RACISM AND METAPHOR The Palestinian-Israeli conflict in popular literature Toine van Teeffelen Discourse and Society, Vol.5(3), 1994, pp.381-405. SUMMARY This article examines the portrayal of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in Western bestselling literature through the analysis of contrasting metaphors or analogies of Israeli society and political action on the one hand (family and Masada/World War 2), and Arab/Palestinian society and political action on the other (desert and water/fire/explosion). Considering a number of passages from bestsellers, it is shown how an amplified contrast between two life worlds is constructed. and how metaphors, in a "play of tropes", construct a boundary threat to the Israeli world, to racist effect. At the same time attention is paid to the situational and ambiguous uses of metaphors, and the ways in which the narrative and political context credentializes racist interpretations. INTRODUCTION During the 1970s and 1980s a great deal of academic and activist effort was justifiably put into the exposure of the anti-Arab bias of Western media when covering events in the Middle East .Suleiman (1987) provides a survey.. Unfortunately, this focus coincided with a relative neglect of other fields, including popular or bestselling literature. .See Orfalea (1988), Terry (1985), and Sabbagh (1992), for useful yet not theoretically informed critiques of stereotypes in fictional bestsellers on the Middle East. Breines (1990) offers a more developed argument but limits his analysis to a critique of the Jewish portrayal in this literature. See Antonius (1994) for a genealogy of literary themes which persist in 20th century "trash" on the Arab world. At least two reasons call for attention to contemporary bestsellers on the Middle East. In the first place, they are credible and widely read sources of information about the Arab and Islamic world. Usually popular literature lends credibility to a fictional plot by the suggestion of realism and intimate or expert knowledge of an existing state of events. This feature brought the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) in the beginning of the 1980s to publicly call Leon Uris' The Haj a racist novel sold as a romanticized yet reliable account of the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. There is also a more theoretical reason to pay due attention to this literature: it calls for a more dynamic analysis of racist stereotypes. To clarify this reason the double meaning inherent to the concept of racism should be made explicit. RACISM As a universal or general concept racism implies the accentuation of a contrast between the self and the other along "racial", ethnic or cultural lines. To acquire the force of racism, this accentuation should help creating, sustaining, or enhancing a relationship of oppressive or exploitative power (Wetherell and Potter 1992: 70). It is especially when a narrative or argumentation represents the other as an amplified threat to the self and to the existing balance of power that those functions are accomplished since oppression can then be justified as necessary to protect the ingroup's best interests. The amplified threat can take various appearances: a direct physical menace, or, more often, a disturbance of the social order or cultural integrity of the self, whether due to the other's numerical power (for instance, when the numbers of refugees in Europe are accentuated to justify closure of borders) or its social influence (as when the influence of Islam is dramatized there). Usually the threat is defined by an undermining of the moral values of the ingroup as well as a disruption of the power relation between the self and the other. At the same time it should be acknowledged that racism is an historical concept which cannot be simply caught in a formal definition. .To circumvent the problem of changing conceptions of racism Potter and Wetherell (1992), in their study of racism in New Zealand, pinpoint any oppressive discourse in the context of interethnic or intercultural relations as racist ["Racist discourse ... should be seen as discourse (of whatever content) which has the effect of establishing, sustaining and reinforcing oppressive power relations..." (emphasis added)]. The problem here is that a multitude of discourses which do not refer to any racist theme, including for instance commands or interrogations by authority agents, may function as sustaining oppressive power relations. In my view any definition of racism has to incorporate an historical dimension. Some themes are recognized as more racist than others, even though these may equally contribute to the maintenance of an oppressive power system. Examples of typically racist themes are those which invoke the memory of virulent acts of oppression during Western colonialism, imperialism, or the persecution of Jews. Moreover, understood from an historical point of view racism, as well as the fight against racism, take place in changing argumentative contexts in which the definition of racism itself is a key area of conflict. The power to obtain support for labeling oppressive actions as racist, non-racist or even anti-racist is a major resource in public debate. Defenders and opponents of oppressive situations constantly contest the relevance of various prototypes of racism, in the course of which the argumentative contexts and social understanding of racism gradually change. For instance, in most Western countries definitions of racism based on categories of race and blood are replaced by definitions based on the less "contaminated" concepts of culture and nation. Methodologically, the historical approach to racism calls for an examination of ambivalence, contradiction and modification in the use of racist themes. RACISM AND POPULAR LITERATURE In view of the above, many media studies on anti-Arab stereotyping demonstrate serious shortcomings. They are typically aimed at listing more or less racist images, and do not take issue with the question how the accentuation of self-other distinctions and the portrayal of the other as a threat are accomplished in narration or argumentation. There is moreover little concern with the ambivalence and contradiction racist notions entail due to their historical grounding and rhetorical context. The shortcomings of a static approach are particularly obvious in the study of literature, including popular genres. According to Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott (1987), in popular literature images are not just reproduced; rather, their relevance is tested in the light of new social developments as defined by the narrative. Such literature enlists the readers' interest by creating a fictional experiment with the ingroup's identity, values and definitions of reality. Successful popular fiction guides the reader to the edge of a mental and emotional abyss where one's closest values and firmest assumptions about reality, including the stability of the self-other boundary, are shaken for the fictional moment. In thus enhancing the reader's concern, this literature generates ample narrative space for the examination of ambivalences as well as the accentuation of self-other boundaries. Building upon Bennett's and Woollacott's argument it can be said that popular Western stories projected in a non-Western setting such as the Middle East - think of thrillers, spy stories, adventure stories, or settlers' sagas - experiment with normal assumptions about Western vs non-Western distinctions along two lines. The narrative plot may on the one hand serve to amplify a threat in terms of appearance, impact, or cruelty. The non-Western other turns out to be both more immoral and more powerful than expected. Such literature, called fantastic (Denning 1987a) or imaginary (JanMohammed 1986), directs the readers' attention towards negative group traits and associated reasonings which deepen, in an often crude colonialist and racist fashion, the self-other divide. On the other hand, the story may narrate situations in which this division is somewhat questioned when non-Westerners show themselves to be less threatening and more human than expected, or, conversely, when Westerners turn out to be potentially as "primitive" as the other, as in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Such interrogation is typical for the more "symbolic" (JanMohammed) or "realistic" (Denning) novels. However, it should be added that in practice both categories of literature cannot be so neatly distinguished. When they are not altogether one-dimensional and stereotypical - and usually they are not - many bestsellers incorporate both options in a hierarchically layered narrative which combines a deepening of the self-other gap with its partial or momentary bridging. It is this movement into two directions, open to continuous negotiation and ambiguity within more or less fixed boundaries, which propels the cultural practice of monitoring self-other boundaries in this genre. This makes it a relevant subject for a study of racist stereotyping which goes beyond a simple categorization of images. To locate mechanisms of stereotyping I will examine the portrayal