Political tourism in the Negev and Bedouin tribes

[..] Every foreign visitor relied implicitly on a specific fantasy of an "authentic voice" from the absent [Bedouin] local community. In this process, ordinary people from Bedouin towns, were fashioned by these various flows of political activist: once as an essential Bedouin, once as a heroic active anti-Israeli resister, once as the passive victim of a humanitarian case.... and, sometimes, as a bit of all these. Ali, a Bedouin truck driver, was not even aware of being so many things!

[..] all those claims are sometimes produced "outside" and projected on contingent situation which actually are used instrumentally. They may reflect a specific political agenda or some psychologic need of the "humanitarian" tourist visiting the Negev.

These claims, pre-packaged and then projected (or injected) into the local comunities created and amplified, by becoming increasingly dislocated into a global "infoscape", they enhance a meta-conflict where symbols tend to refer only to other symbols. Or, as Slavoj Zizek puts it, "reality is never directly itself".

Adapted from a seminar of Dr. Alexander Koensler