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SOUVENIRS OF CONQUEST: ISRAELI OCCUPATIONS AS TOURIST EVENTS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2008

Rebecca L. Stein
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Extract

It is perhaps self-evident to suggest that military conquest shares something with tourism because both involve encounters with “strange” landscapes and people. Thus it may not surprise that the former sometimes borrows rhetorical strategies from the latter—strategies for rendering the strange familiar or for translating threatening images into benign ones. There have been numerous studies of this history of borrowing. Scholars have considered how scenes of battle draw tourist crowds, how soldiers' ways of seeing can resemble those of leisure travelers, how televised wars have been visually structured as tourist events (e.g., the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq), and how the spoils of war can function as a body of souvenirs. These lines of inquiry expand our understanding of tourism as a field of cultural practices and help us to rethink the parameters of militarism and warfare by suggesting ways they are entangled with everyday leisure practices.

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , November 2008 , pp. 647 - 669
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

NOTES

Author's note: Thanks to Shira Robinson for her careful reading of this text, to audiences at the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting (2006) and the University of Vienna (2004), where earlier drafts were presented, and to three anonymous referees for IJMES who provided helpful suggestions for revision.

1 Diller, Elizabeth and Scofidio, Ricardo, Back to the Front: Tourisms of War (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Lloyd, David, Battlefield Tourism: Pilgrimage and the Commemoration of the Great War in Britain, Australia, and Canada, 1919–1939 (Oxford: Berg, 1998)Google Scholar; Jennifer Terry, “Killer Entertainments: Militarism, Governmentality, and Consuming Desires in Transnational America,” unpublished manuscript (2006); Young, James E., The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meanings (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

2 This analysis focuses primarily on the following Israeli daily newspapers: Yediot Aharonot, Maʾariv, and the Jerusalem Post.

3 For an exception in the case of the 1967 war, see Segev, Tom, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East, 1st American ed. (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007), 424–36Google Scholar. To my knowledge, the only scholar to have investigated the role of tourist discourses during the Lebanon war is Gertz, Nurith, Myths in Israeli Culture: Captives of a Dream (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2000)Google Scholar.

4 Many of the Jewish Israeli men who traveled into the territories as tourists had already been there as soldiers.

5 The narrative of a humane army engaged in liberation was also abundant. See Gertz, Myths in Israeli Culture.

6 For a discussion of the Ashkenazi bias of the Israeli media, see Avraham, Eli, Ha-Tikshoret be-Yisrael, Merkaz u-Feriferiyah: Sikuran Shel ʿAyarot ha-Pituah (The Media in Israel: Coverage of the Development Towns) (Tel Aviv: Breirot Publishers, 1993)Google Scholar.

7 See Behdad, Ali, Belated Travelers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greenblatt, Steven, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grewal, Inderpal, Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire, and the Cultures of Travel (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas, Nicholas, Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Spurr, David, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

8 My turn to postcolonial analytics is primarily rooted in a historical rationale—namely, the contention that Zionist settler-nationalism borrowed heavily from contemporaneous colonial movements in terms of settlement tactics, forms of governance and economy, and legitimating discourses. See Abu El-Haj, Nadia, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Lockman, Zachary, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Pappé, Ilan, The Israel/Palestine Question (London: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar; Said, Edward, The Question of Palestine (New York: Vintage Books, 1979)Google Scholar; Shafir, Gershon, Land, Labor, and the Origins of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict 1882–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

9 A handful of scholars have considered the importance of the hike or excursion (ha-tiyul) within the Jewish community of Palestine during the pre-1948 period and its links to the settler-nationalist ideology of yediʾat ha-aretz (knowledge of the homeland). See Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground; Almog, The Sabra; Katriel, Tamar, “Touring the Land: Trips and Hiking as Secular Pilgrimages in Israeli Culture,” Jewish Ethnology and Folklore Review 17, no. 1–2 (1995): 6–13Google Scholar; Katz, Shaul, “The Israeli Teacher-Guide: The Emergence and Perpetuation of a Role,” Annals of Tourism Research 12 (1985): 49–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shapira, Anita, Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881–1948 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; and Rebecca L. Stein, “Borders, Bibles, and Bad-Arabs: On Travel and Colonial Nation-Making in Israel” (unpublished manuscript). There is also a growing literature on contemporary Israeli tourism although much of it shies away from political questions. I discuss this literature in more detail in Itineraries in Conflict: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Political Lives of Tourism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008).

