security of the state of Israel,the minister was responding to a widespread senseamong the country's conservatives that basic patrioticvalues have been undermined.

At the heart of her initiative lies an attempt toreassert the validity of Israel's most cherishedfoundation myths. Over the past decade a newgeneration of historians has questioned the idea thatthe 1948 war of independence was a glorious victoryfor the Jewish David over the Arab Goliath. Theirresearch suggests that the atrocities against Arabcivilians that punctuated this victory were not alwaysthe random excesses of trigger-happy troops in thefield and that at least some senior Zionists saw thewar as an opportunity for permanent demographicengineering.

These conclusions are highly unpalatable to thegovernment of Ariel Sharon. The prime minister himselfrecently referred to the war of 1948 as only thebeginning of a continuing struggle which is stillunder way. But while the authorities are pledged toput the shine back on their formative victory, IsraeliArabs are joining Palestinians in commemorating 1948as the year of catastrophe. There could be no clearerindication of the cleavage that now exists within thecountry than this diametrically opposed contest ofhistorical memory.

Not that Israel is the only country arguing over itsmyths of origin. In the Irish Republic, the standardnationalist narrative of the country's emergence outof civil war in 1916-1922 has been challenged in asimilar fashion to Israel's: there too, historianshave shed light on aspects of the independencestruggle that had been ignored, neglected or hidden byearlier generations.

In Italy, where the 1940s are the subject of highlycharged disputes, it is very likely that SilvioBerlusconi's government will try to intervene in theteaching of modern history in schools.

At the heart of this tussle over the past is a largelyunspoken distinction between shameful and inspiringacts of violence. On the one hand, there is the heroicexpulsion of the invading foe, usually commemorated bystatues, street names, national anthems and publicceremonies; on the other, there is the killing ofunarmed neighbours -a matter best swept under thecarpet and quietly forgotten.

The trouble is that the creation of nation statesgenerally involves both. The Turkish republic, forexample, was born out of a glorious war ofindependence against invading Greek armies but it wasalso facilitated by the earlier massacre of hundredsof thousands of Armenians.

India and Pakistan jointly owe their existence to the1947 partition of the sub-continent, which toreprovinces apart and led within weeks to 1m dead and10m refugees. These events remained until veryrecently largely untouched by historians in bothcountries, as though recalling the brutality thatattended national independence might cast a shadow onwhat followed.

Similar taboos are visible in eastern Europe, too: itis only now that Poles and Czechs can admit that theevents of the 1940s - in which the Germans firstkilled their Jewish co-citizens before being drivenout in their turn - led to two of their largest andmost vocal minorities disappearing from the nationalcommunity.

All these cases illustrate how hard states and theirpeoples find it to give up their self-image ashistory's victims and heroes - and to acknowledgetheir own role as perpetrators and beneficiaries too.Victim and perpetrator are not, after all, mutuallyincompatible categories.

It was the second world war that accustomed theinternational community to the idea that huge,unwanted populations could be moved by force acrossstate borders. The chief lesson of Europe's inter-wardifficulties for many of Hitler's opponents was thatonly ethnically homogeneous states were likely to makefor international stability. Eastern Europeanpoliticians had already determined that when the warwas over they would throw out their ethnic Germanminorities. Eventually, millions - including Germananti-Nazis and even surviving German Jews - wereexpelled westwards in Europe's largest-ever refugeemovement.

Less well known is that in 1941 such senior Zionistleaders as David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann werealso privately contemplating a transfer of Arabs outof an eventual Jewish state to make room forimmigrants from the ravaged continent. It is history'sgreat irony that half a century after Europe toreitself and much of the rest of the world apart in thequest for ethnic purity, the forces of economic changeand globalisation have shown the futility of thatquest and underlined the need for mobility of labouras well as trade and capital. In Israel, as elsewhere,prosperity has brought with it the need for importednon-Jewish hands and only impoverishment could endthis trend. Economic dynamism is hard to reconcilewith national exclusivism but we should be naive toassume that the former will always win out.

Attitudes to the past attest to a country's vision ofitself in the world. Dealing politically with one'sopponents and neighbours requires an effort tounderstand their experience and to accept the moralcomplexity of the past. Thus Ireland's shift to a moresecular, outward- looking society has been reflectedin a gradual willingness to abandon once-cherishednationalist myths about the civil war. In that sense,the peace process has been prefigured in Irishscholars' readiness to accept the ambiguity andmessiness of the historical record.

To this openness, the Sharon government's educationalproposals make a depressing contrast. The so-calledpost-Zionist historians it detests are - by bringingthe experience of Palestinian and neighbouring Arabsinto the frame - at least attempting to forge thebasis for a new dialogue with Israel's neighbours. Butwhat alternative does the administration have tooffer? Still committed to a form of settlercolonialism, still in thrall to a mystique of the landthat can be justified not in political but intheological terms only, its very actions show the warof 1948 in a new light. Unable to offer a wearyelectorate the promise of glorious wars to come, it istrying at least to preserve the country's pride in thestruggles of the past. And in refusing to acknowledgethe facts of history, it reveals the poverty of itspolicies for Israel's future.

* The writer is professor of history at Birkbeck College London