Sifting people, sorting papers: academic practice and the notion of state security in Israel

The Israeli "revisionist history" of the late 1980s and 1990s has been the subject of much controversy. Revisions of mainstream historical accounts were sparked partly by the release of archival data on the early state period previously unavailable, and partly by the ways historians, aware of theoretical critiques of nationalist histories extant in the contemporary historiographical literature, modified the object of their research to provide more sensitive accounts of power relations and of mutivocal historical experiences. The "release" by Israeli institutions of documents that potentially tarnish authoritative nationalist narratives of the state's foundation is unusual among Middle East countries. On the other hand, academic practice and access to data for research in Israel is far from being homogenous. This essay is an attempt to explore the production of knowledge about Palestinians in Israel from the perspective of cultural practice. That is, I seek to understand how academics' use of archives relates to other social, political, and cultural practices encountered in the process of production of knowledge in Israel. While historical texts are meaningful, they become so not only as we compare them to other historical texts, but also as we relate them to the various contexts within which they come to be. This research is based on two theoretical considerations: how "state security" informs social discourse and practices, and how the content of academic work is related to particular sociopolitical practices linked to cultural, social, and political notions of persons through which it is produced and sustained. Through concrete examples drawn from my experience and that of other researchers, I will describe how these discourses and practices can inform the production of academic research on Palestinians within Israeli history and society.

Theoretical approaches that consider how political imagination, social categories, and identities are shaped by state projects were developed mostly in the 1980s and 1990s.² More recently, researchers' attention has begun to focus on how political notions of security expressed by military officials and makers of foreign policy interact with everyday understandings of safety and homeland ³ In a critical study of American foreign policy, political scientist Philip Campbell shows how notions of American identity are not only the result of national pedagogical projects, but also of more diffuse expressions, common to foreign policy, media, and popular culture, of danger posed by "others." While nationalist rhetoric constitutes states as refuges from danger, and thus justifies them as a necessary condition for the survival of a people, Campbell argues that danger as expounded in foreign policy is, paradoxically, "...not a threat to the state's identity or existence: it is its condition of possibility".⁴ As the feeling of danger threatening the nation is perpetuated, state foreign policy is made legitimate or even commonsensical. Similarly, the ethnographic research of anthropologist Catherine Lutz (2001) describes how a rhetoric of [foreign] political danger works into everyday lives in America. Both suggest, then, that contrary to popular belief a homeland is not simply built to prevent danger. Instead, the danger perceived from specific groups of outsiders is part of the very stuff which constitutes and perpetuates a sense of home.

It comes as no surprise that notions of national identity and personal safety in Israel are also closely linked with notions of state security. State security is the reason given for much of Israel's policy of expropriation of land from Palestinians in the Galilee and in parts of the occupied territories. Less obvious is the fact that discourse linked to the notion of state security works to shape categories of people (insiders and outsiders, safe and unsafe), to authorize their access to resources, and to imbue them with credibility. The rhetoric of security, then, helps to constitute both a sense of a common whole, and differences between people within and without. It pervades many dimensions...