of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in fictional bestsellers which appeared since World War II until 1986 (see the appendix for a list). This is not only because of the subject's intrinsic relevance, but also because the aforementioned mechanisms and complexities bear a particular significance here. The Israeli-Arab setting has on the one hand been very often used to amplify a general contrast between the Western and non-Western world, with obvious racist consequences (Said 1978). Yet at the same time this conflict is fraught with complexity because of the cross-cutting of various ethnic, national, and religious identities and their contrasts: West vs East, Jews/Israelis vs Arabs, Jewish vs non-Jewish West, and Israel vs West. Moreover, the argumentative field is particularly intricate here. The long-time perception of Israel as an answer to Western anti-Semitism and, in the Middle Eastern context, as a beleaguered country has rendered it difficult for Westerners to publicly denounce assumptions or practices here as racist which in other political and argumentative contexts would probably have received such a qualification without much reservation. .Many will defend this denial or mitigation of racism (Van Dijk 1987) with the argument that in the Israeli case ethnocentric and generalizing stereotypes of the (Arab) other do not primarily function to sustain an oppressive power relationship but rather are a negative by-product of the disadvantageous situation in which Israel presumably finds or has found itself. It should be noted that, in not accepting such an understanding of the Israeli situation, the analysis of racism given here is, like its rivals, ultimately and unavoidably based upon a specific understanding of the relevant facts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (see Chomsky 1986 for a survey of the literature which shows how Israel decided not to fulfil various historical opportunities to make peace with the Arab world and the Palestinians). In other words, the analyst cannot escape the argumentative context in which the debate about racism takes place. There is still another way in which this contribution departs from conventional studies of anti-Arab stereotypes. At the methodological level it is imperative to go beyond the intuitive interpretations of many of these studies and to show in some detail how texts work in creating and credentializing racist stereotypes. In doing so, this paper will follow anthropological and discourse studies in dealing with the constitutive role of textual metaphors and analogies. .See especially the readers by Fernandez (1991) and Holland and Quinn (1987). Next to some detailed discourse analyses, I will summarize findings from a broader study of the portrayal of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in contemporary Western popular literature. .See Van Teeffelen 1991, 1992a and b, 1994; McKenzie and Van Teeffelen 1993. This study was financially made possible by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). I am grateful to Teun A. van Dijk for his consistent support as well as his constructive criticisms. METAPHORS In a further step to clarify my theoretical focus, let me now explain why metaphors form a suitable key for studying racist stereotypes in literature. Since Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) pathbreaking work, it has become common knowledge in cognitive and cultural studies that metaphors do not only embellish a preconstituted reality for rhetorical purposes, but also contribute to the construction and understanding of social reality itself. Cognitively speaking, metaphors structure the understanding of reality domains by comparing them to other (source) domains. More specifically, they transmit common sense reasonings, or lay theories, from concrete and familiar domains of experience and knowledge to more abstract and less familiar domains. An example of such metaphoric reasonings can be found in what Schank (1990) calls "skeleton stories": typical expressions, proverbs, or references to myths or genres that express a great deal of cultural credibility. Thus, the Middle East conflict is often regarded as a "family quarrel" or a "(Greek) tragedy" whereby both parties' actions are considered to follow scripts of intense personal antagonism. When applied skillfully, metaphors can have a strong impact due to their "literary" quality and visual concreteness. This rhetorical thrust allows them to emphasize particular elements and linkages, and simultaneously to de-emphasize others. Since they organize the understanding of cause and effect, symptom and essence, and especially praise and blame, metaphors can be employed to serve political aims or interests. When thus used as ideological devices, they privilege, and, when turning into common sense, naturalize particular accounts of reality. There are also reasons for choosing metaphor which bear more directly upon the subject at hand. Through the fortunes of protagonists popular fictions usually narrate a larger social problematic, such as the unification of the nation or the solidarity of the class (Denning 1987b). In fact, as Ella Shohat (1987) has argued, texts on Israel prompt such metaphorical (allegorical) readings due to the enormous amount of symbols and myths with which Israel's history is populated. Several bestsellers make ample use of the cultural knowledge of Biblical stories in their titles: The Fifth Horseman, The Tower of Babel, By the Rivers of Babylon, Exodus, The Heirs of Cain. Moreover, metaphor itself has turned to become a key subject in studies of racism. Many metaphors feed upon Western self-other dualities of which race is the "ultimate trope" (Gates 1986: 5); for instance, mind-body, culture-nature, and masculinity-femininity (Haste 1993). Based upon such dualities, a range of conventional metaphors is used to frame the other's identity and actions, and to show how it threatens the integrity of the self, whether physically or socially. Invasion, plague, cancer, pollution and wild animals are familiar notions to evoke a boundary threat to an ingroup conceived in terms of organic development and growth, family cohesion and purity. As Edward Said (1978) has demonstrated, the tropes and emblems of Orientalism have been particularly effective in expressing and sustaining the power difference between West and East. For lack of space I cannot dwell nuch upon the analytic complexities of the metaphor concept. My concern with metaphor as a device to activate common sense notions of self vs other concurs with modern social, especially anthropological studies which examine metaphor in its social and cultural context, including its power to define social reality, rather than with strictly cognitive theories wherein prototypical, dictionary-like examples of metaphors are studied as data. .See comments on G.Lakoff's approach in contributions to Fernandez (1991). Thus, metaphoric meaning can vary according to context and function. Elsewhere I have shown how the aforementioned concept of tragedy in applications to the Israeli-Arab conflict can obtain different political meanings in different contexts (Van Teeffelen 1981). It can be used to express a distanced position in which both parties are seen as being blind to each other's rights and therefore as drawing each other into a negative spiral of violence. But it can also be employed, as in much Israeli discourse, to underline that Israel finds itself in a tragic position since it is presumably "forced" to repress Palestinians. It then functions to facilitate identification with mainstream Israeli policies. Sometimes the term is subtly used to mix both meanings in order to meet conflicting values or attitudes, such as combining objective disengagement with human commitment, or political support for Israel with compassion toward all victims. In other words, depending on context and function a similar metaphor can be used to accentuate or to interrogate self-other distinctions. In order to assess to what extent the self-other distinction is really interrogated it is important to clarify the credibility and salience a particular metaphoric usage receives. This emphasis on the situational use of metaphor is related to another theoretical point. When considered in a discursive and social context, it is often problematic to identify metaphors unequivocally. Depending on such context, a word or clause may be understood as trope or denotative description, as metaphor or metonymy, as metaphoric at a local or macro level, or as metaphoric at a linguistic or narrative level. In practice, metaphoric meaning is somewhat flexibly constituted in an interpretative process which shifts from one discourse level, dimension or context to another. Once the assumption is jettisoned that essence and stability in metaphorical meaning exists, it becomes all the more imperative to investigate metaphors in relation to other textual features which influence its meaning and impact. This is one reason for the recent upsurge in interest into the "play" of tropes, such as the interaction of metaphor and metonymy in synecdoche, when a source domain is presented as contingent to (part of) as well as resembling a target domain (Turner 1991; Ohnuki-Tierney 1991). The combined use of metaphor and metonymy is in fact typical for the general understanding of racism as defined above. In its metaphoric meaning racism compares and contrasts the domains of the self and the other, while its metonymic meaning refers to the border threat emanating from the other's domain perceived as contingent to the domain of the self. I deal with those metaphors and analogies which have racist implications for self-other (Arab-Israeli/Western) perceptions, and which by their salient or frequent appearance or otherwise important position in the bestseller stories can be expected to have a major impact on the reader's understanding of, on the one hand, the difference between Israeli and Arab (Palestinian) society, and, on the other, the political or military actions of both sides which form the heart of the narrative. I focus upon the constitution, amplification and ambiguation of self-other distinctions and upon the threat the other is suggested to represent to the self's integrity. In doing so, metaphoric content and credibility are both taken into account. DESERT If one asks an arbitrary person on the street in New York or Amsterdam which images of the Arab world come first to mind, there is a good chance that "desert" ranks high among them. Following many Hollywood movies, bestsellers make ample use of the cultural potential of the desert image to generate narrative tension. Like the Indian wilderness or African jungle, the desert serves as both an exotic locale for adventure and a source of threat. It generates cultural resonances which amplify the divide between the Western self and the non-Western other. In associating the desert with wilderness and sin, Biblical stories have injected into Western memory a wide range of adjacent meanings that contrast with key Western self-concepts of order, rationality, development, and civilization: flatness, monotony, lack of fertility, disorientation, and - when images of the "Bedouin" associated with the desert are taken into account - lack of roots, endless wandering, homelessness, primitiveness. Metaphoric impact is highest when the Arab world is portrayed in strong metonymic contact with the desert. While the historical novels briefly describe Bedouin attacks on Jewish travellers or settlements (The Source, The Haj, No Time for Tears), in a number of contemporary thrillers on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict the desert serves as a setting for conspiracies, training exercises, and attacks by Palestinian guerrillas (Thirty Four East, Caprifoil, By the Rivers of Babylon). To see how the desert image can be exploited to serve various functions, consider a passage from The Fifth Horseman. In this novel Palestinian guerrillas support Libya's Mouammar Khadaffy in planting a hydrogen bomb in the heart of New York City. Khadaffy demands of the US government that Israel be forced to withdraw from the territories it has occupied since 1967. Before communicating the blackmail terms he tests the bomb in the Libyan desert. The only sound reaching Muammar Al-Qaddafi's [Khadaffy's] ears was the low and mournful sigh of a distant wind. No Teleprinter's hum, no radio's cackle, no jangling telephone marred the perfect quiet of his desert. As was only natural, he had chosen to pass the critical hours preceding the test of his hydrogen bomb in the solitude of the spaces in which he had found his faith and nurtured his dreams. His command post was the symbol of that vanishing race by whose precepts he strove to reorder the future, his ever present Bedouin tent. Not a single manifestation of the technology he sought to harness intruded on its spartan precincts. (...) Qaddafi was alone with the oneness of the desert and the stillness of his soul. Here, he knew, there was neither the time nor the place for the useless or the complex. As the oncoming light of day stripped away the illusions of the night, so the emptiness of these expanses stripped life to its fundamentals. All here gave way to the inexorable struggle to survive. Since time immemorial the intensity of that struggle had made the desert the incubator of the spiritual, its inhuman solitude the catalyst that had driven men to the extreme. Moses in the Sinai, Christ in the wilderness, the Prophet on his Hegira: each, in turn, had thrust on mankind the visions engendered by their desert retreats. Others had, too: visionaries and zealots, fanatics and spiritualists, part of the unending parade of austure and alarming men that through the centuries had emerged from those trackless wastes to trouble the settled world around them. (103) The passage constructs a stark opposition between a primitive world and a settled, civilized world. A linguistic generalization activates a strong metaphoric understanding of the desert image. While the opposition is still specific in the first paragraph when the quiet of the desert is set against the noise of technology, it is brought to a more general level when the absence of technology in the desert is opposed to the Western world of technology. Again on a higher level of abstraction, the principle of simplicity is set against the principle of complexity. Two other metaphors facilitate this interpretation of the desert as standing for a broader life world. The personification of nature, very familiar from literary descriptions in general, is expressed by several nouns used to describe the desert ("quiet", "solitude", "oneness"). Conversely, some human properties are naturalized to similar effect; cf. the expression "emerged" in the reference to "men" who "emerged from those trackless wastes". Not only is Khadaffy's life world like the desert, the desert also determines his world. The metaphoric understanding of the desert is supported by metonymic linkages: the desert is a setting which "stripped life to its fundamentals." To underline this causal connection metaphoric expressions are employed which compare this influence to the causal world of physics, such as "incubator" and "catalyst." The suggestion of a strong law-like causality is sustained by linguistic examples of amplification: enumeration (for instance, in the second sentence "no... no... no...") and absolute ("only", "neither time nor place", "perfect", "ever present", "not a single", neither/nor, "all here", "time immemorial", "unending parade", "each"). Morover, the devices of enumeration and absolute fulfil an additional function pertinent to our discussion: They make it difficult to challenge the truth value of this passage. Especially the absolutes evoke a "long view", panoramic perspective that signals the authority of an omniscient and therefore unchallengable narrator. The interrelated metaphors and metonyms thus obtain a high, apparently non-negotiable credibility. So we see a number of linguistic devices which on the one hand authoritatively generalize the scope of the life world the desert represents, and, on the other hand, serve to tie Khadaffy to this world. This last process is also sustained by the seemingly innocent expression "his desert." This expression is replete with tropical meaning. In the first place it implies contiguity: presumably, Khadaffy is used to taking refuge in the desert. This is confirmed elsewhere in the novel when he is portrayed as a "son of the desert" (75), his character being molded by his many journeys there. But the expression "his desert" may also imply a part/whole relation when desert is understood metonymically as standing for a "desert world", in which case Khadaffy is regarded as being part of that world. Or, conversely, the expression may imply a whole/part relation, the desert being a kind of "property" of Khadaffy's life world. All these tropical meanings may interact in complex ways to produce one effect: Khadaffy and the desert are inseparable. The more the two domains are seen as overlapping, causally connected, and resembling, the more they become like one. Returning to the central theme of this article, I would argue that the interaction of tropes resulting in an amplified contrast between two lifeworlds facilitates the application of racist themes. This conclusion however cannot be derived from a linguistic analysis alone. It assumes that the passages tie in with social representations Western readers hold of Arabs or the Arab world. The very name of Khadaffy and the reference to the "Bedouin race" will serve to many as cues or prototypes for Arabs in general. Instead of the "unsophisticated" presenting of explicit stereotypes about Arabs this passage facilitates a racist understanding through the construction of a subtle network of connections between the desert theme on the one hand and prototypes indicative of the Arab world on the other, built up by credible metaphors and metonymies. This all does not mean that the passage is without contradiction. In fact, the self-other distinction, although amplified, is at the same time fraught with evaluative ambiguities. The desert-image encompasses some of the positive cultural meanings which go back to the Romanticist tradition: nature, quietness, opportunity for meditation, the possibility for withdrawal. Moreover, the desert can be a source