10 I discuss this in greater detail in “Introduction: Popular Culture, Transnationality, and Radical History,” in Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture, ed. Rebecca L. Stein and Ted Swedenburg (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005), 1–26.

11 Author's interview with Avishai Ehrlich, July 2003.

12 Dayan, Yael, Israel Journal, June, 1967 (New York: McGraw–Hill, 1967), 104Google Scholar; Friling, Tuvia and Troen, S. Ilan, “Proclaiming Independence: Five Days in May from Ben-Gurion's Diary,” Israel Studies 3 (1998): 218CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Doris Lankin, “Miraculously the Western Wall Sings and Shines,” Jerusalem Post, 9 June 1967.

14 “Crowds Clamour for Plane to Israel,” Jerusalem Post, 9 June 1967.

15 Hadassah Bat Haim, “Lost in the Old City,” Jerusalem Post, 11 June 1967. Note that the Western Wall remained largely off limits on this first day of tourism amidst the demolition of the “slum buildings that had cluttered the place,” a euphemism for the massive dispossession that such demolition had involved. See Jerusalem Post Reporter, “Western Wall Area Cleared,” Jerusalem Post, 12 June 1967.

16 Helga Dudman, “Organized Tourism to West Bank from June 25,” Jerusalem Post, 16 June 1967.

17 “Tourism Operators See Big Opportunity,” Jerusalem Post, 11 June 1967.

18 Phillip Gillion, “Fraternization Banned Except with Old Friends,” Jerusalem Post, 11 June 1967.

19 “Tourism Operators See Big Opportunity.”

20 Menachem Barash, “Be-Karov: Tiyulim le-Gadah le-lo Rrishyonot” (In the Near Future: Trips to the West Bank Without Permits), Yediot Aharonot, 11 July 1967.

21 The Gaza Strip and Golan Heights were particularly impoverished in this regard. See Zvi Kessler, “Moreh Derekh le-Mevaker ba-Shetahim ha-Muhzakim” (Tour Guide for the Reinforced Territories), Yediot Aharonot, 18 July 1967.

22 “200,000 at Western Wall in First Pilgrimage since Dispersion,” Jerusalem Post, 15 June 1967.

23 On 11 June, bulldozers “cleaned and greatly enlarged” what became known as the Western Wall Plaza, although civilian access was still denied. “Western Wall Area Cleared.” A dissident response to the Israeli tourist event at the Western Wall, and to the 1967 war more generally, was articulated by Amos Oz in the summer of 1967: “I'm prepared to visit the Western Wall as a tourist, just as long as there is peace.” Shapira, Avraham, ed., The Seventh Day: Soldiers Talk About the Six-Day War (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1970), 150Google Scholar. Also see Segev, 1967, 432.

24 “200,000 at Western Wall” and “350,000 Have Walked to the Western Wall,” Jerusalem Post, 18 June 1967.

25 “Tiyul le-Yerushalayim ha-Meshuheret” (Tour of Liberated Jerusalem), Maʾariv, 21 June 1967.

26 “Keeping Posted,” Jerusalem Post, 3 July 1967.

27 Bus companies responded by adding new lines and more frequent service, but the demand rapidly exceeded them. Idit Neuman, “Panim Hadash ba-Otobus” (New Lines on the Bus), Yediot Aharonot, 16 July 1967.

28 The Israeli Society for the Protection of Nature issued a formal apology in their September 1967 issue of Tevaʾ ve-Arets about the large demand for organized trips into the “new territories” and the lack of sufficient staff to fulfill such demands.

29 Jerusalem Post Economic Reporter, “Big Tourism Publicity Push,” Jerusalem Post, 20 June 1967.

30 Zvi Lavie, “‘Ha-Yisreelim Baʾim . . . ha-Yisreelim Baʾim . . .’” (The Israelis are Coming . . . The Israelis are Coming), Maʾariv, 25 June 1967.

