It is the 30th of January 1972, in the city of Derry, Northern Ireland. British soldiers shoot dead thirteen unarmed Irish nationalists and wound fifteen others during a civil rights demonstration (Dawson, 2005). Ten years later, on the 16th of September 1982, in the midst of the Lebanese Civil War, between 2,000 and 3,500 Lebanese civilians and Palestinian refugees are killed by the Christian Phalange militia and the Israeli Defence Forces in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps (Al Jazeera, 2022; Shahid, 2002).

What came to be known as “Bloody Sunday” and the “Sabra and Shatila massacres” are not merely remembered as acts of horrific violence, but have been transformed into contested, politically charged narratives. War memories extend beyond reflecting the past by shaping how conflicts are understood in the present (Bell, 2009; Tint, 2010).

This article argues that memories of war shape national discourse and political agendas not simply through their construction, resistance, and appropriation, but through the extent to which they are stabilised into coherent narratives or remain fragmented. Crucially, this article argues that political significance depends less on the violence itself than on the extent to which memory can be organised, stabilised, and mobilised. 

Construction refers to the production of meaning; resistance to the contestation of dominant narratives; and appropriation to the strategic use of memory for political ends (Bell, 2009; Tint, 2010; Dawson, 2005; Rigney, 2016; Conway, 2008). The article proceeds by analysing these three interrelated processes, followed by a comparative analysis.

The Construction of War Memory

Bloody Sunday has come to represent far more than a single episode of violence. It is widely understood as a case of cultural trauma, with its significance shaped not only by the killings themselves but by the decades-long struggle over how the event should be remembered and interpreted (Eyerman, 2024). From the outset, state institutions played a central role in shaping that memory. In the immediate aftermath, the Widgery Tribunal produced an official narrative that largely legitimised the actions of British soldiers, framing the shootings as a response to disorder despite widespread rejection of this account among many people in Derry and across Northern Ireland (Dawson, 2005; Butler, 2021). 

This illustrates how state institutions can shape collective memory in ways that align with their own political interests, generating what Butler (2021) describes as a “self-serving” account (pp. 53). The Widgery Tribunal interpretation also worked to contain subversive Irish nationalist critiques, embedding the event within a broader state-aligned political discourse. In this sense, construction defines the boundaries within which political claims about legitimacy and responsibility can be made.

Furthermore, the construction of the war memory of Bloody Sunday happened through film, music, journalism, and commemoration (Rigney, 2016; Toner, 2022). Its prominence has been reinforced through extensive cultural representation, including music such as the U2 song “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (1983) and films like “Bloody Sunday” (2002), as well as a wider body of artistic responses that have continually retold and reinterpreted the events across decades, thereby sustaining its visibility in public memory (Rigney, 2016; Toner, 2022). 

While Bloody Sunday has generated extensive scholarly attention, films, music, museums, annual commemorations, and two official public inquiries, the Ballymurphy killings are an example that received far less recognition, despite involving a comparable number of civilian deaths (Rigney, 2016). This uneven pattern of remembrance shows that the memory of particular historical traumas in Northern Ireland was actively constructed through representation rather than simply inherited, thereby shaping the extent to which they are remembered today. 

Memory in Lebanon followed a markedly different trajectory. Rather than establishing an official inquiry, a national memorial, or a unified account of the Civil War in schools, the Lebanese state largely avoided confronting the past. The post-war settlement prioritised political reconciliation over accountability, creating a culture of impunity that shaped how the Sabra and Shatila massacre was remembered, or, more accurately, how it was not remembered.

The 1991 General Amnesty Law discouraged questions of responsibility in Lebanon, while wartime atrocities went largely uninvestigated and perpetrators were not prosecuted (Barak, 2007; Human Rights Watch, 2015). Many former militia leaders instead remained influential within Lebanon’s post-war political system. For example, Elie Hobeika, a senior Lebanese Forces commander implicated in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, later served as a government minister without facing prosecution (Barak, 2007; Human Rights Watch, 2015). This absence of accountability contributed to the state’s avoidance of a unified official narrative, leaving remembrance to fragmented political and community actors. 

