Striving for Peace through Personal Narratives of Genocide and War

This book is for scholars and activists who want to understand how personal narratives of genocide and intractable war can be harnessed to promote peace, repairing toxic relationships between 'enemies.' It provides rich examples of such narratives, including dialogical ways to face and overcome societal challenges when working toward peace.

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Personal narratives of genocide and intractable war can provide valuable insights around notions of collective identity, perceptions of the 'enemy,' intergenerational coping with massive social trauma, and sustainable peace and reconciliation. Written in an accessible and narrative style, this book demonstrates how the sharing of and listening to personal experiences deepens understandings of the long-term psychosocial impacts of genocide and war on direct victims and their descendants in general, and of the Holocaust and the Jewish–Arab/Palestinian–Israeli context, in particular. It provides a new theoretical model concerning the relationship between different kinds of personal narratives of genocide and war and peacebuilding or peace obstruction. Through its presentation and analysis of personal narratives connected to the Holocaust and the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, it provides a deep exploration into how such narratives have the potential to promote peace and offers concrete ideas for further research of the topic and for peacebuilding on the ground.