31 On the problem of tourist-generated litter, see Tevaʾ va-Arets (Land and Nature) and “Shemira ha-Nikayon be-Shetahim ha-Meshuharim” (Preservation of Nature in the Liberated Areas), Tevaʾ va-Arets, August 1967. For a brief discussion of concurrent efforts to prevent Israeli visitors from “harming animal and plant life” in the territories, see Segev, 1967, 427.

32 For a discussion of the prestate tiyul, see endnote 9.

33 On this day, tours of the occupied territories were also made officially available to tourists from abroad. By the end of the month, El Al would report “all planes full” and no vacancies in West Jerusalem hotels. See James Feron, “Israel Opens Holy Sites in Jordan to Tourists,” New York Times, 24 June 1967; “Tenuʾat ha-Tayarut: le-Sia” (Tourism Traffic at its Peak), Yediot Aharonot, 20 July 1967. For a brief discussion of the permit economy, see Segev, 1967, 426.

34 In the letters to the editor one reads numerous complaints from Israelis denied permits. Such was the case with Tanya Rosenbaum of Beit Shemesh, who complained that she was one of about 300 Israelis whose request for a permit was rejected. “Could your paper please ask the sponsor of the permit, [why] . . . won't you give a permit to a fighter and his children to visit the very place for which he risked his life? And if we don't have a right, who does?” In tandem, a journalist spoke of “those of us that have not yet succeeded in touring Hebron, Nablus, Jenin or the rest of the cities of the West Bank because of the difficulties in obtaining permits from the military government.” The article promises that the permit regulations will soon be altered. “Mikhtavim” (Letters), Yediot Aharonot, 4 July 1967. For a discussion of permit issues, see Barash, “Be-Karov.”

35 Note that public officials and their families were granted permits prior to 25 June, as were members of the Israeli press. On the black market in permits, see Lavie, “‘Ha-Yisreelim Baʾim.’”

36 Particularly large tourist crowds were reported at the Dead Sea, Gush Etzion, and religious sites in Bethlehem and Hebron. Ibid.

37 Other offenses included looting, buying, and selling in the territories amidst the ban. See “Jailed for Entering Closed Area,” Jerusalem Post, 25 June 1967; Jerusalem Post Reporter, “Four Jailed for West Bank Offences,” Jerusalem Post, 27 June 1967; Lavie, “‘Ha-Yisreelim Baʾim.’”

38 Kessler, “Moreh Derekh le-Mevaker ba-Shetahim ha-Muhzakim.”

39 Gaza City was opened at the end of July, with crowds so sizeable that many Israelis were forced to park their cars on the beach; the Northern Sinai was opened in mid-August, although large-scale tourism began only in 1971 following completion of the highway from Eilat to Sharm el Sheikh, and officially sponsored tours of the Golan Heights began on 25 August. On the opening of Gaza City, see David Appel, “Ke-35 Elef Yisreʾelim Arkhu ʾShabat Shel Keniyotʾ be-Aza” (Some 35,000 Israelis Spent a “Shopping Shabbat” in Gaza), Yediot Aharonot, 23 July 1967. On 16 July, Palestinian residents of Gaza were permitted to visit the West Bank: Menachem Barash, “Aravei Aza Horshu Etmol le-Vaker be-ʾare ha-Gadah ha-Maʿaravit” (Arabs of Gaza were Permitted to visit West Bank Cities Yesterday), Yediot Aharonot, 17 July 1967. On the opening of Sinai, see Baruch Meirei, “Tenuʾah Hofshi le-Sharm” (Free Passage to Sharm el-Sheikh), Maʾariv, 18 October 1971. The road had opened two months earlier for buses: “Eged Mehadesh ha-Tiyulim ba-Kevish Sharm-a-Sheikh” (Egged Renews Trips on the Sharm-el-Sheikh Road), Maʾariv, 29 June 1971. For a discussion of the role of the Society for the Protection of Nature in leading Israeli tours through the Sinai and West Bank, see Danny Rabinowitz, “Tsiyonut o Erets be-Reshit: Rekviʾem le-Tsuki David” (Zionism or the Land of Genesis: Requiem for Suki David), Svivot (1989); Tal, Alon, Pollution in a Promised Land: An Environmental History of Israel (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2002)Google Scholar. On the opening of the Golan, see “Golan Heights Open to Tourist,” Jerusalem Post, 25 August 1967. Note that despite this official opening date, there are press reports about Israeli visitors in the Golan beginning in early July. “Revavot Metayelim be-Ramat ha-Golan” (Tens of Thousands Hike the Golan Heights), Yediot Aharonot, 9 July 1967.

