2
Constructing “Normalcy”
Submitted to the Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies
Presented in two different versions at:
The Language and Global Communication Conference, July 2005. Cardiff University, Wales, United Kingdom.
National Communication Association, in the Peace Studies Division, November 2003. Miami, FL.
Constructing “Normalcy” in Israel
Tema Milstein
Abstract
This study explores Israel Ministry of Tourism officials’ discourse during a time of heightened conflict that directly followed a time of hope for peace in the region. I contrast Ministry officials’ discourse, which related tourism in Israel as safe and the state of the country as “normal,” with the interceptions of talk, sights, and sounds, as well as with media coverage. Data were gathered through participant observation of a press tour during the early stages of the al-Aqsa Intifada. I concentrate on describing the nature of the observed discursive construction of “normalcy” as it unfolds, further critically relating my role as a member of the press participating in the co-construction of normalcy. In so doing, I attempt to illustrate official Israeli discourse as it is shaped by a history of conflict and as it in turn shapes knowledge or understanding of states of being.
Constructing Normalcy and Safety in Israel
At the beginning of the al-Aqsa Intifada, a joke circulated within Israel. It was called the schnitzel story – schnitzel is breaded and fried chicken – and it went like this: “You know, they say it is dangerous in Israel. But Israel is safe. It’s only dangerous in the town of Gilo. But even in Gilo it is very safe; it’s just a certain Gilo neighborhood to the east facing the West Bank that is dangerous. But even that neighborhood is really very safe; it’s just a block of apartments that is not safe. Really though, even the block is safe; it’s just one apartment building you should be careful around. But even the apartment building is safe; it’s just an apartment owned by a certain Moroccan Israeli family that is in any way dangerous. But even their apartment is actually quite safe; it’s just the kitchen that faces the rocket fire. But the kitchen is actually quite safe; it’s just the corner of the kitchen where the refrigerator is. But even the refrigerator is quite safe; it’s just the freezer area that is at all dangerous. But even the freezer is pretty safe; it’s just the section of the freezer where the schnitzel is stacked. That area was hit by a rocket from the West Bank. So you must be careful around the schnitzel area. It is very, very dangerous. Be sure not to go there.”
This humor, exchanged in everyday interactions among Israelis, ironically reflected the talk in Israel during the months following the September 2000 onset of the al-Aqsa Intifada, or the Second Intifada. Specifically, the joke satirized tensions at play within Israeli senses of safety and normalcy and, at the same time, satirized the discourse of Israeli officials whose job it was to package this normalcy for public consumption.
This study’s main focus is on the formations of mainstream, for-public-consumption, official Israeli discourse during a time of heightened conflict that directly followed a time of heightened hope for peace for Israeli and Palestinian populations. In investigating such discourse, the study aims to explore the framing of constant conflict, the use of discursive formations to achieve and preserve security of being, and the positioning of certain beneficial discursive formations for others’ consumption. The study relates Israeli officials’ discourse to Foucault’s (1972) notions of discourse and discursive construction. According to Foucault, discourses should not be treated as merely “groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents or representations) but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (p. 49).
I contrast Israel Ministry of Tourism officials’ discourse, which related tourism in Israel as safe and the state of the country as “normal,” with the interceptions of talk, sights, and sounds, as well as with Israeli media news coverage at the time. Whereas tourism may at first appear to represent a minor, even frivolous concern when faced with the violent history and reality that continues to face Palestinian and Israeli populations, tourism is a central economic concern to Israel and, at the time of the onset of the second Intifada, had begun to grow as a viable economy in the Palestinian territories. The study is chiefly concerned with how those in power serve to discursively construct a continuous state of conflict for public consumption, in this case for the consumption of wary international tourists. Data were gathered through participant observation and, in the description and interpretation, I concentrate on describing the nature of the observed discursive construction of normalcy as it unfolds, further critically relating my role as a member of the American Jewish press participating in the co-construction of normalcy. In doing so, I attempt to illustrate Israeli tourism discourse as it is shaped by the relations of institutions, individuals and occurrences, and as it in turn shapes knowledge or understanding of states of being.
Communication, Conflict, and Tourism
One characteristic first-time travelers to Israel often note is that many Israelis exhibit a disarmingly frank approach to communication. This characteristic is perceived sometimes as caustic, such as when polite niceties are abandoned for shoving matches in crowded markets or bus terminals, or as refreshing, such as when public relations officers engage in raucous and straightforward political discussion involving personal opinion and emotion even when speaking to journalists with notepads (See Katriel, 1986). Having lived in Israel previously, I anticipated such communication when I agreed to attend a February 2001 press trip as a member of the North American Jewish press sponsored by the Israel Ministry of Tourism. I also was clear about the Ministry’s goals with such press trips, as expressed in no uncertain terms by the public relations manager for the Israeli Tourist Office in Los Angeles: “We still have thousands and thousands of tourists in the country every day, going about their visits as usual, having a marvelous time. We want communities to know they don’t have to postpone or hesitate about going. We’re sending journalists so you can say this is the truth since you’ve seen it yourself. It’s not just a story that we are giving” (XXX, 2001).
This send-off by Ministry of Tourism staff made it clear from the start that the Ministry’s official ontological security was the agenda-setting responsibility of journalists. I use Gidden’s (1991) concept of ontological security here to illustrate the political and identity elements at work in the discourse observed. Gidden’s defines ontological security as the desire to preserve identity projects, or to achieve and preserve security of being. This mental state can only be achieved by discursively constructing and maintaining a sense of continuity and order.
