Foreign Bodies both Inside and Outside
I was watching TV and Benjamin Netanyahu described the Middle East crisis by making an analogy to the film Alien, describing Hezbollah as the alien lurching from the shadows and feeding off the host from the inside. "Have you seen the film Alien?" Netanyahu claimed. "Hezbollah is something like the monster that attacks from the outside but it's also a foreign body that feeds off the host." I think this is fantastic because: 1) It means Hezbollah is feminine -- strange! 2) Netanyahu deploys the horror genre to shore up the boundaries of national identity. 3) The abject is alive and well, and apparently informing Israel's foreign policy. 4) Paranoia is a fluid, supple notion that, given the fall of the cold war, is a dual pronged attack - we can no longer discern the other because they are on the inside and the outside.