The Gaza Strip Issue
Content:
1. History
2. Power and Memory-Perspectives
3. Silence
4. Spectacle
5. Question marks and conclusion
6. Bibliography
1.History
The spectacle is another facet of money, which is the abstract general equivalent
of all commodities.(Guy Debord,The Society of the Spectacle)
In the late 1800s a group called the Zionists(extremist minority of the Jewish
people) decided that they will create a home state for themselves and the rest of
the Jewish people.Scaterred around the world after centuries of persecution they
saw hope in this initiative and soon more and more people started immigrating to
Palestine.At first, there were no major problems but soon the native population
started to worry about the consequences of these actions.
Zionists argued that their actions were based on the fact that Palestine was(is)
their historycal homeland(Land of Israel) and also that their initiative will create a
secure environment for Jewish development.
By 1914 the Jewish population in Palestine grew to around 60.000 with more
than half being recent settlers.This was possible through the acquisition of land
from the Arabs wich often lead to the eviction of entire families and villages
which found themselves caught inbetween interests.
After World War I, between 1920 and 1948 Palestine was under British
Mandate.The large acquisitions of land continued(mostly from absentee
landlords) continued and the immigration of Jews increased significantly also due
to the Nazis rise to power in Germany.
The first major riots against the Zionists happened in 1921 only to escalate in
1929 and finally turning into The Six Day War(June 1967).After these six days
Israel managed to acquire a significant land mass, taking control of the Sinai
Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, the Golan
Heights from Syria and the Gaza Strip.
In 1994, according to the Oslo Accords the Palestinian Authority took over the
administrative authority in the region.Though stated in the agreement signed by
both parties that full collaboration will take place after the immediate retreat of
Israeli troops, the withdrawal only took place oficially 11 years later, on the 12th
September 2005.
In 2006, parliamentary elections won by Hamas were followed by another wave
of violence from the opposition(Fatah).
2008 marked the beginning of another conflict between Israel and Palestine also
known as the Gaza War.The stated reason was to stop rockets being fired into
Israel aswell as weapon smuggling inside the Strip.The 3 week conflict resulted in
1417 Palestinian and 13 Israeli(4 from friendly fire) deaths.
Between 9 and 14 of March 2012 another Israeli operation took place.Under the
code name “Returning Echo”, it consisted of several air strikes targeting different
facilities inside the Gaza Strip.It was characterized as the worst outbreak of
violence since the Gaza War in 2008.
According to Benny Morris, among the first violent incidents between Israel and
Palestine was the “accidental” kill of an Arab man at a wedding in December
1882.In response about 200 Arabs descended on the Jewish settlement with
stones and vandalized the property.This initial display of forces would mark the
beginning of a confict wich today, over 130 years and countless victims later is still
ongoing.
2.Power and Memory-Perspectives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgl0JnE4B_4 online
This video posted by the online press agency “The Young Turks” shows the
disturbing assasination of one of the Hamas leaders.The footage was also shown
by other news agencies or televisions the day it happened or maybe a few days
after.In fact, it was willingly uploaded on youtube and other media platforms by
the Israelis in order to be perceived as a historical success or at least as a power
statement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB_h9NOCgq8 cnn
This second video posted by CNN shows some violent explosions in Gaza City
sometime after midnight.
-The difference between the footage shown on mainstream television and the
onen posted online consists in the additional comments of the news
presenter(anchorman).Being an online based/ independent agency, the presenter
is exercising his freedom of speech right and he portrays his own opinion on the
events.In the CNN video the correspondant focuses on emphasizing “what is
already there” rather than going into details.
At first, most of the people will tend to disregard the 1st video or its content only
because they are used with a different type of exprimation when watching the
news.
The neutral point of view commonly used in the mainstream television creates
the sense of disconnection with the event.The audience is satisfied with observing
and does not feel threatened or affected in any way by what is shown on tv no
matter how gruesome or grotesque.More than that, we tend to get anxious or
“bored” when watching political or(and) military news.This takes place because of
the manner in which events are portrayed to the wide audience.
MEMORY1. The mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experience.
2. The act or an instance of remembering; recollection: spent the afternoon lost in
memory.
3. All that a person can remember: It hasn't happened in my memory.
4. Something remembered: pleasant childhood memories.
In these conditions the definition of MEMORY isn`t the same for everyone.A
memory as we know it only exists when remembered and it gains power once
certain actions are taking place in order to change something because of the
past.In other words memory`s purpose is to prevent mistakes from happening
again.But this can only happen if the past is constantly being brought back and
showed to the audience.
Mainstream television such as BBC or CNN gain their POWER over the masses by
bringing back to memory only certain events, the ones that the audience can
relate to the most.Things that are not constantly being remembered tend to be
silenced and eventually forgot, no matter how important they seemed at the
time.
3. Silence
Paul Connerton argues that there are three types of silence.
