The Militarization of Public Space

For me, the most poignant indication that when I had entered Israel I had stepped into a society that perceived itself as under siege, was the teenage girls with machine guns. They're everywhere; waiting for the bus, in front of you at the check-out line, shopping at the mall. To me, they looked exactly like my students in every way; listening to their ipods, chewing gum, fussing over their hair - except these were teenage girls armed to the teeth, each one in uniform with a fully automatic machine gun slung over their shoulder. It drives home the the message - public space in Israel is militarized.

A few months before I arrived in Israel, Katushka rockets were raining into parts of the country on a daily basis. At the same time the Israeli Defense Force was busy with a bombing campaign that nearly leveled the entire infrastructure of its northern neighbor Lebanon. It was war, but it was also business as usual here. Within hours of Israel’s declaration of statehood in 1948, six nations declared war on it. A quick look at the modern nation of Israel's sixty years of history reveals varying degrees of armed conflict within its own borders, punctuated by periods of outright war with its surrounding neighbors.

It made me curious about the effects this constant state of heightened security had on "ordinary life" in Israel.

This was a display at an Israeli toy store. Further down the isle were the stuffed animals.