MICHAL GOVRIN
Martyrs or Survivors? Thoughts on the
Mythical Dimension of the Story War
T
HE WAR THE PALESTINIANS started in September
2000,
right in the
middle of the Barak-Arafat-Clinton talks, I spent in my city,
Jerusalem, where Jews and Arabs, Muslims and Christians, sec–
ular and orthodox, Armenians, Ethiopians, and pilgrims from all over
the world live together in a complex and unique texture. In my apart–
ment in a residential neighborhood, on mornings of writing, in hours
with my daughters, I have lived in constant fear of terror for two
years-years of damage to Israeli and Palestinian societies, years of
watching the dream of peace turn into a nightmare. And I have followed
with dread the "story war" in print, broadcast, and electronic media,
exposing the global clash between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism in a
complex and unprecedented triangular arena. This ferocious war's
terms were sucked from the depths of the theological clash and its
mythic precipitates; their extremism was preserved in disguised forms
and repressed voices between violent outbursts.
The story war rewrites every single day, every single event, according
to its needs.
It
turns one reality into a "story" and prevents another
from turning into one. In fact, after two years, life in Israel at the heart
of the war of terror has not yet been formulated as a "story," despite the
wave of global terror. It evokes worrisome comparisons, not only with
the Gulf War of 199I-when, for strategic considerations, the story of
Israelis sitting in sealed rooms, behind a ridiculous defense of plastic
and masking tape, exposed to an attack of Scud missiles and chemical
and biological threats, was trivialized-but also (in pessimistic moments
of dread) with the hushing up of the Holocaust of European Jewry.
So, first of all, we must "bear witness," despite the inevitable one–
way blindness in all testimony, and despite the additional problem of
testifying in a war in which the "witness," in its Greek etymology, "mar–
tyr," is central to the story war-imposing terms of suffering and
Michal Govrin's
Snapshots
has won the
2002
AKUM-Ashman Prize.
