Chronic Trauma, the Sound of Terror, and Current Israeli Cinema

Abstract

Since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987, and especially during the height of the second Intifada (2002‐04), Israeli society experienced chronic trauma. This stemmed from a long series of terrorist attacks perpetrated by Palestinian suicide bombers who acted alone, carrying explosive-packed belts or parcels into crowded urban settings. While an average of three such attacks occurred monthly between October 2000 and November 2004, 1 they were pushed away from the public eye by Israeli public discourse. This distancing is built into the level of visual imagery allowed by the media. The attack is represented in media reports by familiar iconography (long shots, invisibility of the corpse, etc.). In terms of sound, one can’t even speak of representation, but rather of a total absence, the result of a silencing. Even though the blast waves of the explosion are mainly responsible for the traumatic forcefulness of the event, i.e., its visible traces, the volatility of the sound of the blast is consistent with its “silencing” in terms of its representation. The traumatic sound lacks any intimacy with the symbolic. In this sense, when speaking of levels of traumatization, repressing sound seems to be the deepest level. No wonder, then, that Israel’s chronic social fantasy regarding terrorist attacks is first and foremost acoustic: every Israeli is familiar with the visual aftermath of attacks, but only the victims have actually heard them. The fantasy, structured around the moment of the blast as a phantom, is powerful precisely because the sound quickly vanishes and is unrepresentable. Like the traumatic event itself, signified by its reverberating boom, the sound is conceptualized only later, in its imagined post-effect. From this perspective,