The Ministry’s discourse was made significantly easier to echo, and therefore ontological securities significantly more difficult to upset, by a crowded press trip itinerary in which journalists were shepherded to everyday tourist sites and at night deposited at 5-star hotels. A few journalists on the press trip pushed to visit tourist sights in the Palestinian territories and were told by Ministry staff that they could do so on their own time. The Ministry argued it did not represent tourism in the territories and, therefore, would take journalists only to sites within Israel. No journalists actually pursued visits to the territories. The limitations imposed by the Ministry served to impose both discursive and practical boundaries upon the journalists who were urged by this move to view Israel as a place that was clearly separate from the territories. In this way, to borrow from the schnitzel story, the journalists’ gaze was largely turned away from the schnitzel area of the freezer.
A U.S. State Department travel advisory for Israel and the territories was in effect during the press trip. Israel’s tourism industry, one of the country’s major economies, had suffered greatly because of the advisory and the already existing international perception of a heightened lack of safety in the country due to the al-Aqsa Intifada, which had already taken hundreds of Palestinian and Israeli lives since its start in September 2000. The Intifada, considered by many Palestinians to be a war of liberation and by many Israelis as a terrorist campaign, never officially ended, though many consider relatively low levels of violence in 2005 to have marked its end. Thousands died, with Palestinian deaths greatly outnumbering Israeli deaths. Israeli officials argued the advisory was especially unfair because the State Department would not differentiate between Israel and the Palestinian territories; therefore, via the advisory, danger levels in the Gaza Strip were conflated with danger levels in Tel Aviv. The Intifada and the sharp decrease in tourism came at a time when Israel had prepared for a great surge in tourism, especially Christian tourism, surrounding celebrations of the Millennium Jubilee.
During the February 2001 press trip, Israel felt different from just a couple years before, especially in Jerusalem, which is nestled in the West Bank on three sides. In the Old City, the Temple Mount and Al-Haram Al-Sharif mosque – the most holy site in Judaism as the original site of the Jewish Temple and the third holiest site in Islam as the mosque compound that houses the rock from which Mohammed and his horse are said to have leapt to heaven – was closed indefinitely at the Jewish quarter entrance. The Arab quarter’s market was open for business but empty of tourists and nearly silent, a jarring contrast to its bustling atmosphere of previous years. During the first day of the press trip, I sat in a Jewish quarter café I formerly had frequented. While during earlier visits, I had to wait for a free table, today I had the entire place to myself. The waitress and cook spoke in the back of the restaurant and took a while to notice a customer had materialized.
As the waitress took my order, a loud booming sound ripped open the peaceful interior of the cafe. When I lived in Israel before, I was used to the sonic booms of military planes. While the shattering sound was jarring, I assumed it was the same. Then came a second boom, one that shook the windows and stopped in their tracks the few Israelis walking outside. I looked at the waitress and at a spot under a table to which I had decided to throw myself. “You have to wait to hear the rumble afterward,” the waitress said. “Then you know it’s a plane.” Yes, I remembered. Together, we waited silently for the rumble. No rumble came, but no sirens did either. After a few tense moments, I ordered lunch.
A few hours after the booms, violence did break out in Gilo, the site of the schnitzel joke and of real Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Gilo is an Israeli town that sits next to Jerusalem on the border of Israel with the West Bank. The day ended with sounds of Israeli tankfire answering shots fired into Gilo. If I had been able to find a way onto the hotel roof, I could have seen Gilo, and probably the explosions of the machinegun and tank fire. For a few months, Palestinian militia had been shooting rockets and bullets at Gilo from Beit Jala, a Christian Palestinian town in the West Bank on the other side of the road, and the Israel Defense Forces had been shooting tank fire and bullets at Beit Jala. The night before, there had been gunfire from both sides that I had slept through. Beit Jala borders Bethlehem and Israeli government officials said the gunfire from this area was strategic to make the Israeli military fire into Christian towns and turn the Christian world against Israel.
While the shootings at Gilo went on audibly in the background that evening, a Gilo resident who worked at the hotel spoke in a way reminiscent of the schnitzel story. The staff person at the King David Hotel stated that Gilo was different from the rest of Israel because it was at the heart of the current violence and that “it won’t be forever.” The Gilo resident had just spoken on the phone to her teenagers who were staying inside that night until they heard the shooting cease. The teenagers had a deal worked out with their parents: They were free to go to the disco as long as the shootings started after they already had left the house. If the shooting or rocketfire started before they left, then they weren’t to go out that night. Tonight, the teenagers had to stay home. “Yes, they say at home that they heard some shooting, but that’s all,” the hotel staff person said. “But you would never know here. I think people need to come here to know because they see things on TV. But we are not afraid. It’s funny because I walk on the streets and see bombs going overhead. It’s not that it is not dangerous, it’s just that you can live as usual.”
The Gilo resident was speaking to journalists she had befriended earlier in the day. As the room cleared and only two of us journalists remained, we asked her whether Palestinians who worked at the hotel had been able to come to work since the uprising began. The question elicited the first of what Foucault terms an interception. “The Palestinians are also very afraid of the situation,” she said. The statement served as an interception in that she used the word “also” after only a moment before stating, “We are not afraid.” In the context of our conversation, her use of “also” clearly meant “the Palestinians are very afraid of the situation, as we Israelis are.” We will revisit this interception when I discuss other official and unofficial Israeli reactions that mirror the schnitzel story and the interceptions that resist and transgress dominant safety discourse.