Abstract
This study examined how commemorative journalism shapes collective memory by exploring 18 supplements and special projects commemorating Israel’s 70th anniversary. The research questions focused on three central narrative characteristics of journalism: protagonists, plots, and narrators. Our examination revealed the ways in which those located at the fringes of the ethnic-national community were excluded from these journalistic narratives, conveying mostly a tale of Israeli strength, narrated mostly by Jewish men. We maintain that the current dominant memory version narrated by the supplements reflects a withdrawal from and rejection of recent, more critical journalistic readings of the Israeli past. This conscious return to older, hegemonic patterns of narration of the national past could be understood within the context of two central conditions, shaping the construction of Israeli reality over the past two decades: the growing dominance of the political Right and changes in Israel’s media map.
Introduction
Throughout the last three decades, media memory scholars have analyzed the ways by which commemorative journalism recollects the past. Such scholarship looks at how the commemorative narration of past events changes - if at all - through time and across news media; it asks who are the protagonists of these commemorative narratives; who are the narrators of these accounts and what grants them the authority to narrate the past; finally, such studies explore which readings of the past dominate commemorative reporting, while other readings of the past are marginalized or dismissed (Kitch, 2005; Keith, 2012; Sonnevend, 2013; Somerstein, 2015).
The operation of journalism as a mnemonic agent is always anchored within larger political and cultural contexts. And so, gradual or swift changes in the perception of the collective past are always echoed, intensified, questioned, or even ignited by journalism. Hence for instance the late 1980s German “Historians dispute” (Historikerstreit) erupted and continued to unfold in the news media (Rabinbach, 1988). Similarly, the 1993–1995 heated debate over the Smithsonian’s Enola Gay exhibit was shaped, to a large extent, through its extensive journalistic coverage (Capaccio & Mohan, 1995). And so, overlooking the pivotal role of journalistic discourse in such critical rereadings of the collective past hampers the effort to comprehend the full scope of this phenomena.
But what about instances in which the critical rereading of the collective past is itself questioned, critiqued or ignored? What is the role of journalism in mnemonic processes that aspire to withdraw from the supposedly linear progression of collective recollection, from a partial and one-sided interpretation of the past towards more inclusive and pluralistic interpretations? How does journalism situate itself in response to cultural and political demands to resign from journalism’s own, previous critical rereading of the national past?
This article aims to address these questions through an exploration of the 2018 commemorative supplements and special projects, published by Hebrew newspapers in commemoration of Israel’s 70th anniversary. To do so, we examined which events comprised the main memory narratives; who were the main protagonists of the narratives and what social roles were assigned to them; and which voices were heard while others were silenced, or downplayed. Following that, these findings were explored within the context of the longitudinal investigation of Israeli commemorative journalism throughout the last five decades (Meyers, 2002, 2021).
The combination of a “horizontal” axis of exploration (across the 2018 supplements) alongside a “vertical” exploration axis (looking at supplements published since 1968) enabled us to detect major trends in the journalistic commemoration of the Israeli past and position 2018 commemorative journalism on this continuum. We maintain that the dominant memory version narrated by 2018 commemorative journalism reflects a withdrawal from and rejection of more critical readings of the Israeli past that appeared in 1990s and 2000s commemorative journalism. This assertion is supported through the employment of our combined comparative and longitudinal approaches: the horizontal investigation allowed us to highlight 2018 journalistic coverage that directly manifests a rejection of the previous critical readings of the national past. The complementing vertical perspective enabled us to identify gradual shifts in the representation of various social groups as well as the changing rhetoric of narrators of the Israeli past.
Positioning these findings within larger political and cultural contexts, we argue that the 1990s and early 2000s critical supplements echoed and popularized a scholarly academic discourse that challenged the mainstream Zionist narration of the Israeli past (Ram, 2011). In contrast, the 2018 hegemonic rereading of the previous critical rereading of the Israeli past reflects interrelated changes in Israeli politics and Israel’s media map. Such processes are not unique to Israel (i.e., Rawski, 2019; Tileagă, 2008). Thus we believe that the conceptual and analytical approaches we implemented in this study could be used to investigate changing narrations of the national past in other contexts.
Conceptual foundations
Collective memory is constructed through two complementary components: the abstract component reflects how each individual in a given community recollects the past. The complementing concrete and public component is manifested through a system of mnemonic signifiers placed across time and space (Bar-On, 2001). Instituting remembrance days that commemorate historical events, such as a national Independence Day, is a clear example of the concrete and public component; or as put by Walter Benjamin: “Calendars do not measure time as clocks do; they are monuments of a historical consciousness” (1969, 261). Concurrently, the ways in which commemorative ceremonies or commemorative journalism can be charged with changing meanings across time reflects transformations in the abstract perceptions of the past among individuals and communities.