“First, traumatised silences. These are painful and profound because a crucial
feature of them is the element of delay. They retard us; it takes time, sometimes
an immense amount of time, to digest them. In The Burden of Our Time (1951),
Hannah Arendt wrote that understanding genocide was the burden bequeathed to
the twentieth century. Her argument began to be acknowledged only much later;
before monuments of memory were built to the Shoah, a long period of silence
had to be lived through. In this connection one might think of how Kenzaburo Oe,
in his notes on the city of Hiroshima written in 1965, says that even twenty years
after the bomb fell, many of those he interviewed were unable to speak of what
happened on that day.”(Paul Connerton,How Societies Remember)
The variety of examples is much wider.From the ancient times to the Holocaust
history is full of such “forgive but never forget” events.The silence is passed on
from generation to generation and sometimes it gains power and turns into
action.This is a possible explanation for the current situation in the Gaza
Strip.Faced in the past with of genocide,global persecution and no stable
homeland it is possible that the collective memory of the Jewish people became
so powerful that it turned into action.
“Second: closely related to traumatised silences are others, sometimes difficult to
discriminate from them, in the sense that they originate in deeply shocking and
painful experiences. We might call them narrative silences, since they signify the
refusal or inability to recount certain narratives.”( Paul Connerton,How Societies
Remember)
This second type of silence addresses the idea of collective rather than individual
memory.The intentional refuse to remember and discuss certain matters shows
that people tend to protect their community(family,city,country) by choosing to
dodge topics that may cast their community in a bad light.
“Third: the refusal or inability to recount certain narrations often leaves its mark in
what might be called terminological silencing. In Russia the denial of the fact of
mass death during the Stalin period meant that the word ‘starvation’ was banned
in 1932. The French never referred to the campaign between 1954 and 1962 to
retain Algeria as a war but referred to it as an ‘operation to maintain public
order’. The documents assembled by the British government in India refused to
ascribe conscious will and design to the subaltern Indian groups, but assimilated
revolts to natural phenomena, which were said to break out like thunderstorms, to
heave like earthquakes, to spread like wildfires. In the United States it is almost
heresy to describe the nation as an empire. In Germany in the 1950s and 1960s,
whenever Germans referred to the period of the third Reich, they acknowledged
its existence only elliptically, by referring to it as ‘damals’ (then)” Paul
Connerton,How Societies Remember)
In some of the cases mentioned above at least one of the types of silence worked
in favour of the nation, preventing such events from happening again.
The fact is that in the Gaza Strip Issue no principles seems to apply.The Memory
has been acummulating Power for the last 130 years and when two collective
memories clash as such the consequences turn into a violent Spectacle.What is so
intriguing about this certain situation is that Memory isn`t used as in other
cases.Past events are not recollected in order to change the current situation but
are used as fuel for it.
“It is in society that people normally acquire their memories. It is also in society
that they recall,recognize, and localize their memories” (Halbwachs 1992,
p. 38).
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-hamas-leader-who-was-killed-by-a-tweet/
In this article posted on an independent Jewish website one can observe the point
of view of a person which is more or less directly involved in the current
matter.Sharing the same collective memory as other Jewish people, the author
shapes the form of the situation so it matches the ideology of his community.
Opposed to the video posted by the “Young Turks”, the article portrays the death
of the Hamas leader as something that was ment to happen, as consequence for
his actions.This shows the level of influence that memory can have on people`s
actions.If two different parties have total opposite memories but equally
powerful,normal boundaries and principles do not exist anymore.
3.Spectacle
This print-screen was taken when I was in the process of researching.It offers the
perfect example of how everything can be transformed into a Spectacle and how
powerful the Spectacle actually is.The contradiction between realities and the
way in which this contradiction is understood by the audience can be, ironically,
amusing at times.
“Here we have the principle of commodity fetishism, the domination of society by
things whose qualities are "at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the
senses." This principle is absolutely fulfilled in the spectacle, where the perceptible
world is replaced by a set of images that are superior to that world yet at the
same time impose themselves as eminently perceptible”.(Guy Debourd,P11,The
Society of the Spectacle)
By constantly producing new types of Spectacle, the society manages to focus the
general short-term memory of the large audience on a different sort of reality
therefore temporarily diminishing its power.But this only lasts for as long as the
audience perceives and accepts the spectacle as reality.This state of living in a
false consciousness stops wherever people are confrunted with the more brutal,
genuine reality.We can see this with the Gaza Strip Issue which is observed by
non-participants from a neutral,distant from a point of view transforming it into a
spectacle.The same thing cannot be said about the people directly influenced by
the events.They are caught inside the spectacle therefore creating more of it.
“ The spectacle is money for contemplation only, for here the totality of use
has already been bartered for the totality of abstract representation. The
spectacle is not just the servant of pseudouse it is already, in itself, the pseudouse
of life”(Guy Debourd.P 14, The Society Of The Spectacle)
Out of all the media material researched for this project, one artefact stands out.