of greatness and prophecy, cf. the mentioning of Moses, Christ, and the Prophet. The ambivalence is particularly called up by the juxtaposition of "visionaries" - "spiritualists," to be positively valued, and the negative "fanatics" - "zealots." Still another ambivalence is generated by the opposition between the "settled" world of civilization and the unsettling nature of the desert world. While this pair may refer, on the one hand, to the opposition between civilization and primitiveness, it can also point to the desert as a source of inspiration, in which case both domains become functionally complementary rather than opposed. In such reading the civilized world needs the redeeming spirit of the desert, along the lines of the influential distinction of the 19th century British literary critic Matthew Arnold between what he called the "Hebrew" culture, prophetic and fanatic, and the settled "Greek" culture. Again, it is difficult to decide from the passage alone to what extent this ambiguity opens up space for different argumentative positions. Pertinent to an evaluation of the passage is a consideration of its broader narrative context. To a large extent the course of narrative events decides about the value readers attribute to different themes. In this case any positive meaning associated with the desert is superseded by the reader's knowledge of an amplified negative event deriving from the desert - Khadaffy's atomic blackmail. The political context should also be taken into account. The novel exploits a triangle of themes which during the Reagan years started to dominate Western ideological concerns about future threats located in the Arab-Islamic world: Islamic "fanaticism", Palestinian "terrorism", and atomic "blackmail." These ideological concerns will serve to further disambiguate the (Western) reader's understanding of the desert theme into a largely negative direction. A similar ambiguity controlled by the macro-narrative occurs at other places in the bestsellers when a desert setting both accentuates the homelessness and the lawlessness of Palestinian guerrillas trained to attack Israelis or Westerners (Thirty Four East, Caprifoil and By the Rivers of Babylon). Other novels portray the Palestinians' living surroundings as unfertile and nameless (The Levanter, Triple, The Tower of Babel), evoking the broader concept of wilderness. FAMILY The elements of barrenness and unsettledness which dominate the desert's metaphoric meaning neatly coincide with one of the most significant features of the bestsellers; namely, that they do not narrate any form of stable domestic life or love relation among Arabs (except for The Pirate, wherein, however, an Arab romance simultaneously leads to a withdrawal from Palestinian politics). In the few cases in which an Arab settled household is portrayed, the repression or exclusion of women is severe (The Levanter, The Pirate, and The Haj), to the point that the marriage breaks up (The Pirate and The Haj). Among the Arab characters single men and women are overrepresented. The novels typically associate Arabs with sexual behavior which deviates from the norms of heterosexual romance and family life: homosexuality (Thirty Four East, By the Rivers of Babylon, The Pirate, The Source, The Heirs of Cain), incest (By the Rivers of Babylon), prostitution (The Fifth Horseman, The Tower of Babel, Code Ezra, The Haj, Exodus), entertaining different sexual relationships simultaneously (Triple, Black Sunday, The Little Drummer Girl), use of sex for manipulative ends (Black Sunday, The Haj), and sexual extravagance (The Pirate, The Haj). Given that popular literature tends to metaphorically understand political and societal life through the experiences of persons and small groups, this departure from norms of family life and sexual behavior constructs an image of Arabs, especially Palestinians, as fragmented, individualized, and in fact without society. In a most explicit and racist way The Haj combines a plot about the breakdown of a Palestinian family with an account of general political fragmentation and decline of Arab/Palestinian society. As I have demonstrated elsewhere (Van Teeffelen 1992b), the bestsellers make it at the same time easy to understand Israeli political life through the prism of gender and family relations. The so-called family sagas (Exodus, The Source, No Time for Tears, The Settlers) narrate the experiences of a Jewish family or professional group migrating to, and settling in Palestine/Israel. Such novels typically show the clash of different opinions toward political dilemmas through the purview of family members, relatives, or professional associates. These opinions broadly reflect the right-left or hawk-dove continuum underpinned by an overall loyalty to the Zionist enterprise. Similarly, a number of thrillers with a romance element in the plot describe morally based challenges by women to the tough-minded opinions of Israeli male heroes (Black Sunday, Triple, The Tower of Babel, and especially Code Ezra, The Little Drummer Girl, and By the Rivers of Babylon). As elsewhere (Haste 1993), the gender framework is here particularly suited to show diversion within unity, or the progression from division to unity (as in a love relationship). These schemas fit societal notions of democracy and social viability. Moreover, while the notion of family serves to accentuate a contrast between Israeli and Arab society in a fashion which can be easily interpreted as racist, the presentation of different opinions and testing dialogues within Israeli society at the same time mitigate any understanding of this society and its politics as being governed by racist viewpoints. In addition, several stories of romances narrate the traditional racist motif of the kidnapping and/or sexual abuse by Arabs of Western/Israeli women to be rescued by the Western/Israeli male hero (The Pirate, Triple, Caprifoil, Rosebud, Thirty Four East, By the Rivers of Babylon, The Haj). Significantly, the threat here takes not only the appearance of an assault on the women's personal integrity, but also of a disruption of the relationship or family life in which the targeted women partakes. In The Levanter a Palestinian guerrilla group indeed forces a Western couple to cooperate in its ranks. Conversely, the bestsellers portray male Israelis as being able to attract Western or Arab women for the purpose of an enduring relationship or marriage (Triple, Snap Shot, Thirty Four East, Code Ezra, The Tower of Babel, Exodus, The Haj, The Pirate). These features further help to amplify the contrast between the Israeli and Arab capacity to develop a productive and stable social structure, with obvious racist consequence. Let me now turn over to the portrayal of political actions in the bestsellers. Here the analogies of Masada and the Second World War for the Israeli condition stand opposed to metaphors of attacks by Arabs. In a number of cases, primarily the novels which narrate the origin of Israel, the building up of the political threat is described through a series of comparable metaphors which frame social opposition or outgroup threats as mechanical or natural. They are often employed interchangeably or in close connection to each other, to mutually reinforcing effect: metaphors of water, heat, fire, and explosion. .See for analyses of these metaphors: Lakoff and Kovecses (1987) and Lee (1992: 93). For some critical remarks on the use of such metaphors in the context of the Palestinian Intifada, see Farsoun and Landis (1991: 17). ATTACK These metaphors raise a broad frame of expectations about the unfamiliarity, unpredictability, and perhaps threatening character of an (Arab) Middle East "out there" as opposed to a familiar, stable, "safe," home-like West. They are familiar from a cultural repertoire applied again and again toward historical situations in which masses are seen to challenge the status quo. .See See Chapter 6 in Van Teeffelen, 1992b. As Lakoff and Kovecses (1987) have demonstrated, together they can be used to delineate a prototypical scenario with successive stages. This is what I intend to do in this section, adding a social dimension to Lakoff's and Kovecses's psychological model, and taking more explicit notice of the lay theories which underpin the metaphors. I will dwell upon a number of passages from the two narratives by Leon Uris on Israel's history, Exodus and The Haj. Both stories contain strongly metaphoric descriptions of the successive stages of the Palestinian mass uprisings during the 1920s and 1930s when especially after the rise of Hitler in Germany Jewish immigration into Palestine increased. .See for a comparable, more semiotically oriented analysis of metaphors employed in Israeli literature on Arabs, Eisenzweig (1980). Firstly, some passages in The Haj refer to a presumed inherent susceptibility of Arabs to be mobilized into mass action: The short fuse that every Arab carries in his guts (...) this always smoldering rabble (...) (64) [An Arab mukhtar:] "During the summer heat my people become frazzled. They worry about the autumn harvest. They are drained. They are pent up. They must explode. (55) The metaphors refer to heat ("smoldering," "frazzled"), pressure