40 For example, there was little if any discussion of Israel's destruction of the Old City's Harat al-Maghariba (Moroccan quarter) in preparation for construction of the Western Wall Plaza to which Israeli tourists flocked. On the history of this incident, see Dumper, Michael, The Politics of Jerusalem Since 1967 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 78–80Google Scholar; Weizman, Eyal, Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation (London: Verso, 2007), 37–39Google Scholar.

41 On 23 June, “Israel's Muslim citizens” were first officially permitted into the occupied territories, including the Temple Mount compound. “For many,” the press wrote, this was “the first opportunity to see members of their family” since 1948. “Israeli Moslems [sic] on Temple Mount Today,” Jerusalem Post, 23 June 1967.

42 Lustick, Ian, Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel's Control of a National Minority (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1980), 240Google Scholar; Rouhana, Nadim N., Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State: Identities in Conflict (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), 68, 258, n. 3Google Scholar.

43 Yosef Weitz of the Jewish National Fund contended with disdain that Mizrahim comprised the vast majority of Israeli Jews worshipping at the Western Wall in the aftermath of its conquest in 1967: Segev, 1967. On Mizrahi representations and experiences of the 1967 war, see Hever, Hannah, “We Have Not Arrived from the Sea: A Mizrahi Literary Geography,” Social Identities 10 (2004): 42–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rejwan, Nissim, Israel's Years of Bogus Grandeur: From the Six-Day War to the First Intifada, 1st ed. (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 2006), ix–x, 39, 91–93Google Scholar; Shenhav, Yehouda A., The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006), 4–5Google Scholar. Note that Rejwan's text includes a personal account of travel into the newly occupied territories in the war's immediate aftermath.

44 Segev, 1967, 428.

45 Shtal, Avraham, “Keitsad Hinkhu et ha-Ashkenazim le-Ehov Teva ve-Tiyulim” (How the Ashkenazim were Taught to Love Nature and Hikes), Studies in Education 31 (1981)Google Scholar. Many Israeli reporters described their euphoric return to the Golan, waxing nostalgic about memories from the Mandate period: Menachem Talmi, “Tevilah be-El-Hama” (Baptism at El-Hama), Maʾariv, 23 June 1967.

46 Segev, 1967, 431.

47 For a brief discussion of the consumer frenzy, see ibid., 428, 35. Segev quotes one eyewitness who noted that “‘[p]eople bought things they would never otherwise have bought, believing they were getting good prices (even though they were being taken for a ride’”), 1967, 435.

48 Paul Kohn, “Old City Hotels being Vacated,” Jerusalem Post, 26 June 1967.

49 Paul Gillon, “Fraternization Banned—Except with Old Friends,” Jerusalem Post, 11 June 1967.

50 “South West Bank Flooded with Tourists,” Jerusalem Post, 27 June 1967.

51 Ronnie Hope, “Jerusalem Traffic: Hardening of the Arteries,” Jerusalem Post: Weekend Magazine, 7 July 1967.

52 Gidon Rieker, “Piknik be-Havilat Husein” (Picnic in the Hussein Villa), Yediot Aharonot, 21 June 1967.

53 Caption under photograph, Jerusalem Post: Junior, 7 July 1967.

54 Zvi Lavie, “Ha-Mevukeshet ba-Iir ha-Atikah: Totseret Sin ha-Amitit” (Desirables in the Old City: Authentic Chinese Products), Maʾariv, 2 July 1967; Haim Meron, “Andralamusyah ve-Shema Kelkalit ha-Gadah” (The West Bank Economy in Disorder and Ruin), Yediot Aharonot, 14 July 1967.

55 Amos Kenan, “Bikur be-Misadah ba-Hevron” (Visit to a Hebron Restaurant), Yediot Aharonot, 22 June 1967.

56 “Keeping Posted.”