Erll (2011) identifies three stages in the development of collective memory research: the first stage, identified mainly with Halbwachs’ pioneering work, defines collective recollecting as a process in which social groups construct their own images of the world by constantly shaping and re-shaping versions of the past ([1925] 1992). The fundamental arguments characterizing the second stage in the development of collective memory research are demonstrated in the work of Nora (1989), who famously explored “realms of memory” such as monuments or remembrance days that were created in order to cement the meaning of national memory. According to Nora, the growing need to preserve and study the past demonstrates the weakening of “authentic” past consciousness and detachment of analytical historiography from traditional memory.
Studies of the third stage in the development of collective memory research focus on transcultural memory (Erll, 2011): the changes that memory has undergone due to the ongoing challenging of national identity in an arguably post-national era. Such studies examine the shift toward cosmopolitan memory, that exceeds the boundaries of the nation-state. Subsequently, the heterogeneity of memory does not only exist “above” the national level, but also “below” it: ethnic, generational, gender-based and other groups create challenging interpretations of memories of the national chronology (Olick et al., 2011).
Erll’s approach is anchored in the idea that memory is inherently constituted via movement through time and space: as social, temporal and local contexts change, dimensions of remembering are constantly charged with new meanings (2011). Based on this conceptualization, our study looks at how journalistic recounts of the national past represent ethnic and gender identities that can either coincide with national identity, or challenge it.
Employing Erll’s “travelling memory” conceptualization we ask whether the rise of post-national and non-traditional readings of the collective past is inevitable, or rather memory might “travel” in reverse, given changing political and cultural circumstances. Our thinking about the Israeli case study might be advanced by looking at similar phenomena in other cultures, and further developments of the memory-movement perceptive: hence for instance, Tileagă (2008) describes the ideological transition of the national commemoration of the 1989 Romanian ‘revolution’ by social and political actors, interpreting and altering the meaning of this event. Similarly, Sik (2015) identifies collective memory transmission in post-socialist Hungary: a longitudinal process in which the Hungarian collective memory is reproduced by institutionalized memory agents. Such a transmission provides the basis for the emergence of an anti-democratic political culture. The notions of transition and transmission will guide us in tracking the ways in which Israeli journalistic commemorative memory “travels” through time and across media outlets (the “horizontal” and “vertical” trajectories).
Competing, changing, and silenced memory versions
The fundamental purpose of realms of memory, such as a national Independence Day, is to “stop time, to block the work of forgetting” (Nora, 1989: 19). Journalistic outputs commemorating Independence Day rely on the assumption that the personal experience of remembering the state’s foundation is naturally eroding; thus such commemorative reporting wishes to prevent or suspend national amnesia. This begs the question of how does commemorative journalism “stop time”? And whether the attempt of commemorative supplements to suspend the natural progression of forgetting has to entail the symbolic annihilation of social groups and narratives?
Alongside its manifested contents, every memory narrative contains a repressed silence; alongside remembering, the constant movement of travelling memory entails the forgetting of lost, unfulfilled, and silenced elements. Although it is supposedly impossible to examine something that “is not there” (or is “no longer there”), Connerton (2008) offers a typology of seven types of forgetting, such as repressive erasure and prescriptive forgetting that help us decipher the mechanisms guiding commemorative journalism in choosing specific memory versions over others.
Journalism and collective memory
Media memory studies are “descendants” of both media research and memory scholarship - two multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary fields of study. This field of inquiry asks questions about the ways in which the media operate as memory agents (what kinds of versions of the past are shaped by different media?); the cultures in which these processes take place (media memory as an indicator of sociological and political changes); and the interrelations between the media and other sites of social activity (such as the economy and politics) (Neiger et al., 2011).
Journalism is one of the foundational sources of public collective memory (Zelizer and Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2014). Thus, when a public event comes to an end, its memory may be preserved within collective consciousness as it was mediated by the journalistic work that documented it (Teer-Tomaselli, 2006). The journalistic ethos that claims journalists document social reality as it is, or as it was, provides news professionals with narrative authority (Edy, 1999). And so, when journalists act as memory agents, they engage in three complementary dimensions of their work: on a basic level, they do what they always do - tell the public stories about realities that are beyond the public’s immediate reach. On a second level, the journalistic coverage of the past always situates it within larger cultural and social contexts. Thirdly, when journalists narrate the past they tell stories about their own work, and the role they play in shaping social memories.