in a container ("pent up"), explosion ("must explode") and a catalyzer ("fuse"). In Western culture this is a very familiar series of metaphors to understand uncontrollable anger (Lakoff and Kovecses 1987). In several lengthy passages in Exodus and The Haj such anger is explained by reference to the environmental factors considered above: The Arabs are said to be amenable to sudden emotional outbursts due to their historical inability to overcome natural (desert-like, dry) conditions - a classical racist explanation which fits the desert image analyzed in the previous section. The metaphors of pent up emotion ready to explode leads one to understand the process of mobilization as a quasi-physical sequence of events. The schema implies the linkage common sense makes between frustration and aggression. Frustration "contained" too long - not being released in a timely fashion and transformed into constructive action - is bound to be expressed in violence. The novels detail how these amplified emotions are manipulated by a leader. [According to a British officer the Arabs have leaders] cruel enough and arrogant enough to command them as one commands a mob of sheep. (The Haj: 74) (...) the masses were but pawns in the schemes of the effendis and sheikhs. They could be stirred into religious hysteria at the least provocation and were thus useful as a political weapon." (Exodus: 228) [Haj Amin] proceeded to stir up the fellaheen (...) he inflamed the fellaheen against the Jews, ranting that the Jews were stealing their land, desecrating their holy places (...). (No Time for Tears: 368) Haj Amin al-Husseini whipped up a mob of fellaheen with hatred for the Jews (...) (Exodus: 253) This time he concocted a cold-blooded fraud aimed at driving the Arabs wild (...) (Exodus: 262) In the Arab sector inflammatory oratory rang out to the wild chantings of Arab mobs. (Exodus: 421) (...) mobs, goaded by their leaders (Exodus: 466) Most passages employ the metaphors of animal ("a mob of sheep," "whipped up," "driving (...) wild," "wild" chantings, "goaded") and heat ("inflamed," "inflammatory"), whereas the expressions "stirred into" and "to stir up" can refer to both domains. The animal metaphor insinuates the mob to be either beyond control - run "wild" - or under control of the leader - as in "a mob of sheep." Such metaphors tie in with popular scientific theories about how mass behavior can be manipulated from outside. One such popular theory, behaviorism, originally drew from the malleability of human behavior via experiments with animals. .See for the historical impact of behaviorism on popular notions: Farr (1990). BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Toine van Teeffelen (1952) completed in 1992 a Ph.D. in discourse analysis at the University of Amsterdam on the representation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in popular literature. Earlier he published about ideological features of Israeli anthropology; Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Soemoed: Palestijnen onder Bezetting, Sumud: Palestinians under Occupation, Baarn: Het Wereldvenster), and images of the Middle East in Western media. At present he teaches discourse and communication studies at Birzeit University (West Bank). This theory was informed by LeBon's (1895) still widely accepted notion of the "depersonalization" of people in crowds, as a result of which mass action is seen as acquiring its own dynamic. This reasoning is suggested in several passages through animal, heat and sea metaphors. [About an Arab religious mass:] Out they poured (...) (The Haj: 52) If they become inflamed, I am but a mukhtar. I cannot stand against a tide (...) (The Haj: 55) It was a maddened swarm that fell on the wretched quarters of oriental Jews (...) (The Haj: 64) Within hours this always smoldering rabble had been ignited into a wildfire that swept over Palestine." (The Haj: 64) (...) while the Mufti and his cutthroats run wild. (Exodus; 270) (...) inflamed mobs broke out in wild rioting. (Exodus: 465) While the Arab mobs ran wild. (Exodus: 538) The metaphors of "wild," "wildfire," and "swept over" point to the quickness and uncontrollability of the people's movement; the metaphors of "swarm," "tide," and "poured" to the massivity of the moving object. The movement and the spreading of the mass are governed by the laws of nature in a way reminiscent of LeBon's quasi-physical metaphor of "contagion": in mass behavior people are said to imitate each other. In addition, popular psychology suggests that when forming a mass people may lose psychological control and become "mad"; cf. the expression "maddened swarm." Thus, whereas mass action is originally caused by factors and incentives from outside, it presumably reaches a point at which it is perceived to follow its own dynamic; psychologically when people lose control, and socially when mass action spreads to other areas. The movement's automatism is again brought forth in metaphors referring to the attack itself. (...) when Arabs had swept over that town, slaughtering all Jews in an apocalyptic fury (...) (The Source: 945) (...) the Arab mob fell upon the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City (The Haj: 52) Throughout the Arab world, other mobs (...) tore into Jewish ghetto quarters. (Exodus: 466) We didn't know what it meant until we saw those crazed mobs pouring into our sector. They were our friends - but they were insane. (Exodus: 472) In the Old City of Jerusalem, the Arab mobs surged in behind the Legion (...) (Exodus: 539) Enraged mobs poured into the streets (...) (The Haj: 64) The metaphors relate to the final stage of the social process set in motion by the leader's intrigue, implying a quasi-physical, expanding movement of a force irresistibly breaking through the "containment" of the targeted Jewish communities ("swept over," "fell upon," "tore into," "pouring into," "surged in"). Taken together, the metaphors imply a rather rigid reasoning, controlled by lay theories, that fits a relatively simple causal schema or scenario (Lakoff and Kovecses 1987). CONDITIONS PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITION: Short-temperedness Metaphor: "short fuse that every Arab carries" Theories: quasi-mechanical reasoning, "honor and shame" culture. SOCIAL CONDITION: Poor economy Metaphor: "my people become frazzled" Theory: climate/environment influences national characteristics CIRCUMSTANCES PSYCHOLOGICAL CIRCUMSTANCES: State of excitement Metaphor: "inflamed" Theory: frustration-aggression hypothesis PREPARATION OF ACTION PREPARATION OF MASS ACTION - PLAN: Leadership plot PREPARATION OF MASS ACTION - MENTAL TRAINING: Speech, sermon by (religious) leader, sloganizing Metaphor: "whipped up," "stirred up" Theories: religion coincides with intolerance, social scapegoating, manipulation/indoctrination, mass psychology PREPARATION OF MASS ACTION - INSTRUCTION - COMMAND: mass is directed toward victim Metaphor: "goaded" Theories: behaviorism, manipulation, mass psychology EXECUTION OF ACTION EXECUTION OF MASS ACTION - MOVEMENT - SOCIAL AMPLIFICATION: spreading of the mass Metaphor: "wildfire" Theories: quasi-physical/natural process, contagion, mass psychology EXECUTION OF MASS ACTION - MOVEMENT - EMOTIONAL AMPLIFICATION: mass anger increases Metaphor: "running wild" Theories: mass psychology, lack of self-control EXECUTION OF MASS ACTION - PENETRATION: mass enters and attacks Jewish quarter Metaphor: "pour in" Theory: quasi-physical/natural process Several slots of, and linkages in this schema are not specific to popular images of Arab or Islamic masses, but actually derive their persuasiveness from their wider application in other domains, as in the historical understanding of urban "mobs" in Europe, or, in regard to the more psychological categories of the schema, the understanding of uncontrolled aggressive sex by men. Consider, for example, the sexual connotation of the metaphor "stir up" - a metaphor which is widely applied in political and scientific discourse on Arab society (Said 1978). Interestingly, with some variations this schema is applied toward other situations in the Uris novels as well. For instance, the account in The Haj of the Palestinian flight from Palestine in 1948 (248 ff.), one of the most contested topics in historical descriptions of the conflict, is remarkably similar to the above in form, although contrastive in content. The role of the leader as the cause of the mass movement, the "excited" psychological state of the population, and the intensifiers of the social process mirror each other - except that the movements go in opposite directions: attacking and fleeing, respectively. In some of the other bestsellers comparable causal schemas are evoked when a psychological trauma of a Palestinian is said to lead to frustrations and tensions which are "nurtured" to the point that the tension comes into the open in the form of a violent guerrilla or terrorist action. Instead of being enlarged by contagion, this action typically triggers a series ("chain") of events which amplify the consequences of the action ("domino effect"). It is a worn-out device of many action thrillers to let the narrative threat bring