However, silence did not eliminate memory; rather, it displaced it into alternative arenas. The massacre continues to occupy a central place in Palestinian collective memory. Annual commemorations, memorial marches, and community organisations have sustained its significance across generations (Al Jazeera, 2022; Azzam, 2012). Azzam (2012) describes annual memorial marches in Shatila, survivors displaying photographs of relatives killed in the massacre, and the role of Palestinian organisations such as Beit Atfal Assumoud in organising remembrance efforts. Palestinian and leftist groups in Lebanon framed the event as a symbol of victimhood and injustice (Larkin, 2010).

Although the Lebanese state did not institutionalise remembrance of the massacre, memory has also been sustained through independent memorial and archival initiatives, including UMAM Documentation and Research. These institutions preserve multiple accounts of the civil war, reinforcing distinct cultures of remembrance (Albrecht & Akar, 2016; Larkin & Parry-Davies, 2019).

Memory was there constructed in Lebanon through local, embodied, and community-based rituals. The Sabra and Shatila massacres did not become part of a unified national narrative, but instead entered a fragmented memory landscape shaped by state avoidance and sectarian division.

Resistance and Counter-Memory

If war memories are constructed, they are also resisted. In Northern Ireland, resistance to the official account of Bloody Sunday was central to its political development. The Widgery Report was widely rejected, particularly by victims’ families and Irish-nationalist communities (Butler, 2021; Dawson, 2005; Rigney, 2016). These communities built a counter-memory, emphasising the innocence of the victims and the illegitimacy of state violence toward civilians (Dawson, 2005). This counter-memory was sustained through activism and commemorative practices led by victims’ families, particularly through organisations such as the Bloody Sunday Trust, which supported the pursuit of a new inquiry.

Annual marches and campaigns transformed private grief into a publicly articulated “sectional memory” capable of challenging the state’s “official memory” (Dawson, 2005, pp. 153). Local truth-telling projects such as the Ardoyne Commemoration Project created spaces for documenting experiences excluded from official accounts (Lundy and McGovern, 2006). This counter-memory not only contested the state’s version of events but also reframed Bloody Sunday within political discourse. Resistance actively reconstituted the event as a legitimate basis for staking political claims.

However, resistance also occurred within nationalist memory itself. There were efforts to detach Bloody Sunday from explicitly partisan or militant associations, as activists increasingly reframed the event within a wider human rights discourse (Conway, 2008). This reveals that memory can be contested between opposing groups; however, it can also be continually renegotiated within them to broaden its political appeal. 

In Lebanon, resistance to dominant memory was shaped by the absence of a coherent official narrative. Resistance emerged through civil society actors who sought to preserve and circulate memories of wartime violence through cultural production and public debate (Barak, 2007). 

Writers, filmmakers, and activist organisations created alternative spaces of remembrance through testimonies, exhibitions, and commemorative events that challenged the state’s policy of silence and collective amnesia (Barak, 2007; Azzam, 2012; Albrecht & Akar, 2016). In doing so, actors in Lebanon sought to reinsert the massacre into public discourse and challenge institutional political narratives that avoided accountability. 

Consequently, resistance remains dispersed across multiple and often incompatible narratives, limiting the emergence of a shared political project. 

The Appropriation of Memory

Remembrance functions as a form of political mobilisation, through which past events are actively appropriated to advance claims for justice and accountability (Rigney, 2016). In Northern Ireland, Bloody Sunday became a powerful symbolic resource that could be appropriated to support nationalist claims. The event came to represent a wider history of injustice and discrimination (Dawson, 2005). 

The strategic reframing of Bloody Sunday further illustrates how memory is appropriated. By presenting the event as a violation of universal human rights, activists were able to mobilise international support and extend their political reach (Conway, 2008; Dawson, 2005). Bloody Sunday could be invoked in wider campaigns for justice and used to critique British state authority (Dawson, 2005). This reframing added layered meanings onto the memory, increasing its effectiveness as a political tool. 

On the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday (30th January 2022), large-scale memorial events in Derry brought together victims’ families, political leaders, and the public, demonstrating the continued salience of the event in present-day politics. Political figures explicitly linked remembrance to ongoing demands for, “justice, truth and accountability,” while victims’ families used the occasion to oppose proposed government measures that would limit prosecutions for Troubles-related crimes (McBride & Wilson, 2022). Memory was used to interpret the past, and more importantly, to shape contemporary political agendas. 

In Lebanon, the appropriation of memory operates through identifiable political and social actors who actively mobilise the past for contemporary purposes. Different actors appropriate the massacre to support competing claims: as a symbol of Palestinian victimhood and displacement, as evidence of Lebanese complicity, or as an indictment of Israeli violence (Larkin, 2010; Azzam, 2012). 

