Birding Beyond Borders: Middle Eastern Birdwatching Deconstructs Border Stereotypes and Builds Identity

Abstract

Despite significant research studying the effects of the natural realm on human coexistence across many broad regions, there is little published on the relationship between nature and politics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Birds and birdwatching present an alternative realm to explore how the peripheral nature and naturality specifically of borders allow for information exchange between extraordinarily diverse groups, thus yielding a potential new trajectory of reconciliation for the MENA region and its human populations. Using cultural media analysis of a Vice News YouTube segment, I analyze the cohesive effects of birds in Middle Eastern border areas, particularly Golan Heights. To further demonstrate the potential for connecting and identity-forming ability of birds to specific peoples and places, I discuss avian migration patterns of birds in Golan Heights, explore historical and cultural significance of birds in Tehran, and navigate a personal Jewish narrative titled “ Birding in the Dark ” . Birds and the natural realm have the potential to teach humans, especially in the border-stereotyped MENA region, how to coexist. The legacies of early and mid-twentieth century Middle Eastern state-building featured the seizure of territory during opportunities of state weakness, causing an influx of borders to be drawn and redrawn. A paralleled rise in separatism created an inseparable connection between the Middle East and border instability. The ensuing portrayal of borders by media sources characterizes borderlines in the Middle East as strictly delineated by brutality; however, the seemingly indifferent nature of a birder group in the Vice News Golan Heights video toward the Syrian-Israeli conflict shows that borders, through birders, have the capacity to be more arbitrary and flexible than originally projected. Avianmigration patterns further dismantle the perception of impassable and demarcated borderline areas. The Golan Heights area and the Syria-Israel border make up an important migration corridor for migrating birds.