The process of commemorative recollection by journalists can thus be understood using Carey’s (1989) perception of the communication as a ritual: the ritualistic characteristic of Independence Day supplements reaffirms existing knowledge and common values. In such cases, journalism seems to act as an agent that shapes cultural identity, rather than a mere conveyer of information (Britten, 2013). The new stories told in commemorative issues connect the past with the present, and create a narrative that bears national meanings. Hence anniversary journalism exists on the spectrum between chronology and mythology (Kitch, 2002: 61).
Research design
Data collection started a month before Independence Day (April 18, 2018) and ended two weeks after it. The entire corpus of surveyed data could be placed across a commemorative spectrum: several outlets – such as Jewish ultra-orthodox dailies, which do not concur with Zionist ideology – did not address Independence Day at all. Other outlets dedicated entire supplements to Independence Day. Between these two extremes lie most journalistic commemorative coverage: special commemorative projects were published as part of weekend or Independence Day supplements, alongside routine coverage. After excluding outlets that did not address Independence Day at all, we were left with 18 supplements and special projects published in commemoration of Israel’s 70th Independence Day by 11 print dailies, weeklies, and magazines (see Appendix).
A narrative is a form of discourse, consisting of a narrator manifesting a point of view, at least one character, and a plot (Tuval-Mashiach and Spector-Mersel, 2010). To decipher the narratives featured in the studied data, our examination combined quantitative mapping with qualitative-interpretive analysis: the quantitative exploration aimed to code the protagonists of the narratives according to relevant characteristics. Ethno-national identity was classified according to three subcategories: Israeli Jews, Israeli Palestinians and Israeli Druze. Gender identity was classified according to male and female categories. 1
Next, our research questions focused on three narrative components -
Journalism studies scholarship offers the essential differentiation between thematic and episodic framing: thematic framing deals with public policy or broad social trends. In such cases, the object of coverage is abstract and impersonal. In contrast, episodic framing presents news items as distinct stories and focuses on individual examples (Iyengar, 1990). Commemorative journalism is supposedly - by default - a clear example of thematic framing: all studied supplements and projects share one clear theme – marking Israel’s 70th Independence Day. Yet, we would like to offer a more nuanced categorization of the research corpus into personal-thematic framing and impersonal-thematic framing.
This division was inductively borne out of a methodological challenge: 13 out of the 18 researched supplements and projects, featuring in total 440 items allowed for a quantitative coding of the stories’ protagonists. These supplements and projects - which we classify as personal-thematic coverage - possess personal characteristics, as they narrate a theme (Independence Day) by focusing on individual protagonists.
In contrast, the remaining five publications did not allow for a quantitative count of individual protagonists, mainly because they did not embrace protagonists-focused narrative narration patterns. Thus we classify such journalistic reporting as impersonal-thematic coverage. In such publications, individuals are secondary in the plot, with the State of Israel as the narratives’ clear and stated protagonist. This is the case, for example, with the financial daily Globes’ supplement, “Where is the State and where is the vision? 2 2048”, forecasting the realities of life in Israel 2048.
Our quantitative mapping was complemented by a qualitative-interpretive exploration: first, each supplement or commemorative project was explored as a distinct empirical unit. Following that, we performed a cross-sectional investigation of all the data to identify similar characteristics and patterns that cut across individual stories and form the wider commemorative narratives marking Israel’s 70th anniversary. The thematic analysis is presented in three chapters reflecting a “thick” reading (Geertz, 1973) of the journalistic coverage, that positions the texts within broader theoretical, cultural, and social contexts.
No media memory study is complete without a reference to the narratives that remain untold. To identify and examine such silences, a point of comparison is required: first between different types of news outlets, all published in 2018 in which differing ideological inclinations or professional perceptions yielded different patterns of coverage (Klein, 2010); a second, longitudinal point of comparison was provided by previous studies that examined supplements published in commemoration of earlier Israeli independence days (Meyers, 2002, 2021).
Findings
Protagonists
The frequency with which representatives of communities comprising Israeli society are featured in the data illuminates a reinforcing commemorative logic: the salience of social groups in the journalistic coverage reflects their significance to the national community; at the same time, this salient representation in the public journalistic arena enhances such groups’ superior social status.
Ethno-national representation and underrepresentation
As mentioned, the quantitative coding of the identities of protagonists addressed all the items (N = 440) that appeared in the 13 quantitatively-coded personal-thematic supplements and projects. While Israeli Arab citizens comprise 21% of Israel’s population, they were the protagonists of 10 items, only 2.2% of all coded items. The marginal presence of Israeli Arabs in 70th anniversary coverage is an ongoing trend: throughout the years, the maximal representation of Israeli Arabs in Israeli Independence Day supplements was at 3.4% (Meyers, 2021).
