Security Narratives: the Seductive Politics of the Israeli Security Industry

• In Event: Global Webs of Counterinsurgency Policing

Abstract

In this paper, I will discuss how Israeli security actors sell their products and spread their knowledge through security narratives. I’m interested in analyzing the Israeli security industry as both a tool and a product of seduction. I will explore the deliberate and less explicit or conscious strategies, socializations, and processes that lie at the heart of the existence and workings of this industry. I ask what messages it conveys, what its silences are, and how actors who are part of it and (politically) utilize it frame the industry. I investigate how processes of translation are part of this ‘seduction’, as it consists of a legitimization of Israel’s military, its violent operations and, subsequently, the industry itself. I then find translations of violence into security, Human Rights violations into protection, traumatized soldiers into heroes, and people under occupation or civilian non-violent protestors as a (terror) threat. As a case I will discuss the security fairs where security is sold accompanied by politically colored “stories”, performances, and activities, sharing messages about the historical and potential future use of these products and their necessity and importance for the defense of Israel.

Author

• Erella Grassiani, University of Amsterdam