57 Appel, “Ke-35 Elef Yisreʾelim Arkhu ʾShabat Shel Keniyotʾ be-Aza.”

58 Lavie, “Ha-Mevukeshet ba-Iir ha-Atikah: Totseret Sin ha-Amitit.”

59 Meron, “Andralamusyah ve-Shema Kelkalit ha-Gadah.”

60 Kessler, “Moreh Derekh le-Mevaker ba-Shetahim ha-Muhzakim.”

61 Meron, “Andralamusyah ve-Shema Kelkalit ha-Gadah.”

62 In response to the concerns of Jewish merchants and manufacturers, the state intensified its efforts to collect a levy on purchased goods. Ibid.

63 The remainder of the Gaza Strip was opened at a later date.

64 Tom Segev notes the following exchange between Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan: “Why are so many Jews running to shop in Gaza?” Eshkol wondered. Dayan responded: “Because they're Jews.” 1967, 435.

65 Appel, “Ke-35 Elef Yisreʾelim Arkhu ʾShabat Shel Keniyotʾ be-Aza.”

66 Aaron Shamir, “Zohi Daʾati: Ketsat Gaʾavah!” (My Opinion: A Little Pride!), Yediot Aharonot, 7 July 1967.

67 Consumption was also deployed by some left-wing Israeli Jews as a way to oppose the 1967 war and—in its aftermath—to articulate opposition to the occupation. Consider the following testimonial from an Israeli soldier describing his wartime experience: “We went into a village, which was an antiquities center. . . . You could feel that the whole village was stunned. The village notables and the people in charge of antiquities came up to us and tried to invite us into a restaurant. ‘Help yourself, please. Have a drink. Take some postcards—take as many as you want!’ So we said: ‘Okay, but only on condition that you let us pay the full price for anything we have.’” Shapira, The Seventh Day, 128–29.

68 “Peace is Possible,” Jerusalem Post, 30 June 1967.

69 See the advertisement that ran on the front page of Jerusalem Post, 23 July 1967.

70 See the advertisement that ran on page 9, Jerusalem Post, 6 July 1967.

71 “What was previously—although within hailing distance—another country, is now Israel,” wrote the Jerusalem Post, “and places like Ramallah have become suburbs of greater Jerusalem.” See Erika Gidron, “Confused Geography for Jerusalem Children,” Jerusalem Post, 28 June 1967. Tour guides echoed this sentiment: “We almost forgot, after all this time . . . that the route from Jerusalem to Ein Gedi is really short,” stated the introduction of an updated Hebrew-language tourist guide to Israel's desert and that of the newly occupied territories. Azaria, Alon, Shevilim ba-Mmidbar: Me-ʾarvot Yeriho ad Mifrats Shelomoh (Paths in the Desert) (Ramat Gan, Israel: Monopress Ltd., 1969), 66Google Scholar.

72 This phenomenon was vividly described by Ghassen Kanafani in his 1969 novella “Return to Haifa.” Kanafani, Ghassan, Palestine's Children (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1961, 1984)Google Scholar.

73 Barash, “Be-Karov.”

74 “West Bank News,” Jerusalem Post, 11 July 1967.

75 For a brief discussion of this phenomena, see Segev, 1967, 434–35.

76 “Peace is Possible.”

77 Moshe Kohn, Jerusalem Post, 30 June 1967.

78 “Call for Personal Good Will to Arabs,” Jerusalem Post, 30 June 1967.

79 Ronnie Hope, “Gigantic Job for Police,” Jerusalem Post, 30 June 1967.

80 Lavie, “Ha-Mevukeshet ba-Iir ha-Atikah: Totseret Sin ha-Amitit.”

81 Moshe Dor, “Ha-Shahar She-Nifrats” (The Dawn Has Broken), Maʾariv, 3 July 1967.

82 Meron, “Andralamusyah ve-Shema Kelkalit ha-Gadah.”

83 Hadassah Mor, “Ba-Muzeon Yisrael Yedrikhu Gam ba-ʾAravit” (At the Israel Museum They Will also Guide), Yediot Aharonot, 4 July 1967; Anan Safadi, “Old City Arabs Crowd New Streets,” Jerusalem Post, 30 June 1967.