While the percentage of Arab protagonists in Israeli commemorative journalism remained low through the years, a longitudinal exploration of the patterns of representation reveals significant shifts: the earliest supplements (1968, 1973) featured Israeli Arabs mostly as enemies, and did not grant them the right to narrate their own stories. In contrast, some later supplements challenged this pattern: Ma’ariv’s (popular-centrist daily) 1998 The Scroll supplement, featured the Articles of Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence, alongside illustrative photographs and explanatory texts. One of the declaration articles promises that the newborn state will “foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants.” The editors of the supplement accompanied this article with several photographs and texts: one photograph featured Israeli Arab citizens demonstrating against the confiscation of their lands by the government; one of the two accompanying texts was authored by Azmi Bishara, an Arab Kneset (parliament) member at the time who argued that as long as Israel is defined as a Jewish state it will never be truly democratic.
Following a similar line, Ha’aretz’s (liberal-dovish highbrow daily) 2008 supplement featured the story of Sami Bidas, a Palestinian who lived until 1948 with his family in the village of Sheikh Muwanis, where Tel Aviv University lies in part today. Following Jewish attacks, Bidas’ family fled to Jordan where they have lived ever since. The former inhabitants of Sheikh Muwanis, who are still alive, Bidas explained in the supplement, believe that one day they will return home.
In contrast, the dominant trend in the studied 2018 supplements and projects wholeheartedly embraced consensual Zionist givens. Our analysis suggests that the legitimacy for the appearance of the few Arab protagonists of the 2018 items was their positioning as allies, who are “good Arabs.” The Arab Israeli citizens whose voices were heard are not critical whatsoever; they side with the State of Israel and wish to belong to the national community.
This is the case, for example, with the commemorative supplement “Despite Everything, Love,” issued by the Right-wing weekly Makor Rishon which featured two Arab protagonists – one, a reserve duty soldier who conducts public diplomacy activities around the world in support of Israel, and the second, a former collaborator with the Israel’s general security services. The reserve duty soldier, Jonathan Elkhoury, is described as “the most Zionist Lebanese you’ll ever know” whose “childhood memories are intertwined with the alliance with Israel”. Following that, Elkhoury promotes the drafting of Christian Arab Israeli citizens to the Israeli military.
As mentioned, only 10 Israeli Arabs were positioned at the center of the coded 2018 items. Three out of 10 are Druze, who constitute less than 10% of the Arab population in Israel (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2021). The common assumption in Jewish-Israeli society regarding the Druze, is that they are loyal to the state and the fact that they serve in the military paves their way into mainstream Israeli society (Amrani, 2010). Following that, we can see that the representation of Druze in Independence Day supplements revolves around their service in Israel’s security forces and military bereavement.
Compared with these representations, the story of the vast majority of Arab citizens of Israel who are not Druze, is not told in the supplements as it does not fit the Zionist ethos. Although this claim is not expressed in the supplements outright, it is revealed by searching for silences and examining lacks (Machin and Mayr, 2012). Forgetting is an inseparable part of remembering; therefore, telling some memories while silencing others can be interpreted as an attempt to confine the boundaries of talk of the past (Vinitzky-Seroussi and Teeger, 2010). Massalha and Jamal (2011) maintain that the symbolic inhalation of Arabs in Hebrew-written media belittles the significance and distresses of Arab society; their incorporation into the media’s agenda is conditioned by submission to the edicts of the dominant majority. Thus, what little ongoing representation of Arab citizens of Israel does exist in commemorative journalism is an illustration of silencing.
Gender representation and underrepresentation
Women are mostly underrepresented in the news media, and are usually identified with private spheres, rather than public ones (Lemish, 2004). These tendencies were echoed in the studied 2018 data: personal-thematic commemorative projects published by women’s magazines At, La’Isha, and Lady Globes featured only women protagonists; in contrast, the remaining 10 coded supplements and projects, featured women protagonists in just 33% of the items.
Additionally, our findings show that the life stories and (paid) work of women were underrepresented in supplements that were not specifically aimed at women. For instance, women were mostly missing from the documentation of Israel’s founding generation: only 22% of the protagonists in “Letters to the founding generation” supplement were women, and only 15% of the protagonists in the “Builders of the land” supplement were women.
