Practicing Uncertainty: Scenario-Based Preparedness Exercises in Israel

Abstract

Eyal Barak, 1 an official responsible for writing and directing the Israeli emergency-preparedness exercise known as Turning Point (Nekudat Mifne), explained to me how scenario narratives are selected: "We are talking about a serious and reasonable scenario, this is what we design, not a worst case, but plausible and serious. I'm not saying this is what's going to happen, but that this is what we need to prepare for. This is not a prophecy, it's a decision, and we need to be ready for it."Turning Point is an annual scenario-based event that involves all government ministries, local municipalities, and essential infrastructure units, as well as all citizens. It is the largest scenario-based exercise of its kind. Preparations for each exercise are extensive; some units start preparing more than five months ahead of execution. The last two months before the exercise involve the most intensive preparations, and, then-for a specified number of days-all relevant units practice the scenario and its implications. Scenarios include preparedness for natural disasters as well as war and terrorism. The exercise has been conducted since 2007, following the country's second war with Lebanon. It is overseen by the National Emergency Management Authority (NEMA; the Hebrew acronym is Rachel), a unit of the Ministry of Defense. Though the organization responsible for civilian preparedness in Israel has changed several times over the years and

On parabiopolitical reason

“…This said, she cannot escape joining the majority of her colleagues in zeroing in on the thematic of emergen(t)cy. Moreover, calibrating her analytical lens on the logic of scenario planning on the basis of its ‘real’ (Samimian-Daresh, 2016: 371) dénouements, she buttresses the seemingly obvious presumption that the scenarios that scenario planners conjure are (just) stories. The old saw has to be repeated: it is not always obvious what is obvious.…”

“…The upshot is that, short of being utterly beyond the conceivable, aspiration and anticipation are the orders of the day—as much for the common man and woman as for the policy consultant. The professionalized scenario planning at the heart of parabiopolitical governmentality is far from the whole but still a noteworthy part of those orders (see, e.g., Caduff, 2015; Cerulo, 2006; Collier, 2008; Collier and Lakoff, 2008, 2015; Collier et al., 2004; Diprose et al., 2008; Keck, 2010, 2015; Lakoff, 2007, 2008; Lakoff and Collier, 2008; Mallard, 2017; Porter, 2016; Samimian-Darash and Rabinow; Samimian-Darash, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2016; Simon and De Goede, 2015; Stalcup, 2015; Stevenson and Jamieson, 2009).…”

‘Situational awareness’: Rethinking security in times of urban terrorism

“…No longer understood as ‘“evil” exceptions’ (Chandler, 2014: 443), such acts of terrorism in European cities have given rise to a logic of governing that proceeds in anticipation of ‘serious’ and ‘plausible’ events (Samimian-Darash, 2016) on urban grounds. A call to alertness, smartness, sensitivity and prompt reactions in the here and now folds into the future-oriented demands of prevention and preemption.…”

Staging Climate Security: Resilience and Heterodystopia in the Bangladesh Borderlands

“…If anticipatory planning marks the zeitgeist of contemporary governmentality, it is far from monolithic. It has multiple genres, situated contexts, and cultural vocabularies in need of ethnographic attention (Lowe ; Samimian‐Darash ). I suggest that we understand what I here call heterodystopias as a specific genre of anticipatory governance: one that frames particular spaces at once as sites of experimental management for future crisis and as representational zones that enact spectacles of containment and securitization.…”