84 Safadi, ibid.

85 Hope, “Gigantic Job for Police.”

86 Malka Rabinowitz, “The Arzyelys come back to the Old City,” Jerusalem Post, 30 June 1967.

87 Neuman, “Panim Hadash ba-Otobus.”

88 The consumer narrative both echoed and advanced Israeli state policy of the moment with its insistence on disregarding the claims of Palestinian refugees. Concurrently the Israeli Justice Ministry and Israel Lands Authorities were engaged in discussions about the status of property claims filed by Palestinian residents of Jerusalem. In late June 1967, as Palestinian visitors began to make their way into Israeli cities, the press reported that no compensation would be granted for property lost in 1948 “since ownership rights have lapsed.” See Jerusalem Post Economic Reporter, “Claims for Compensation by Property Owners Studied,” Jerusalem Post, 30 June 1967.

89 Although this analysis focuses primarily on the daily newspapers Yediot Aharonot and Maʾariv, other Israeli papers were consistently more critical of the invasion, including Davar, Haʾaretz, Al Hamishmar, and the Jerusalem Post. As Yermiya notes in his “War Diary,” these more critical papers were confiscated by the army and never reached the soldiers on the front who only had access to Maʾariv and Yediot Aharonot. Yermiya, Dov, My War Diary: Lebanon, June 5–July 1, 1982 (Boston: South End Press, 1983), 54Google Scholar.

90 Yari Amikam, “Berut Etmol: Rehovot Homim, Misadot Meleot ve-Horshot ʾAmusot Nofshim” (Beirut Yesterday: Noisy Streets, Full Restaurants, and Forests Full of Vacationers), Yediot Aharonot, 21 June 1982.

91 Idem, “Ba-Darom Levanon Yesh Kevar Shelate Derekh be-Ivrit, uve-Berut Efshar le-Shalem ba-Shekel” (In South Lebanon There Are Already Signs in Hebrew and in Beirut You Can Pay in Shekles,” Yediot Aharonot, 16 June 1982.

92 Ezra Yanuv, “Hayale Tsahal be-Berut Lomdim et ‘Sod ha-Hayim ha-Tovim’” (IDF Soldiers in Beirut Learning the Secret of “the Good Life”), Maʾariv, 30 June 1982. Nurith Gertz notes that the Israeli press presented a Lebanon “filled with tourist attractions rather than daily life, with aesthetic sights rather than a real and complex existence.” Gertz, Myths in Israeli Culture.

93 Amikam, “Berut Etmol”; idem, “Mekhonit Yisreʾelit le-Tsad Kle Rehkev Mekhvit ve-Saʿudit be-Rehovot Berut” (Israeli Cars alongside Vehicles from Saudi Arabia in the Streets of Beirut), Yediot Aharonot, 23 June 1982. The Israeli consumption of Lebanese cherries, which were in season during the time of the invasion, is employed as the title of a popular Israeli antiwar film; Buzalgo, Haim, Onat ha-Duvdevanim (A Time for Cherries) (New York: Sisu Home Entertainment, 2000)Google Scholar. For a critical reading of this film, see Gertz, Nurith, “The Medium That Mistook Itself for War: Cherry Season in Comparison with Ricochets and Cup Final,” Israel Studies 4, no. 1 (1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

94 Arvin Eitai, “A Man Bursts into the Beirut Office and Says, ‘My Name is General Sharon,’” Yediot Aharonot, 16 June 1982.

95 Yanuv, “Hayale Tsahal be-Berut Lomdim et ‘Sod ha-Hayim ha-Tovim.’”

96 Ibid.

97 Eitan Hever, “Ha-ish She-ba le-Sadot be-Berut: Ha-Yisreʾelim be-Berut Hashim Kemo ʾba-Bayit'” (The Man Who Came to Support Beirut: Israelis in Beirut Feel “At Home”), Yediot Aharonot, 18 June 1982.

98 The U.S. media told a similar story about Lebanon in the midst of the invasion. The New York Times described the “IDF celebrating in Lebanese cafes and swimming pools . . . [the] central message: ‘Lebanese are rejoicing over Israel's crushing defeat of the PLO.’” Such reporting changed in mid-June, when Israeli and international support for the invasion diminished. Wagner, Donald, “Lebanon: An American's View,” Race and Class 24 (1983): 405CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 Amikam, “Berut Etmol” Yanuv, “Hayale Tsahal be-Berut Lomdim et ‘Sod ha-Hayim ha-Tovim.’”