Gender roles are a system of norms that stem from social and cultural influences, assigning men and women gender-typical tasks that are learned and internalized through socialization processes. According to this construction, initiative, confidence, and decisiveness are considered “masculine” qualities, while nurturing, gentleness, and warmth are considered “feminine” qualities (March et al., 2016). These characterizations were evident in the examined publications: other than women’s magazines, the highest female representation was found in a supplement published by Yedioth Ahronot (a popular-centrist daily) titled “I’m going to write to you, be strong up there.” 3 The supplement was composed of letters written by friends and family members of fallen soldiers and victims of terror attacks, conveying the writers’ grief and longings. 49% of all letter writers were women, writing mostly to fallen men (84% of “recipients”). As mentioned, the lowest point of female representation (15%) was found in the “Builders of the Land” supplement, published by the financial daily Globes, dedicated to Israeli economy and its founders. This gap reflects and amplifies gender stereotypes: active men build the country while emotional women bear sons and mourn over their death.
In the earlier supplements researched by Meyers (2002), female representation was minimal, among other reasons due to the focus on the image of the Israeli combat soldier, as a main protagonist. In contrast, the Israeli combat soldier is not the main protagonist of the 70th Independence Day commemorative journalism. Supposedly, because the supplements do not necessarily focus on the Israeli-Arab conflict, turning the spotlight on more personal “civic” stories, the 70th Independence Day supplements and projects could have increased women’s presence in journalistic narratives. Despite that, women remained a clear minority.
As mentioned, the three studied women’s magazines featured only women protagonists. Still, the patterns of representation identified were traditional: women protagonists were mostly featured in domestic contexts, and their role as mothers was used to legitimize their media appearance. Educator Miriam Peretz, who lost two sons during their military service, appeared in three supplements as the prominent manifestation of the cultural perception that Israeli women’s main contribution to the national collective is by becoming mothers (Berkovitch, 2001). The items in the supplements that focused on Peretz presented motherhood as the core of her feminine essence. She was depicted as the Hebrew mother who carries the burden of bereavement, brought upon by the justified sacrifice of her sons, embodying the nation. Peretz received the Israel prize, the highest honor awarded to Israeli citizens, on Israel’s 70th Independence Day. When addressing this honor in the women’s magazine At, Peretz wrote: “You, my children, have given me this award, and I shall endeavor to be worthy of you” (p. 57). In so doing, Peretz asserted that she was awarded the prize due to the social activities she initiated and led following the death of her sons, rather than to the long-standing work as a prominent educator. And so, the narration of her story in all three supplements established her image as a national matriarch.
The 13 quantitatively examined supplements and projects featured five Arab women. “My Israeli Picture,” a supplement published by the women’s magazine La’Isha featured photographs from the photo albums of various women, who weave their own personal success stories into Israel’s success story. Chief Inspector Faten Naseraldin, the first female Druze police officer, chose a photograph titled by the magazine “four religions in one picture.” The photograph features Naseraldin with three other female officers: a Muslim, a Jew, and a Christian; Naseraldin commented on the photograph: “What unites us is our love of the land and desire to serve the country with love” (p. 71). Naseraldin differs from most women protagonists of the supplements in two ways: she is featured in a work-related context, in which she is a non-Jew among a majority Jewish workforce. In this case, it is evident that Naseraldin’s service in a security-related position paved her way to the national commemorative sphere.
In sum, the earliest commemorative supplements studied tended to exclude the voices of “ordinary” citizens, women, and Israeli Arabs, while some of the later commemorative supplements - namely from 1998 to 2008 - widened the range of voices narrating the Israeli story, and some of those voices even challenged the dominant commemorative narrative (Meyers, 2021). In contrast, the current study reveals that in 2018 the inclusion of members of marginalized social groups was made possible only as long as they did not undermine the dominant narrative, but rather replicated it: women were presented as the mothers of the nation and Arab citizens were presented as allies who are loyal to the Zionist vision.
Narrators
In this study, a narrator is defined as the person who was credited for writing the journalistic text. In the first stage of the analysis, we applied a quantitative classification of the types of narrators in all supplements and projects (N = 18), based on the sources of authority typology suggested by Zandberg (2010): biographical, official, academic, cultural, and journalistic authorities. In the second, interpretive stage of the analysis, we examined the connections between different kinds of narrators and the texts they authored.
In four out of the 18 examined publications the credited writers relied on their official or cultural authorities to discuss the past while anchoring it in present contexts. For example, in Makor Rishon’s supplement, “Letters to the founding generation,” each of the 41 credited writers – researchers, politicians, novelists, social activists, and others – wrote a letter to a (late) member of the founding generation, about the current state of affairs in Israel in a field connected to the writer and the founder. In their letters, the writers stressed the achievements of the state of Israel, and in many cases seized the opportunity to boast their own achievements.