Political parties such as the Future Movement, Hezbollah, Lebanese Forces, and Kataeb Party construct distinct “cultures of remembrance” through commemorative rituals, martyr iconography, political speeches, and educational initiatives (Albrecht & Akar, 2016). These actors selectively frame events like Sabra and Shatila within more extensive narratives that emphasise their own suffering, heroism, or resistance, while delegitimising rival accounts (Albrecht & Akar, 2016; Azzam, 2012). These practices embed the massacre within competing national and sectarian discourses, appropriating memory to legitimize present political authority.

Beyond formal political actors, civil society groups, artists, and memory activists also appropriate the past through cultural production and public discourse. However, rather than producing a unified counter-narrative, these interventions contribute to what Larkin describes as a fragmented “memoryscape,” in which memories of violence are differently embedded in specific sites, narratives, and everyday practices (Larkin, 2010, p. 618). As a result, memory is continuously reinterpreted. 

In Lebanon, the absence of a dominant national narrative therefore enables particularly flexible forms of appropriation. Competing groups ensure that memory remains a contested resource rather than a shared account of the past.

Comparative Analysis

War memories in Northern Ireland and Lebanon have been constructed, resisted, and appropriated in various ways. Still, in both cases, these processes have been central to how political authority, legitimacy, and identity are negotiated today. The comparison demonstrates that memory does not become politically powerful simply because violence occurred, but because it can be organised into narratives that align with, and reinforce, particular political agendas. The comparison, therefore, suggests that the political effectiveness of memory is contingent on the conditions under which it is produced, circulated, and contested.

In Northern Ireland, Bloody Sunday became a dominant site of memory because it could be stabilised into a coherent and morally legible narrative of unjust state violence. This narrative allowed it to circulate widely across institutional, cultural, and political arenas, transforming it into a durable symbol within nationalist discourse. The uneven visibility of other events, such as the Ballymurphy killings, which involved comparable civilian deaths but did not achieve the same symbolic status, demonstrates that memory is selective rather than proportional. What distinguishes Bloody Sunday is not the scale of violence, but its capacity to be narrated and re-narrated in ways that sustain political claims about injustice, rights, and state accountability. In this sense, construction, resistance, and appropriation converge to produce a memory that is coherent with a wider national discourse.

In contrast, the memory of Sabra and Shatila has not been stabilised within a single national framework, but instead operates within a fragmented and contested memoryscape shaped by state absence and sectarian politics. Here, the political function of memory lies not in narrative coherence but in its adaptability. The massacre could be mobilised to highlight Israeli aggression, emphasise internal complicity, or support ideological claims, depending on the interests of those invoking it. Rather than consolidating a shared national discourse, these interpretations remain unresolved and mutually reinforcing, allowing memory to sustain division rather than overcome it. This indicates that fragmentation does not weaken the political role of memory, but transforms it into a resource that can sustain multiple, competing agendas simultaneously.

If Bloody Sunday demonstrates how memory can be consolidated into a unifying political narrative, Sabra and Shatila make evident how memory can remain deliberately open. This reveals that the relationship between memory and political discourse is not uniform. It also reflects underlying asymmetries of power, as actors with greater institutional and political influence are better able to stabilise particular narratives.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the ability to define memory is not neutral, but tied to access to authority. Memory is therefore not only shaped by politics, but actively structures the terrain on which political struggles take place. In both cases, however, memory functions as a political resource through which actors define victimhood, assign responsibility, and legitimise their claims.

This raises broader questions about whether post-conflict societies can achieve reconciliation where memory remains either politically instrumentalised or structurally fragmented. The malleability of memory also carries significant risks for accountability and reconciliation, given that particular events may be disadvantaged and less remembered than more hotly contested or publicized cases. Furthermore, it highlights that the political power of memory is shaped by who is able to control its narrative form. This reveals the limits of reconciliation in post-conflict societies, where memory is often mobilised not to resolve conflict, but to reproduce or renegotiate it.

The legacies of contemporary conflicts, from Ukraine to Gaza to Sudan, will likewise be shaped not only by the violence that occurs but by how that violence is later constructed, contested, and appropriated within national and international discourses, ultimately shaping future political agendas. 

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