Chapter 2 discusses major conceptualizations of collective/group identity and perceptions of the other in relation to conflict contexts, in general, and to the Holocaust and the Jewish-Arab/Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in particular. The chapter focuses on social identity theory and its evolution, the intersectional approach to group identity, and personal narratives as identity. We then explore the connections that exist between conceptualizations of collective identity and intergroup, political violence. These ideas are tied into personal narratives connected to atrocities of genocide and war. The chapter further addresses issues of stereotyping, delegitimation, and dehumanization, “us. vs. them” thinking, and conceptualizations of victimhood. We end the chapter with short overviews of the collective identities of generations of Germans, in relation to the Holocaust, and generations of Jewish-Israelis and Palestinians, in relation to the Israeli–Palestinian context.

Chapter 4 picks up where the previous chapter ends the (failed) option of constructing non-Jewish Israeliness as a solution to this Jewish identity problem. This, again, is done by a reconstruction and deconstruction of a public debate – and publicly available texts. The roots of this anti-Jewish Israeli stance are quite old in terms of Zionist history (Yadgar correctly traces it back to the “Young Hebrews”). Yadgar shows the very shallow and limited sense in which this stance (mis)understands Judaism. He shows it to be based on an anti-Semitic view of Judaism as anti-humanist, primitive and benighted (this is most clearly apparent in the writing of Uzi Ornan, who figures prominently in this debate and in the chapter as a whole). Even more interestingly, Yadgar exposes the Israeli left’s (this stance, again, is a case of a unidimensional identification of Judaism with the right) inability to engage productively with its Jewish history. There is no doubt that (as Yadgar insists) the anti-Jewish Israeli stance is a minority position among Israelis, especially Israeli Jews. Just like its predecessor (anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist “Hebrew” nationalism), it is extremely useful in forcing the logical inconsistencies of the Israeli and Jewish claim to Jewish identity to come to the fore.