the Western world at the brink of disaster or disintegration. The combination of psychological and social theories evoked here may well have a larger relevance in popular literature. Grixti (1989) regards it as characteristic for the horror genre. In his analysis, lay theories of psychoanalysis (the working of traumas) and behaviorism (guerrilla training and leader manipulation) are often brought forward to explain the building up and direction of a horrific threat. I turn over to the relevance of this discussion for the understanding of racism. First of all, it is clear that when used in the context of a threat, these metaphors invite racist themes. In fact, racist discourse is replete with animal, water or sea metaphors, for instance in descriptions of foreigners or refugees in Western countries (see Van Dijk 1987, 1991). The notion of people not being able to control their anger contrasts with prototypical Western standards of psychological functioning (Lakoff and Kovecses 1987). But I would again like to draw attention to the structural feature of amplification, this time not relating to the contrast between the Arab life world and the Western one, but to the various mechanisms of the threat build-up and execution at the individual and social level. I would contend that on the most general level the following metaphoric scenario marks a racist understanding: (a) a gradual increase of a mass in a container (emotional intensification); (b) the reaching of a critical point; (c) the breaking through or overflowing of the container, and (d) the subsequent enlargement in size and effect. Such scenario, with its combination of graduality and suddenness, slow and quick movement, seems particularly effective to accentuate a process of amplification. It is however important to notice here that by themselves the metaphors do not need to have racist implications. Again, context is crucial to meaning. For instance, it is quite common in Arab political discourse to label, without racist intentions, social unrest as a "volcano." For instance, Palestinians have used the metaphor to warn the international community and Israel that if circumstances in the Occupied Territories persist social unrest there may be uncontrollable. In that case the emphasis is not laid upon the inner lack of control but rather the problem or impossibility of outer control. In addition, it is very well possible to employ the water or sea metaphor in a directly positive fashion to call up an image of a people's strength and perseverance. How a form of interaction between the different meanings and evaluations of this metaphor is opened up and controlled can be illustrated by the following passage from John Le Carre's The Little Drummer Girl. The Mossad spy Charlie has a conversation with the Palestinian guerrilla-terrorist head Khalil during the preparation of a violent operation. "You know what we should do?" She didn't. "March. All of us. Before they destroy us for ever" (...) "From the United States, from Australia, Paris, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon - from everywhere in the world where there are Palestinians. We take ships to the borders. Planes. Millions of us. Like a great tide which nobody can turn back" (...) "Then all together, we march into our homeland, we claim our houses and our farms and our villages, even if we have to knock down their towns and settlements and kibbutzim in order to find them." (488). Linguistically, the Palestinians are amplified by rhetorical enumeration and hyperboles ("[m]illions of us") to form a mass which by sheer size apparently cannot be held back. The familiar water metaphor "tide" accentuates the massiveness and unstoppable movement of a march which supposedly breaks through the containment formed by Israel's physical and geographical borders. The ambiguity of the passage is called up by the different evaluations of this scenario. When adopting Khalil's perspective, the action may be understood to be an exemplary form of a liberation struggle, for some American readers perhaps reminiscent of Martin Luther King's march to Washington in the 1960s. Expressions like "march" and "waves" bear a positive meaning in such a context. But the reader can also refuse to adopt Khalil's perspective, an option which is in fact supported by a number of cues. Firstly, in the talks between Khalil and Charlie the narrative perspective is given to Charlie, who is quite skeptical about Khalil's political principles. Secondly, Khalil's speech style is staccato and elementary, and therefore unattractive (Van Teeffelen 1990). In addition, the mechanical conception of the return will bring many readers to wonder how serious the proposal is. When Khalil subsequently instructs Charlie how to use the bomb, most readers will feel rather alienated from Khalil's perspective. By invalidating this perspective, it becomes possible to understand the passage and the sea metaphor in a different way; namely, as an invasion-like, massive threat to Israel such as in the aforementioned descriptions. In a move rather typical for Le Carre, the threat is however ironically toned down when later on Khalil denies the possibility of this scenario: the Palestinians would "never come" (489). Although The Little Drummer Girl resembles other bestsellers in stereotypically framing Palestinian resistance as terrorism rather than resistance, it systematically refrains from employing the kind of narrative and linguistic amplifications that invite a clearly racist understanding. One of the recurring elements in the descriptions of threats we met above is the breaking through a form of containment or border. From an Israeli perspective, the vulnerability of this border is expressed by a metaphor or analogy which signifies a situation of absolute defense (the Masada analogy) or victimization (the Second World War and anti-Semitism analogies). Here we pass over from the metaphoric description of the mechanics of the threat to its (potential) consequences. VULNERABILITY The association of anti-Semitism with the Arab and Palestinian nationalist struggle is regularly made in most historical novels (Exodus, The Haj and No Time for Tears); for instance by stressing the cooperation between Hitler and the Mufti of Jerusalem or by the description of mobilizing slogans of various Arab leaders which explicitly suggest the 1948 war to be a continuation of the Nazi effort to exterminate the Jews. The thrillers make ample use of the Second World War analogy to frame contemporary events. An example is provided in The Pirate from the bestselling author Harold Robbins, a novel which appeared shortly after the 1973 October war and the oil boycott. This example also allows me to further dwell upon some of the ways in which bestseller stories authorize particular accounts. The novel describes a meeting between an Israeli and American delegation. Ben Ezra, a retired Israeli general, has requested the meeting. At a similar previous meeting he had warned of the outbreak of the war, pleading in vain for a preventive military action against the Arab countries. At this meeting he describes the war situation as critical to both Israel and the West. He asks the US to give Israel extra time to be able to continue the war and to occupy Egypt, Libya and the Gulf countries in order to safeguard the Western world from an escalation of the oil embargo. He continues: (..). The Arabs have come up with a better weapon than they ever dreamed off - an oil embargo. That can stop the Western world faster than an atom bomb. "If we control the oil of Libya and the Syrian pipelines, the embargo would fall apart. We could supply the whole world if we had to. Iran is already in the Western camp, Jordan would jump in quickly and there would be no threat. "But if we do not, the whole world economy may come tumbling down around our ears. The Arabs will split the world (...) Bit by bit, the Arabs will turn the countries of the world away from us. Ben Ezra rejects the objection from the representative of the State Department Harris that such an intervention might lead to Soviet involvement. Instead, he blames the Americans for pursuing an appeasement policy. Harris looked at Eshnev [the leader of the Israeli delegation]: "Fortunately this is not your government's policy." Eshnev nodded reluctantly. "It is not." Harris turned back to Ben Ezra. "It is Mr. Kissinger's hope to have an effective cease-fire agreement in two days." "My congratulations to Mr. Kissinger." Ben Ezra's voice was sarcastic. "He may yet prove himself the Neville Chamberlain of the seventies." "I think this discussion is beyond the scope of our meeting," Harris said stiffly," and should be dealt with on a higher level (...)" After the meeting a CIA-representative in the American delegation gives Ben Ezra his private opinion: "You know, general," he said in his nasal Midwestern voice, "you're absolutely right. I wish more of our people would listen to you." After the Americans depart Eshnev asks Ben Ezra's opinion of the meeting. Ben Ezra just quotes a Yiddish phrase: "It's tough to be a Jew." (245-9) Ben Ezra legitimates his plea for a preventive attack by propagating the racist idea, often expressed during