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ABSTRACT
In this article, I analyze how the mainstream media in Israel, increasingly shaped by social media, constructs a story about a mixed marriage between an Israeli woman, who was raised as Jewish and had converted to Islam, and a Israeli Muslim-Arab man. Referring to 57 items published mainly in August 2014 (during the Third Gaza War), a “human rights,” a “Romeo and Juliette,” and an “assimilation” discourses are identified. Mixedness appears as part of the democratization of Israel in the first and second discourses; in the third one, mixedness appears as a threat to the Jewish state. The growing impact of the new media is also referred to.
Notes
1. Skogerbø et al., “Agenda-Setting Revisited”; Fuchs, Social Media: A Critical Introduction.
2. Burton, “An Assimilating Majority?”; Engelberg, “Fighting Intermarriage”; Gross and Shisha, Hatunat ha-damim [Blood wedding]; Hakak, “‘Undesirable Relationships.’”
3. Mann and Lev-On, “Shinuyim [Changes].”
4. Merton, “Intermarriage and Social Structure”; Collet, “Mixed Couples in France”; Killian, “Introduction,” Interracial Couples.
5. Rodriguez-Garcia, “Intermarriage and Integration Revisited,” 89.
6. Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation; Collet, “Mixed Couples in France”; Collet and Santelli, “Endogamy versus Homogamy”; Diduck and Raday, “Introduction: Family”; El Saadawi, Hidden Face of Eve; Nagel, Race, Ethnicity and Sexuality; Streiff-Fénart, “Sauver la face” [Saving face].
7. De Hart, “Regulating Mixed Marriages.”
8. Bourdieu, Sur la télévision [On television]; McQuail, McQuails’s Mass Communication Theory; Griffin, A First Look; Cacciatore et al., “The end of framing as we know it…”.
9. Gottfried and Shearer, News Use. Fuchs, Social Media: A Critical Introduction.
10. McCombs, “A Look at Agenda-Setting”; Groshek and Groshek, “Agenda Trending”; Digital News Report (2016); Skogerbø et al., “Agenda-Setting Revisited.”
11. Merkl, “Embedded and Defective Democracies”; Ben-Rafael et al., Handbook of Israel.
12. Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract, Table 2.1 and Table 2.2.
13. Shlomi Diaz, “Hatuna be-hassut ha-mishtara” [Marriage under police protection]. Israel Hayom, August 18, 2014, 9.
14. Bystrov, “Religion, Demography and Attitudes”; Fogiel-Bijaoui, “Families in Israel”; “Transmitting the Nation”; Triger, “Freedom from religion in Israel”. Engelberg, “Fighting Intermarriage”, in this issue.
15. Dana and Bar-Nitzan, “Hitaslemut Yehudiyot” [Conversion of Jewish women to Islam]; Carmi, “Ma im Aravi” [What if an Arab]; Assaf Golan, “Ha-tzionut ha-datit ve-hitbolelut” [Religious Zionism and assimilation], August 17, 2014, 1 and 5; Burton, “An Assimilating Majority?”; Engelberg, “Fighting Intermarriage.”
16. Hacker, “Inter-Religious Marriages”; Triger, “Gendered Racial Formation”; Rabbi Shmuel Lifshitz, “Minhara tahat yesod ha-kiyum shelanu” [A tunnel under the very foundation of our existence], Israel Hayom, August 18, 2014, 28; Hakak, “‘Undesirable Relationships.’” For more data on this issue: DeLaPergolla, “Ethnoreligious Intermarriage in Israel”.
17. Fuchs, “Seker Ha-aretz: 75% me-ha-yehudim be-yisrael neged nisu’im bein dati’im” [Ha’aretz poll: 75% of the Jews in Israel oppose interfaith marriage], Haaretz, August 22, 2014, 1.
18. Mann and Lev-On, “Shinuyim” [Changes]; Duah Shnati [Annual Report], 2016.
19. Mann and Lev-On, Duah Shnati [Annual Report], 2015, 32.
20. Mann and Lev-On, Duah Shanti [Annual Report], 2016, 30.
21. Mann and Lev-On, “Shinuyim [Changes].”
22. Dor,” On newspaper headlines as relevance optimizers”.
23. Druckman, “Implications of Framing Effects.”
24. See, for example, Dana and Bar-Nitzan, “Hitaslemut Yehudiyot [Conversion of Jewish women to Islam].”
25. On this topic see also Hakak, “‘Undesirable Relationships.’”
26. Kaufman et al. Hevra Aravit be-Yisrael [Arab Society in Israel]; Adalah; Hakak, “‘Undesirable Relationships’ ”; Abu-Baker, “Gender policy in family and society”; Meler, “Finding the Keys to Autonomy.”
27. Fogiel-Bijaoui, “Transmitting the Nation”; Abu-Baker, “Gender Policy in Family and Society”; Meler, “Finding the Keys to Autonomy.”
28. Burton, “An Assimilating Majority?”; Engelberg, “Fighting Intermarriage.”
29. Burton, “An Assimilating Majority?”
30. Mann and Lev-On, Citation2016, 30.
31. Lemish, “Normalizing Inequality”; Lachover and Lemish, “Ha-itonaiyot.”
32. Skogerbø et al., “Agenda-Setting Revisited”; Benski and Fisher, Internet and Emotions.
33. Ott, “The Age of Twitter”; Pickard, “Media Failures.”
34. It seems that media discourses on mixed marriage and families are not yet on the research agenda of media studies (For a special case in point cf: Caballero and Aspinall, “‘Unnatural Alliances”). The only exception seems to be cinema studies (Beltran, and Fojas, Mixed Race Hollywood). In that field of research, there are many published research works, including in Israel, (for instance research on “Burekas films”: Shohat, Israeli Cinema).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Sylvie Fogiel-Bijaoui
Sylvie Fogiel-Bijaoui is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Israel Academic College in Ramat-Gan. She holds a PhD in Political Sociology from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and Paris (West)- Nanterre (Paris). Her fields of research are: Gender Studies; Citizenship and Human Rights; Family and Kibbutz Studies. She has published extensively on these topics in peer reviewed journals, chapters and books.