Death in Gaza-James Miller
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=death+in+gaza
It is a documentary film that tries to show the world the everyday life of the
people involved in this conflict.The manner in which is filmed(trough the
cameraman`s eyes) helps integrate the viewer in a world which very little known
before:the world of “collateral damage”.During his short stay in the Strip, James
Miller managed to meet a variety of people and captured some truly disturbing
images.Maybe the most shocking piece footage from the film is the part when
James Miller and his crew being unarmed, waving a white flag and repeatedly
stating that they are Bristish journalists get shot upon by Israeli troops.This leads
to the instant death of James Miller and the injury of others.He is the fourth
journalist to be killed since September 2012 and one of many other “collateral
victims”.Another shocking case is the death of 23 year old peace activist from the
U.S.A who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer after acting as a human
shield to prevent the demolition of Palestinian house.The events were covered by
the press at the time but with no notable outcome.No one has yet been held
responsible for either deaths.
The story of James Miller is probably the best representation of the power of
spectacle in the Gaza Strip.He entered the inside world of the spectacle and
became trapped in it contributing to the creation of more spectacle with his
life.The death of a journalist caught on (ironically) his camera is as a
vicious,gruesome and shocking spectacle but still a spectacle for the outside
world.
4.Question marks and conclusion
The power of the spectacle in the Gaza Strip is unmeasurable.No types of rules or
theory apply.When talking about narrative Todorov argued that there are 5 stages
the narrative can progress through:





A state of equilibrium
A disruption of that equilibrium
A recognition that the disruption has occurred
An attempt to repair the disruption
A return of restoration or a new equilibrium
These principles are only ment for film narratives or fictional stories but these are
ment to be reflecting reality so, therefore the rules should apply for mostly
everything.And they do.Every effect has a cause, every action has a reaction both
in the real and fictional world.But because of the spectacle and how it manages to
interconnect these worlds, especially in the Gaza Strip these principles don`t
apply.
It is only fair to state that because in the past 130 years at least one of the rules
was broken.The recognition of the disruption has been made after the first waves
of violence at the end of the last century.It is the next 2 principles or their
absence that we can start observing the true scale of the situation.
-The MEMORY is present; the people there know what has been going for the
past years and they have reminders of it every day.
-POWER (“the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others or
the course of events”) has been passed back and forth and even if, one may argue
that there are hidden forces that hold it, is still there.
Also, there were countless attempts and to restore peace, some of them tried by
the most powerful people in the world.
So what stops the 5th rule(“A return of restoration or a new equilibrium”) from
applying?
One answer could be that the reality created there is so different from everything
else that it has its own rules and means of applying them.In capitalist societies,
the abundance of commodities created a new type of individiual who is so
submerged in this utopic world that he cannot accept the existence of a different
type of individual, guided by a different type of patterns and rules.This transforms
the minority of second type individuals into a SPECTACLE, something so different
than it should only by observed from a safe distance.
This turns the majority of 1st type individuals into a scopophilic(voyeuristic)
society who subconsciously enjoys the SPECTACLE and is reluctant to intervening.
The footage that James Miller managed to capture during his short stay in the
Strip shows a community despite the horendous trouble that has been put
through still manages to survive and work surprisingly well.Laughter and words
like “peace” “family” and “friends” can be heard from the native
population.Despite the uncertainty of tomorrow, children and their parents still
hope western-like future society.This all pauses when the Israeli tanks appear in
the area and the children(of every age) hurry to occupy their “battle
position.Their weapons against the heavy-armoured tanks are yet again another
remider of how mind-boggling the whole situation is.The kids launch the assault
with several waves of flying rocks which only affects the opponent throught the
sound produced.The Israelis reply with warning shots.
Previous to that the crew interviews a couple of children and one boy`s reaction
to the question: “Aren`t you afraid?” is again truly remarkable.He says that he is
not afraid by the Israelis tanks but only his mother.
This whole documentary acts as a confirmation to the idea that for the outside
world, the Gaza Strip is meerly a spectacle, a performance with real men, real
women and real weapons.There is very little difference between the impact of a
tv show and the impact of a war footage on the news.To the viewer both affect
him to a certain extent and both appear so isolated and distant from his everyday
life.
“ It is doubtless impossible to contrast the pseudoneed imposed by the reign of
modern consumerism with any authentic need or desire that is not itself equally
determined by society and its history. But the commodity in the stage of its
abundance attests to an absolute break in the organic development of social
needs. The commodity's mechanical accumulation unleashes a limitless artificiality
in face of which all living desire is disarmed. The cumulative power of this
autonomous realm of artifice necessarily everywhere entails a falsification of
life”.(Guy Debourd,P 20, The Society Of The Spectacle)
The Gaza Strip Issue defies both time and logic and remains a work in progress
with the hope of an immediate ending nowhere in sight. I believe it is one of the
most remarkable (if not the most) situations in the history of mankind, where
POWER, MEMORY and SPECTACLE interract in such a different manner that they
manage to entirely alter the “normal course of events”.
5.Bibliography and references
Paul Connerton- How Societies Remember
Guy Debourd- The Society of The Spectacle
http://www.adamranson.plus.com/TODOROV.HTM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War
www.ifamericansknew.org/history/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip#Israel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_War
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-hamas-leader-who-was-killed-by-a-tweet/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEEkEUcb2Y4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB_h9NOCgq8