and following the 1973 oil boycott, that the Arabs should be prevented from gaining world dominance. Such an opinion will not be self-evident to most Western readers, if only since it deviates from the official American line at the time. To lend it credibility, the passage develops a strong framing. First, the comparison with the situation before the Second World War and the Yiddish phrase bring the point home to the reader that Jewish existence is at stake. The analogy activates the ideological concern of an Israel abandoned in time of danger. This political context makes it extremely difficult for Western readers to refute Ben Ezra's opinion, even though one might disagree with it. It also serves to anaesthesize the opinion against any thought or argument that it is inspired by racism. In addition, the opinion is supported by a number of narrative devices which deserve extra attention since they are specific for the ways in which popular literature in general legitimate conservative or racist points of view. Much of popular literature's attraction stems from the accentuation of the unattractiveness of the institutional order with its fixed roles and scripts. Instead, popular culture authorizes authentic, "free" talk and action. In the words of modern theorists of popular culture the "popular forces" are pitted against the institutional "power bloc" (Fiske 1989). The bestsellers often show Mossad agents addressing their superiors with infectious disregard for institutional precepts. In general, action thrillers fantasize the recapturing of human potency through adventure. Although the evocation of a popular world is especially characteristic of popular culture, it is present in other discourse genres as well, such as the press; cf. the way the tabloid press often employs a populist rather than an institutional mode of address to reach a broad audience (Fowler 1991). Some typical sources of popular authority encountered in the novels are the following. First, national traditions supply authoritative heroic stories, such as stories of the Jewish tradition and the Bible, which can be appropriated for nationalist aims. Second, in popular fiction suffering or life problems in general, such as those stemming from anti-Semitism, often add to someone's experience and wisdom. Third, action capability, as demonstrated by the performance of daring actions outside institutional confines, infuses the hero with a great deal of charisma. Conversely, prototypes of institutional authority, such as the bureaucrat, the diplomat or the professional politician, are targets of ridicule unless dropped into action. In the passage the hero, Ben Ezra, is assigned quite a lot of charisma, due in part to his role as a legendary general. He is the prototype of the Israeli man of action, quite capable and well-informed, having his own information sources among Arabs through his marriage with an Arab woman. He displays an informal, anti-institutional style, cf. the use of such words as "we" and "jump in." A lively style, even at the cost of tresspassing rules of politeness, usually enhances authority in popular fiction. On the other hand, the American Harris limits the scope of the subject and puts an end to the open controversy by an argument which is clearly bureaucratic and unpopular in content and style. The discussion is "beyond the scope of our meeting, and should be dealt with on a higher level," he says "stiffly." He thus shifts the discussion from the informal discourse type of brainstorming to a more formal type, the presentation of an official position. He exploits this change of discourse type to secure institutional rather than authentic agreement from the Israeli spokesperson, who nods "reluctantly" confirming the official Israeli position. The message is clear: Harris hides behind his role as official spokesperson. He does not want to answer Ben Ezra's persuasive attempt at open dialogue. Informally Ben Ezra has made his point, however, as is clear from Eshnev's reaction. Ben Ezra's persuasiveness is confirmed by the informal remark from the CIA-man, whose institutional position prevented the open expression of his opinions during the meeting. The man's Midwestern accent, perhaps indicating an anti-institutional stance, enhances his authenticity. Ben Ezra's popular but not institutional authority produces an effect of self-victimization; he is not able to put his argumentative point into practice. This legitimizes political resentment, an effect quite common in action thrillers. Their heroes often operate outside the law, and have to confront powerful but ineffective law-and-order bureaucracies. Such narrative situations easily lend themselves to the expression of otherwise delicate or controversial opinions. Racist expressions can be presented as being turned into a taboo by official institutions and their spokespersons, a move quite usual in conversational racism (Van Dijk 1987). A similar censoring by diplomats of hawkish views or clearly racist opinions toward Arabs, resulting in the credentializing of these opinions, can be found in Black Sunday, Thirty Four East, The Fifth Horseman, and The Haj. Analogies with the Second World War or anti-Semitism in Europe show Jews as victims. However, this contrasts with the role Israeli heroes play in the novels (Breines 1987). Let us therefore consider another analogy often employed: Israelis as warriors. The Masada story refers to a beleaguerment in 73 A.D. by the Roman army of the mountain Masada near the Dead Sea during which Jewish warriors and their families, after acknowledging the hopelessness of their case, decided to commit collective suicide. In several bestsellers, the story is mentioned in one way or another: as a nationalist slogan in the historical novels ("The Spirit of Masada Lives On", "We Will Not Forget Masada"), as an exemplary story (No Time for Tears); as a place for meditation (The Tower of Babel); as a point of reference in the interrogation of a Mossad hero's or an Israeli leader's psychology (Heirs of Cain, The Tower of Babel, The Fifth Horseman); and as an allegory which structures parts of the story (By the Rivers of Babylon, Exodus). The frequent occurrence of this national myth is no surprise given important tenets of Zionism such as the universal minority position of the Jews and the refusal to give up the national or ethnic struggle. Moreover, the image is narratively very attractive. Most adventure stories contain scenes in which heroes find themselves cornered. Again the power of the metaphor results in part from its combination with metonymy. On the one hand, as a visual, concrete metaphor the Masada story is a rhetorically convincing device to conjure up an amplified crisis situation and the schema of the Israeli-Arab conflict as one between an aggressive and powerful enemy and a small country that must defend itself. On the other hand, the story recalls a metonymical line in history which, in the words of Breines (1990: 75), stretches "from Masada to Mossad." This line is viewed to be continuous in regard to the will to fight, but discontinuous in regard to the ability to fight, presumably restored by Zionism. The story is ideologically productive due to its power to raise and direct thinking about Zionist dilemmas. One question raised and discussed by Jewish characters in some bestsellers (Exodus, By the Rivers of Babylon, The Tower of Babel) is whether or not it is morally permitted to kill oneself rather than to surrender, a question which both accentuates and negotiates the value of life under extreme predicament. Pertinent to my discussion of self-other negotiation is the implication of the Massada metaphor, like the Holocaust or anti-Semitism analogies, that Israelis may find themselves in a position without defense, a possibility which seems to invalidate Zionism's very accomplishment. By narrative amplification, such metaphors and analogies imply that Israel has little other choice than violence, either against the self (the Masada suicide) or against the other. It is here where the connection with racism can be made in dealing with figures which otherwise borrow their credibility from an apparently anti-racist position. Mirroring the mechanics of the amplified threat suggested by the sea, fire and animal metaphors, the Masada scenario implies the gradual intensification of a massive threat, the reaching of a critical point, the breaking through of a defensive border, and the "overflowing" of the self. In his semiotic study of some Israeli novels, Eisenzweig (1980) suggests that one reason why water and sea are so often employed in Israeli literature as metaphors for the other is that they fit the conception of Israel as an encircled "island" threatened with physical and social extinction when taken over by the Arab world. It is a familiar feature of racist argumentations to evoke the possibility of the destruction or dissolution of the self. It is at this point that, dependent on context of use, analogies of Masada and Holocaust can be employed for racist purposes. Although the specter of extinction is sometimes evoked in the bestsellers - in Triple Palestinian fedayeen are said to "hijack a Holocaust" (243) - no bestsellers