Symbolic boundary work: Jewish and Arab femicide in Israeli Hebrew newspapers.

Publisher: published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the London School of Economics and Political Science Country of Publication: England NLM ID: 0373126 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1468-4446 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 00071315 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Br J Sociol Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: London : published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the London School of Economics and Political Science
Original Publication: London, Published by Routledge & Kegan Paul for London, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Arabs*/psychology ; Jews* ; Homicide* ; Newspapers as Topic*; Humans ; Israel ; Female ; Stereotyping ; Male ; Family ; Motivation ; Symbolism ; Crime Victims/psychology

We analyze 391 news reports in Israeli newspapers between 2013 and 2015, covering murders of women and their family members by other family members and intimate partners. We compare articles where the perpetrators and victims are Jewish to those where the perpetrators and victims are Palestinian citizens of Israel (henceforth PCI). We found that articles tend to provide much more details about Jewish culprits than about PCI ones. As for ascribed motives, most murder cases by Jews were framed as an outcome of individual personality or the pathology of the culprit. Conversely, when Palestinian citizens were the killers, culture and tradition were invoked as the main motives. We suggest that the routine work of narration that the Israeli media preform when covering femicide is a case of political use of cultural stereotypes to gain moral ground in the intractable conflict between Jews and Palestinians.
(© 2024 The Authors. The British Journal of Sociology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of London School of Economics and Political Science.)

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Keywords: Arabs; Israel; Jews; Palestinian citizens of Israel; femicide; media

Date Created: 20240130 Date Completed: 20240601 Latest Revision: 20240601

20240602

10.1111/1468-4446.13080

38288988