The exploration of the conjunction between the identity of narrators and the texts they author provides an illuminating example of the observed trend of withdrawal from the more critical reading of the national story, that characterized Israeli commemorative journalism of the late 1990s: Ma’ariv’s 1998 supplement Israeli Memory featured a photograph of the 1949 Israeli government. The writer chosen to comment on the photograph was Limor Livnat, the Right-wing (female) minister of communication at the time. At the end of her short text, Livnat wrote: Five decades have passed… and the miracle of the Jewish state keeps materializing in front of our very eyes, each day. Looking again [at the photograph], one cannot notice the fact that in some respects nothing has changed. Then, just like now – there is only one woman [minister] in the government.
Similarly, the above-mentioned 2018 “Letters to the founding generation” supplement also featured a text written by a Right-wing female politician - Ayelet Shaked, the minister of Justice at the time. Shaked’s letter was addressed to the late Golda Meir, Israel’s only female Prime Minister (1969–1974). Shaked praised Meir’s Hawkish ideology in length; she also used Meir’s words to reflect on her own experiences as a high-ranking female politician: “All my life I lived and worked with men, but the fact that I am a woman was never an obstacle,” you [Meir] wrote in your book “My Life” and simply took the words out of my mouth. “It [being a woman] never made me uneasy or led to an inferiority complex. It never made me think that the situation of men is in any way better than the situation of women… and men have never treated me unfairly.”
As can be seen, the two narrators utilize the past in order to reflect on the current situation and concerns of Israeli women. But while the 1998 text points at the need to question the power gaps between the genders, the 2018 text denies their existence.
In 13 out of the 14 remaining supplements and projects the credited writers were journalists, while in one supplement the texts are not credited at all. And yet, the fact that journalists narrated most of the studied stories, does not necessarily reflect their own narrative prominence: in many cases, journalists were featured as supposedly “transparent” narrators of the stories of others. A close reading of the 13 publications in which all credited texts were authored by journalists, allows us to distinguish between two categories of journalistic commemorative narration: the mediating journalist and the interpretive journalist. In six of the supplements, the journalists signed the texts as interviewers, or merely transcribers - supposedly, the journalists did not take any overt stance regarding the topic covered, or the words of their interviewees; rather, they were presented as mediators between the protagonists of the narratives and the readers. In certain cases, the journalists’ questions were not even presented in the items: for instance, in Israel Hayom’s (popular right wing daily) “70 Faces” supplement, each year in Israel’s history is represented by the photograph of one Israeli and his/her monologue, supposedly without journalistic mediation.
The most extreme example of supposed-transparent mediation appeared in Lady Globes’ project, “The 70 brightest young women in Israel,” that featured no credited writers: each photograph of the 70 women entrepreneurs was accompanied by a short unsigned text. Commemorative journalistic texts that omit the names of their writers create the impression that history “speaks for itself,” and therefore there is no need – allegedly – for journalistic mediation. Such an omission attempts to create the notion of journalistic objectivity, while downplaying the journalist’s presence as a narrator. At the same time, it is important to stress the fact that even in the most extreme examples of the “transparent” mediating model, the initial choice of interviewees and editing of the submitted texts were, of course conducted by journalists, and so journalists are never truly “absent” from the narration and commemoration processes; rather, they merely create the impression of transparency.
In opposition to the mediating model of commemorative journalism, the interpretive model relies on the journalists’ pronounced authority and professional expertise. A clear example for such interpretive commemoration can be found in the “Seven songs for seven decades” project, authored by Ben Shalev, Haaretz’s music critic. In his opening column, titled “What sounds Israeli to you?” Shalev emphasized that the list he chose does not include the best songs of each decade, but rather “songs that clearly and interestingly reflect the decade in which they were created” (p. 2). That is, Shalev positions himself as a professional authority by distinguishing his list from rankings published by other newspapers that sought to crown the best song, best artist, or best band. Rather, Shalev seeks to educate his readers on social and political issues that extend beyond popularity music charts.
In her analysis of the sources of journalistic narrative authority, Zelizer (1990) points at the significance of physical journalistic presence: journalists who covered events in the field, as they occurred, acquire the right to retell those events as memories. In our corpus, journalists converted their physical presence in the coverage of past events as a source of authority with an interpretive authority (Fink and Schudson, 2014), anchored in few cases in a critical outlook. This tendency is most pronounced in supplements and projects that do not focus on the national past, but rather on the national future, which journalists, naturally, did not yet experience. In such future-oriented journalistic publications, the expertise of journalists in covering the current state of Israeli politics, economy or transportation policy bestows on them the authority to predict the future in those areas.
Plots
Anniversary journalism often utilizes personalized histories of individuals in order to promote wide-reaching messages; such strategic and particular uses of the past are often organized around a plot structure, creating “Ideological packages” (Li and Lee, 2013). Similarly, most of the researched publications presented a narrative centered on the life stories of individual Israelis. The journalistic narration of these scattered individual stories weaved them into the fabric of the collective national memory: the personal stories were embedded within the tale of the state’s past and present. The aggregated result coalesces into an overall plot, whose gist is an awe-filled observation of the mere existence of the State of Israel, and a strengthening of the Zionist master commemorative narrative (Zerubavel, 1995).