allow for a plot which puts Israelis effectively in a powerless, Masada-type situation. Significantly, except for the minor case of an Israeli soldier captured together with a group of Americans in Thirty Four East, only Westerners are kidnapped. Even in By the Rivers of Babylon, in which an airplane with Israeli leaders is forced to land in Iraqi Babylon, they are allowed to defend themselves. As the cover says: "Entebbe, Mogadishu: but at Babylon the hostages fight back..." The Masada metaphor has shown an interesting turn in usage during the 1970s when it increasingly became subjected to controversy. While on the one hand the Masada myth can be viewed as an extreme realization of moral values. it can also be understood as a symptom of a trauma. Then anti-Semitism and the Holocaust are considered responsible for an irrationally strong denial of vulnerability and an uncompromising attitude under circumstances which provide other options than fighting until death. Thus, some heroes are scrutinized for their receptivity to the so-called Masada complex (Heirs of Cain, The Fifth Horseman and The Tower of Babel). Some of the Israeli antagonists in these novels are apparently "infected" by the norms attributed to the other. Such an understanding recalls the contradiction which Susan Sontag (1988), in her study of metaphors on AIDS, noticed when she explained how difficult it is for people to reconcile the idea of AIDS as "plague" with the possibility that one might be infected by it. Yet, even though the bearers of the "Masada syndrome" may be considered "fanatic", this fanaticism differs from the one attributed to the Arabs insofar knowledge of Jewish history mitigates any possible blame. So the division between the Israeli self and the Arab other is not really in danger. It is precisely because the myth allows this limited negotiation within an amplified self-other divide that makes it attractive as narrative and productive as ideology. CONCLUSION Metaphors steer attention, conceptualize issues, and sustain and create common sense meaning, including lay social and psychological theories. They are therefore important in the reproduction of racism. Moreover, since metaphoric meaning can flex to fit different contexts they allow for both racist amplifications of the self-other divide as well as forms of ambivalence and contradiction. The latter are however controlled and restricted by various credentializing devices. LITERATURE Antonius, S. 1994. (in print) "Trash" in Discourse and Palestine, edited by A. Moors, T. van Teeffelen, I. Abou Ghazaleh and S. Kanaana (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis). Bennett, T. and Woollacott, J. 1987. Bond and Beyond: The Political Career of a Popular Hero (London: MacMillan). Breines, P. 1990. Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry (New York: Basic Books). Chomsky, N. 1986. The Fateful Triangle. London: Pluto Press. Denning, M. 1987a. Cover Stories: Narrative and Ideology in the British Spy Thriller (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul). Denning, M. 1987b. Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture in America (London: Verso). Eisenzweig, U. 1980. Territoires Occupes de l'Imaginaire Juif (Paris: Christian Bourgeois). Farr, R. 1990. "Waxing and Waning of Interest in Societal Psychology: A Historical Perspective", in Societal Psychology, edited by H. Himmelweit and G. Gaskell, 46-66 (London: Sage). Farsoun, S. and J.Landis 1991. "The Sociology of an Uprising: The Roots of the Intifada" in Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads, edited by J. Nassar and R. Heacock, 15-37 (Birzeit/New York: Birzeit University/Praeger). Fernandez J. 1991. Beyond Metaphor: The Theory of Tropes in Anthropology (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Fiske, J. 1989. Understanding Popular Culture. Boston: Hyman. Fowler, R. 1991. Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London and New York: Routledge. Gates, H. 1986. "Introduction: Writing 'Race' and the Difference It Makes" in "Race," Writing, and Difference, edited by H. Gates, 1-21 (Chicago: Chicago University Press). Grixti,J. 1989. Terrors of Uncertainty: The Cultural Contexts of Horror Fiction (London: Routledge). Haste, H. 1993. The Sexual Metaphor (Hemel Heampstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf). JanMohamed, A. 1986. "The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature" in "Race," Writing, and Difference, edited by H. Gates, 78-107 (Chicago: Chicago University Press). Lakoff, G. and Z.Kovecses 1987. "The Cognitive Model of Anger Inherent in American English" in Cultural Models in Language and Thought, edited by N.Quinn and D.Holland, 195-222 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). LeBon, G. 1895. Le Psychologie des Foules (Paris: Press Universitaires de France). Lee, D. 1992. Competing Discourses: Perspective and Ideology in Language (London: Longman). McKenzie, K. and T.van Teeffelen 1993. "Transcending the Higher Ground Between Europe and Middle East" Pragmatics 3: 305-333. Ohnuki-Tierney, E. 1991 "Embedding and Transforming Polytrope: The Monkey as Self in Japanese Culture" in Theory of Tropes in Anthropology, edited by J. Fernandez, 159-190 (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Orfalea, G. 1988. "Literary Devolution: The Arab in the Post-World War II Novel in English" Journal of Palestine Studies 17: 109-128. Quinn, N. and D.Holland (eds.) 1987. Cultural Models in Language and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Sabbagh, S. 1991. Sex, Lies and Stereotypes: The Image of Arabs in American Popular Fiction (Washington: ADC Issue Paper, 23). Said, E. 1978. Orientalism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul). Schank, R. 1990. Tell Me a Story: A New Look at Real and Artificial Memory (New York: MacMillan). Shohat, E. 1987. Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (Austin: University of Texas Press). Sontag, S. 1988. Aids and Its Metaphors (London: Allen Lane). Suleiman, M. 1988. The Arabs in the Mind of America (Brattleboro: Amana). Terry, J. 1985. Mistaken Identity: Arab Stereotypes in Popular Writing (Washington: American Arab Affairs Council). Turner, T. 1991. "'We Are Parrots, Twins Are Birds': Play of Tropes as Operational Structure" in The Theory of Tropes in Anthropology, edited by J. Fernandez, 121-159 (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Van Teeffelen, T. 1981. "Tragic Heroes and Victims in Zionist Ideology" Khamsin 9: 117-35. Van Teeffelen, T. 1991. "Argumentation and the Arab Voice in Western Bestsellers" Text 2: 241-266. Van Teeffelen, T. 1992a. "Understanding Political Action as a Script or a Project: The Representation of Palestinians in Popular Literature" Journal of Narrative and Life History 2: 163-182. Van Teeffelen, T. 1992b. On the Edge of the Wilderness: Popular Fiction and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict (Amsterdam: Program of Discourse Studies, University of Amsterdam). Van Teeffelen, T. 1994. (in print) "Popular fiction and Palestine", in Discourse and Palestine, edited by A. Moors, T. van Teeffelen, I. Abou Ghazaleh and S. Kanaana (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis). Van Dijk, T.A. 1987. Communicating Racism (Beverly Hills: Sage). Van Dijk, T.A. 1991. Racism and the Press (London: Routledge). Wetherell, M. and J.Potter 1992 Mapping the Language of Racism: Discourse and the Legitimation of Exploitation (New York: Harvester/Wheatsheaf). LIST OF BESTSELLERS Eric Ambler 1972. The Levanter (New York: Atheneum). Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre 1980. The Fifth Horseman (New York: Simon and Schuster). Alfred Coppel 1975. Thirty Four East (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston). Ken Follett 1980. Triple. (New York: Arbor House). Cynthia Freeman 1981. No Time for Tears (London: Piathus). Gay Courter 1986. Code Ezra (New York: Signet). Thomas Harris 1975. Black Sunday (New York: Putnam). Joan Hemmingway and Paul Bonnecarrere 1978. Rosebud (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Harry Kemelman 1972. Monday the Rabbi Took Off (New York: Fawcett Crest). John Le Carré 1983. The Little Drummer Girl (New York: Knopf). Meyer Levin 1972. The Settlers (New York: Simon and Schuster). William McGivern 1973. Caprifoil (London: Collins). Nelson De Mille 1978. By the Rivers of Babylon (London: Grafton). James Michener 1965. The Source (New York: Random House). Andrew Osmond 1976. Saladin! (New York: Bantam). Harold Robbins 1974. The Pirate (New York: Simon and Schuster). Gerald Seymour 1976. The Glory Boys (London: Collins). Wilbur Smith 1974. Eagle in the Sky (London: Heinemann). Leon Uris 1958. Exodus (New York: Doubleday). Leon Uris 1984. The Haj (New York: Doubleday). Morris West 1968. The Tower of Babel (London: Heinemann). The corpus contains bestsellers with a focus on the Israeli-Arab or Israeli-Palestinian conflict that appeared on the New York Times Book Review bestseller lists since World War 2 until 1986. The list has been added by some novels (Code Ezra, Saladin! and Rosebud) which attracted special interest in reviews, or were written by bestselling authors (The Glory Boys, Eagle in the Sky). NOTES