Martyrdom and the Myth of Motherhood: U.K. broadcast news media’s agential construction of Palestinian female suicide bombers during the Second Intifada (2000-2005)

ABSTRACT

During the Second Intifada of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, female-perpetrated suicide bombings emerged as a new proponent of political violence during this phase of Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. Prior academic literature demonstrates the gendered nature of these acts—based upon wider debates concerning the male relationship with conflict—as key in predominantly Western print news media analyses of these female bombers’ coverage. Examining the widely unexamined medium of broadcast news, this article addresses the extent to which BBC News and ITV News embrace the “Myth of Motherhood” to communicate the Palestinian female body’s performative status. Via a postcolonial framework, analyses of applied natural (“Vacant Womb”) and unnatural (“Deviant Womb”) biological frameworks shall address whether constructions of Palestinian female suicide bombers’ allegedly deviant femininity impact upon representations of their political agency.

KEYWORDS:

• Palestinian female suicide bombers
• U.K. broadcast news media
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Intersectionality
• thematic analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Though Amireh recognises that Barbara Victor doesn’t identify as a feminist, Amireh categorises her work as such because Victor utilises a feminist linguistic style.

2. Of ten national newspaper titles, including broadsheets and tabloids, only the Daily Star was shown to have increased sales between November 2000 and November 2009.

3. Coverage of Dareen Abu Aysheh, the second-ever Palestinian female suicide bomber, was not selected for analysis.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Department for Employment and Learning (DEL) [DEL Ph.D. Studentship].

Notes on contributors

Matthew D. Kirk

Matthew D. Kirk was conferred a Ph.D. in International Studies from Queen’s University Belfast in December 2019. Dr Kirk’s research interests include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, political activism and agency, post-colonial media (particularly Africa) and the relationship between digital media and democracy. E-mail ID: [email protected]