“The past cannot triumph over the future” : A Study of Israel’s Legitimation by the Remembrance of the Past, in the United Nations General Assembly 2009-2017

The aim of the paper is to further discussion on legitimation in international fora, and to contribute to the scholarly debate on the role of the interpretation of the past in state actors’ legitimation. This is pursued by conducting a descriptive qualitative study of Israel’s justification of political claims by remembrance of the past in the General Debate of the United Nations General Assembly, between 2009-2017. In a theoretic framework that bridges legitimation theory and the theory of public memory, it is hypothesised that legitimation aid state actors to define national interests, identify threats, mobilize publics and perceive options. The results demonstrate that legitimation through referring to the past is employed by Israel for a wide variety of contemporary political issues, and that different aspects of the past are recalled for different issues. The conclusion is that legitimation through the remembered past seems to support the hypotheses of legitimation, and that Israel’s political leaders during the studied timespan appear to promote some parts of the past over others for justifying political stances