Views of Palestine from an American poolside

The ladies who attend the aqua fit class at the public pool near my Los Angeles home are never short for chatter. Wearing underwater jog belts and pulling resistance bands, they converse about grandchildren, vacation plans, and hair salons. In between sets, some ladies wade to the side of the pool to sip their iced coffee.  After class, the jabber continues in the locker room, where they mingle, unabashedly naked.  The ladies eventually mosey to the parking lot and disperse in luxury cars.

This pool is not the setting in which one would expect to hear people talk about one of the century’s gravest human rights issues, i.e. the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  However, the topic subtly emerged a few days ago.

In the hot summer months, the pool becomes more crowded than usual.  Management tries to enforce the limit of 25 people per class by distributing tickets on a first-come, first-served basis.   A few ladies in the class vigilantly, and voluntarily, monitor the class numbers throughout the hour.  If an extra person steps into the pool, it is almost guaranteed that one of the ladies will start waving her pool noodle or bar float in the sky.    Usually the lifeguard will take notice of the signal and then shoo the person out.

The other day, two ladies were strategizing together about how best to keep out, what they referred to as, the “infiltrators.” The conversation was disjointed and went as follows:

“We need to do like Israel and put up around the pool one of those…what’s that thing called…dome?”

“Iron.”

“Yeah.”

The exchange was short, and bookend by the usual chitchat, but the significance is manifold.  It reveals as much about what these retired, upper-middle class Americans think about the pool, as what they think about war, Palestinians, and Israel.

The Iron Dome is a mobile, all-weather air defense system intended to intercept rockets from Gaza headed to Israel. The dome represents Israel’s practice of disproportionate warfare in the name of self-preservation.   For example, in Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge, there was negligible amount of harm to Israelis from rockets out of Gaza, compared to that caused by Israeli air strikes on Palestinian infrastructure and civilian centers.

The ladies’ reference to the iron dome as a model for self-defense reflects an acceptance and sanctioning of Israel’s disproportionate use of force against Palestinians.   The needs, rights, and feelings of those outside the pool, or metaphorically speaking the Palestinians, do not enter into the picture.  What is most important is protecting the comfortable status of those in the pool.    Security is a cunning way to justify divisions.  Instead of asking if another lane could be opened, more classes added to the schedule, or an additional lifeguard added to the deck, the ladies adopt the line of thinking that their lives are at risk when the class exceeds 25 people.

There is a normalization of Israeli human rights abuses in the way the ladies casually referenced the iron dome system. They barely know the name of the system, but have no hesitation in using it in their discourse.  The ladies’ affinity to Israel makes the country a sacred place to be protected – a place that exists as surely in this world as the pool itself.

There is a self-fulfilling prophecy in the ladies’ reference to the iron dome. The pool, like Israel, contains the good people, with the bad people looming on the sidelines.  If the regulars at the aqua fit class do not demonize and attack the infiltrators, then they risk losing, or having to share, what they hold dear.

The metaphor of the pool as Israel also shows a total disregard for Palestinian life. To compare something as banal and insignificant as a public pool in a privileged area of Los Angeles to a war zone dismisses the devastating implications of violence on the lives of Palestinians.

The invisibility of this fortress in the sky (i.e. the iron dome) is all the more problematic.  The pool ladies want to construct divisive walls that they cannot see. As long as the music keeps going and the coffee keeps getting sipped, it is best not to have to see the conflict zone.

What the LA pool ladies, and Israel, do not seem to acknowledge is that they risk drowning so long as they think of ways to lock themselves inside.