How the Hell Do I Get Out of the Field?

This is the last line of Donna Haraway's book, Primate Visions. It's a quote from Octavia Butler's book, Dawn and its heroine Lilith. I'm paraphrasing Haraway here--Lilith is a young African American woman rescued with people who have survived nuclear war and is chosen by an "alien" species the Oankali as a midwife for the refugees whom they've impregnated as part of an effort to become trading partners with "humanity's remnants." Primate Visions ends, "She laughed bitterly. 'I suppose I could think of this as fieldwork--but how the hell do I get out of the field?'" I'd like to use this ending to introduce my "world," as a feminist ethnographer. This is a world in which one doesn't ever leave the field, tearfully looking back. Fieldwork today is about a different kind of apprenticeship. Let's call it galling.

I wake up today and open up my local newspaper, the Wichita Eagle. As always, when the Israeli military goes into one of its many "operations," as Israel calls them, there are exchanges of letters. One Rabbi in town can be counted on to get drawn into defending Israeli actions, which come under scrutiny. That they come under scrutiny and are not just celebrated is an historical achievement involving many, including the principal actors, Palestinians residing in the O.P.T. (Occupied Palestinian Territories). The other Rabbi tends to stay away from the editorial page of the Eagle, but he made an appearance today in a letter responding to a Christian minister who said he went to the mosque to pray during the latest war on Lebanon. This minister wrote the letter, because when Israel's war on Lebanon began (see how words are part of war--I've said Israel's war "on" Lebanon, not "in" Lebanon--these distinctions matter) the other Rabbi who tends to always be out ahead of today's columnist organized a prayer meeting at his synagogue in which people prayed for Israel. The mayor went, no doubt because he was invited, sending a "message" to many that he was taking sides. Some would claim he was taking sides for "peace," but I don't buy it.

At any rate, some in town have felt like they needed to respond to the paper's coverage of the praying for Israel meeting. A friend and I went into action and organized a demonstration in which over 100 people showed up towndown on a Saturday evening. And a minister in town wrote to the Eagle to say he understood the prejudice that Muslims face in the U.S., etc etc etc.I'm going to link the Rabbi's letter.

Welcome to my neighborhood which is also part of "the field" from which I can't get out. I cannot leave untouched and pristine, his claim that Israel does not target civilians, while the terrorists do. This is the crux of Israeli propaganda, and is part of the "war on terror." I will revise and close by saying, "Israel has F-16s and F-18s, "goddesses," as Palestinian-Israeli, Azmi Bishara calls themwhich create public relations disasters on a regular basis for Israel. Then some members of the local Jewish community who identify with Israel’s way of accounting for dead Arabs, come to the rescue of these F-16s and military hardware as well as the Israeli soldiers who use them, and most importantly, the military generals who plan and implement Israel's wars on, yes on, her Arab neighbors.