Chapter 7 is one of three to describe controlled multi-sited ethnographies the author conducted to reverse-path trace the noise that obfuscated the Sesame Street interventions’ effects and impacts. The ethnographies link the children to their specific communities, looking at how glocalization of interstate systemic forces socialized them and how their everyday lives were reshaped by their respective conflict zones, altering their readings of the text—key to understanding their Palestinian, Jewish Israeli, and Arab/Palestinian Israeli cultures-in-the-making. They also shed light on the children’s dialogical critical intra- and cross-cultural mundane conflict zone experiences and perspectives. A detailed layout describes the lives of the Palestinian audience members, residents of the stateless nation village of East Barta’a—how they are perceived by Jewish Israelis seeking security, Arab/Palestinian Israelis seeking equality, and as they see themselves, seeking justice, as an island cut off from the rest of Palestine/the PA by a “wall” and gate to the east and Israel proper to the west. At age 5, they had already become acculturated to their ethnopolitical grouping’s interpretation of conflict zones structures. They symbolically transferred the meaning of “Jew” into an “army of infidels,” preventing them from achieving independence, “correcting” the imbalance they perceived that could not accommodate their interpersonal contact with Israeli soldiers, with Sesame Street’s encoding of civilian and good-natured “Jews.” They normalized the conflict, adopting protest play patterns and explained that the only resolution is “converting Jews to Islam,” eliminating the other party to “the conflict.”

This chapter’s ethnography of the “quality of life” West Bank development/settlement of Alfei Menashe describes the structural realities and security schematic narrative lens through which this Jewish Israeli audience filtered “the conflict” and understood the series. They are viewed from outside by stateless-nation Palestinians as living behind the “Wall Enclave” and by state-minority Arab/Palestinian Israelis as a “settlement” (most Jewish Israelis regard it as a “consensus settlement”). Alfei provides its children the greatest opportunity for contact with Palestinians, which the separation barrier has all but eliminated for Israelis. Neither interpersonal contact with Palestinian day laborers who build and clean their homes and playgrounds, nor imagined contact influenced their readings of the text. From secondary conversations, news media portrayals, and artifacts like the barrier constructed to maintain the secured existence of Israel, they learn Palestinians are those who commit terror. Via a binary logic, anyone allowed into Israel (or Sesame Street) is not Palestinian. Fearing harm, a majority erased Palestinian characters. These processes, not Sesame Street, were overwhelmingly socializing them, leading them to oppose the series’ attempt to communicate peace. They normalized and reproduced “the conflict,” assuming defensive play patterns; for them, the resolution is “evicting, killing or imprisoning” Palestinians.

Chapter 9 depicts the community, socialization and narratives of Arab/Palestinian Israeli children of Uhm Al-Fahm. This large ethnopolitically Arab city in Israel is viewed by Jewish Israelis as the seat of Palestinian nationalism; and by Palestinians as home to ’48 Arabs who did not resist the Zionists but are culturally and politically key to pursuing justice for Palestinians. From the inside, locals see inequity of resources, and police as monitoring and targeting them. Fahmouwee children’s interactions revolved largely around other Arab/Palestinian Israelis. The majority did not position themselves as the victim, unlike the Palestinian and Jewish Israeli children; and defined themselves as a third sub-state identity, “Arab Muslim Fahmouwees.” Despite their awareness of “fighting,” these children also painted a picture of normalcy. Though their everyday conflict zone experiences also encoded them to erase their shared others in Sesame Street, theirs was a relatively more nuanced interpretation, suggesting that Arab/Palestinian Israeli children are uniquely open to the possibility of being moved by the series’ aims. Still, they also normalized and reproduced the violence, reinserting themselves into the status of state minority through their identity negotiations and protest play patterns. For them too, conflict resolution is achieved by “converting Jews to Islam.”