100 In this war, Ashkenazi Jews represented no more than half of Israeli fatalities. Yaʾir Sheleg, “The Bereavement Map Has Changed,” Ha-aretz, 27 August 2006.

101 For a Mizrahi critique of the Lebanon war along ethnoracial lines, see Giladi, G. N., Discord in Zion: Conflict between Ashkenazi & Sephardi Jews in Israel (London: Scorpion Publishing, 1990)Google Scholar. Giladi, an Iraqi Jew who had immigrated to Israel in the 1940s, chose to revoke his Israeli citizenship in protest in the aftermath of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila.

102 Similar narratives were also rehearsed in the memoirs of Israeli soliders during this period, as in Yermiya, My War Diary, 22, 45, 55, 61, 63, 87, 91, 93, 97. For a discussion of Israeli cinematic representations of the Lebanese landscape during the war, including those that inhabit this paradox (landscape/war), see Gertz, “The Medium That Mistook Itself for War.”

103 Amikam, “Ba-Darom Levanon Yesh Kevar Shelate Derekh be-Ivrit, uve-Berut Efshar le-Shalem ba-Shekel.”

104 Amos Keinan, “Kafeh, Mamtakim, ve-ʾAtidah Shel Levanon” (Coffee, Sweets, and the Future of Lebanon), Yediot Aharonot, 17 June 1982.

105 Amikam, “Berut Etmol.”

106 Shai Segal, “Levanon ha-Yafeh: Mah Oseh Kan Milhamah?” (Lebanon the Beautiful: What's War Doing Here?), Maʾariv, 30 June 1982.

107 Amikam, “Mekhonit Yisreʾelit le-Tsad Kle Rehkev Mekhvit ve-Saʿudit be-Rehovot Berut.”

108 Hever, “Ha-ish She-ba le-Sadot be-Berut: Ha-Yisreʾelim be-Berut Hashim Kemo ʾba-Bayit.’”

109 Yanuv, “Hayale Tsahal be-Berut Lomdim et ‘Sod ha-Hayim ha-Tovim.’”

110 Ibid.

111 Robert Fiske, “The Ugly Reality of War Israel is Trying to Hide,” New York Times, 13 July 1982. Censorship also affected the publication of scholarly monographs on the Lebanese War, as in Schiff, Zeev, Yaari, Ehud, and Friedman, Ina, Israel's Lebanon War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984)Google Scholar.

112 Glenn Frankel, “Controversy Rages over Civilian Toll,” Washington Post, 18 July 1982. Also see Dov Yermiya's discussion of the IDF propaganda campaign, Yermiya, My War Diary, 53, 69, 82.

113 Fiske, “The Ugly Reality of War Israel is Trying to Hide.”

114 Pratt, Imperial Eyes.

115 Shapira, The Seventh Day.

116 On the history of Israeli dissent to the Lebanon incursion, see Keller, Adam, Terrible Days: Social Divisions and Political Paradoxes in Israel (Amstelveen, Netherlands: Cypres, 1987), 173–79Google Scholar.

117 Rabinowitz, “Tsiyonut o Erets be-Reshit.”

118 Stein, “Borders, Bibles, and Bad Arabs.”

119 Bʾtselem, Land Grab: Israel's Settlement Policy in the West Bank (Jerusalem: Bʾtselem, 2002), 23, 75, 87.

120 Stein, Rebecca Luna, “Itineraries of Peace: Remapping Israeli and Palestinian Tourism,” Middle East Report 25, no. 5 (1995)Google Scholar.

121 Consider, for example, the ways that former Palestinian villages have been refashioned as national parks and “artist colonies” and the ways that existing Palestinian villages have been developed by the Israeli state and private sector as culinary centers and loci of cultural tourism that cater to Jewish Israeli tourist populations. For further discussion, see Stein, Itineraries in Conflict. On the conversion of the former Palestinian village Ein Houd into a Jewish artist colony, see Slyomovics, Susan, The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village (Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

122 This is not to ascribe Israeli tourist practices with a necessarily hegemonic function. As I have explored elsewhere, tourism has sometimes provided Israelis, both Jews and Palestinians, with the tools to advance a radical, antistatist agenda. See Stein, “National Itineraries, Itinerant Nations” and Itineraries in Conflict.

123 See Stein and Swedenburg, “Introduction,” 1–26.