Yedioth Ahronot’s supplement, “We have arrived [to the Land of Israel] 4 ” demonstrated this plot: it featured the journeys of six artists and media personalities who discovered their roots, with the journeys constantly shifting between the personal and the collective. For example, singer-songwriter Yehuda Poliker traveled to Greece to trace the life story of his Holocaust survivor, late father. “Till this day, I do not travel alone to Greece,” Poliker was quoted in the article, “I am not at ease. I am afraid, because the Holocaust is everywhere. And I grew in a concentration camp, surrounded by imaginary barbed wire.” Poliker took part in Thessaloniki’s Holocaust commemoration March of the Living, at the end of which he was invited to sing. According to the journalistic narrative, Poliker’s journey is emblematic of his personal victory over his fears and his national victory in the name of his late father: “Here, father, I am your voice now. Your voice passes through me. You have brought your son here, and he sings to the Greeks, and they applaud him in the worst possible place you know.” As Poliker’s tale of triumph shows us, the “Holocaust to Resurrection” theme is still a powerful interpretive frame in Israeli-Jewish culture, connecting the individual and the collective spheres.
Such a narrative also amplifies the ideological argument that the foundation of the State of Israel is the proper moral lesson to be learned from the horrors of the Holocaust. On the complementing personal level, raising a family in Israel is presented as a victory over the Nazis. Hence for instance, actor Shlomo BarAba, also son of Holocaust survivors, traveled to the Jewish cemetery in Lodź and on his grandfather’s grave said: “Look grandpa, this is your great-granddaughter, Shay. Your grandson Shlomo is o.k. now.” This experience, BarAba added “reminded me, suddenly, some wild association of the [2003] Israeli Air Force fly over Auschwitz - from Holocaust to resurrection.”
Eliade (1971) essential work discussed the construction of circular time and argued that societies consciously reconstruct predetermined time patterns. A circular time construction in a master commemorative narrative pattern serves the collective’s self-perception, as it creates the conviction that the remembering collective can endure crises, because it did so before and will continue to do so in the future. Applying this logic to our analysis illuminates the tendency of most of the studied supplements and projects to construct circular national time, in a way that serves an ideological argument: the national story does not necessarily begin with the state’s establishment. Rather, it can start in contemporary Israel or Greece, during World War II, or in the future, with the revival of the Jewish people in their country as the common denominator of all of these timelines.
Alternative plots
In contrast to the dominant narrative, four thematic-impersonal supplements represented the clearest voices of dissent in the studied data. One of the significant characteristics of these alternative-critical plots is their enhanced focus on the future, manifested in severe concern: “Where is the State and where is the vision? 2048,” published by the financial daily Globes aimed to explain “how we neglected long term-planning and what needs to do in order for Israel to make it safely to its 100th anniversary”; in a similar manner, the “Israel 2048” (Yedioth Ahronot) supplement asked on its cover “what will life in Israel look like when the state will celebrate its 100th Independence Day? And what are the chances that things will be good”? The predictions made in the supplement are dire: 2048 Israel is an overpopulated country, torn by a civil war.
This orientation towards the future is anchored within news media logic: in recent decades, online news media has assumed the traditional journalistic role of informing the public on recent events. Correspondingly, legacy print media - unable to compete with the immediacy of online reporting - has assumed the role of projecting upcoming events, analyzing potential outcomes, and shaping collective expectations (Tenenboim-Weinblatt and Neiger, 2015).
Moreover, the focus of the alternative plots on the future enables journalists to convey criticism even within festive circumstances: rather than a head-on accounting of Israel’s current problems and failures, these supplements forecast Israel’s bleak future. Yet, the predictions and policy plans are not presented as mere speculations; rather, they are outcomes and consequences of present Israeli realities.
Discussion
This study examined the construction of collective memory in 18 supplements and projects commemorating Israel’s 70th Independence Day. Our research questions focused on three central characteristics of the journalistic narrative: the narratives’ protagonists, narrators and plots.
An examination of the narrative protagonists and narrators revealed that most narratives focused on and were narrated by members of the Jewish-Zionist collective. In contrast, those outside the boundaries of this collective - namely Arab citizens of Israel - were marginalized from the narratives, both as those who tell the stories, as well as those whose stories are told. In the rare cases in which Arab citizens of Israel were featured in the coverage, their stories were utilized to affirm nationalistic messages. Thus, the general tone of most researched supplements and projects was that of a non-critical version of the Israeli present and past. The only exceptions were four impersonal-thematic supplements that focused, mainly on concerns for Israel’s possible bleak future.
