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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 October 2011
As Asher Maoz insightfully points out, governmental involvement in the ascertainment of historical truth—whether in court, by commission of inquiry, or in other ways—is directed at securing approval of a particular historical narrative, as a step toward imposing that narrative, to a greater or lesser extent, on those who disagree with it. This “official version” exists not only for the sorts of questions presented by the cases Maoz discusses, but also with respect to auto accidents, crimes of passion, and all the other historical reconstructions that form the substrate of “facts” upon which legal conclusions and enforceable judgments are predicated.
1. See Sharon v. Time, Inc., 599 F.Supp. 538 (S.D.N.Y. 1984).
2. As readers of Maoz's footnotes will have noted, the standard pro-Revisionist historian of the affair, Hanoch Ben-Yeroham, republished his book, originally entitled “The Sacrifice,” during the controversy leading to the appointment of the Arlosoroff commission. The title on republication was, significantly, “The Great Libel.” See Maoz, Asher, “Historical Adjudication: Courts of Law, Commissions of Inquiry, and ‘Historical Truth,’” Law and History Review 18 (2000): 561–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, n. 6, 574–75, n. 48. An interesting and valuable essay remains to be written on the image of the blood libel, the inverted sacrifice, in the rhetoric of Israeli law.
3. I am particularly grateful, in this regard, to Daphna Barak-Erez for the opportunity to read her fascinating and as-yet-unpublished work on the construction of historical narratives in Israeli judicial opinions.