Collective recollections are always shaped by present conditions. Thus we argue that our findings reflect, in many ways, the political, social, and economic circumstances of 2018 Israel; such circumstances differ from those that existed when earlier supplements were examined. Hence for instance, 1968 (post Six-Day war) commemorative supplements depicted a narrative of unity and cohesiveness, presenting Israel as a small state that has defeated its mighty enemies against all odds.
In contrast, the supplements published in later years gradually shifted towards a more diverse representation of Israeli realities and a more critical narration of the Israeli past. This trend was most pronounced in some of the supplements published in 1998, commemorating Israel’s 50th anniversary that featured, for example highly critical voices of bereaved parents, who questioned the need for their loved ones to lay down their lives. Similarly, as presented in this article, some of the 1998 supplements presented a critical rereading of the Israeli past, openly discussing Israel’s responsibility for the 1948 Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) and challenging earlier truisms, such as the argument that Israel always strived towards a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict. Such journalistic narration corresponded with the rise of 1990s Israeli “new historiography,” that adopted a critical approach towards Israel’s past, and the way in which it was told during Israel’s formative era (Meyers, 2018).
This withdrawal from the critical rereading of the Israeli past and present is illuminated via the implementation of a “horizontal” investigation, across 2018 commemorative journalism, combined with a “vertical” investigation, looking at earlier supplements. In some cases, the urge to confront or even combat critical interpretations of Israeli realities is directly manifested, as demonstrated by Hagai Segal, the editor of the Right-wing weekly Makor Rishon: According to many of those who shape local public opinion we are racist, corrupt, wicked and misogynistic. Everything is bad here. The weekend supplements and the weekend television shows feature regular interviews with celebrities who badmouths the Jewish state… Independence Day is a celebration of the sweet victory of optimism over skepticism. We beat the external [Arab] enemy relatively fast. With skepticism it took 70 years. It [skepticism] is not quick to raise a white flag, but it is struggling to gain support.
Segal’s stance seeks to account for a positive national narrative, while dismissing critical narrations. A similar effort is described by Sik (2015) in his analysis of the transmission of memory versions by Hungarian right-wing intellectuals, who see their liberal-left critics as motivated by malevolence.
We argue that the findings of our study can be understood within several circumstances that have changed during the last several decades: the first is the demise of the Left’s political hegemony and the establishment of the Right’s political and cultural superiority; Since the first 1977 victory of the right-wing Likud party, the Likud has become the most dominant power in the Israeli political landscape (Ben-Porat et al., 2022). Beyond party politics, Israeli-Jewish public opinion and mainstream culture have moved gradually to the right as can be seen, for instance in the 2011 legislation of the “[anti] Nakba Law” authorizing the Finance Minister to reduce state funding to institutions commemorating Israel’s Independence Day as a “day of mourning.”
Second and related is structural and ownership changes in Israel’s media map. Nowadays, the newspaper with the highest exposure rates in Israel is Israel Hayom, a right-leaning daily founded in 2007 that is circulated free of cost (for the readers). Israel Hayom’s founder and owner was the late Sheldon Adelson, who also financed another right-wing media outlet, the weekly Makor Rishon, founded in 1997. Israel Hayom and Makor Rishon were not examined in previous studies (because they did not yet exist, or did not publish commemorative supplements); in contrast, the two publications have a dominant presence in the 70th anniversary supplement inventory – their supplements constitute a fifth of the overall researched corpus, and they provided some of the most salient representations of the nationalistic reading of the Israeli past and present.
The consensual leanings of the 70th Independence Day supplements fit the functional nature of commemorative journalism, as analyzed in previous scholarship (Kitch, 2002; Song and Lee, 2015); such leaning challenges Meyers’ findings, pointing at the critical potential of commemoration (2021). In this sense, this study shows that the 70th anniversary commemorative journalism demonstrated a significant “backtracking”: revisiting the past selectively to validate the national present (Li and Lee, 2013).
Makor Rishon’s “Despite Everything, Love” supplement narrated the stories of “people who have personally experienced Israel’s less favorable moments, and still love it” (cover). Much like this supplement protagonists, many Israeli journalists who authored 2018 commemorative coverage were keenly aware of the fact that there are ample reasons to be critical of Israel’s past and present. All the same, most 2018 journalists chose the road taken by earlier Israeli journalists and told their stories from a loving - or rather, limited - viewpoint.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the two reviewers of the manuscript for their insightful comments on previous versions of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant number 509/16).
