Managing Jewish Identity in Arguments Over Jewish Support for Palestine

Abstract

The Israel/Palestine conflict has led to intragroup conflict amongst diaspora Jews that do and do not support Israel's actions. This paper addresses that conflict, which is shown to not just be one of differing opinions but of exactly what it means to be Jewish; it is therefore a social psychological study of contested and conflicting identities. Context to intra-Jewish conflict and the concept of the ‘self-hating Jew’ is discussed alongside the discursive approach to identity. The research question is: How is British Jewish identity managed and policed in a debate about Jewish support for Palestine? A critical discursive analysis is conducted on a Facebook discussion initiated by the British Jewish pro-Palestinian organisation ‘Na'amod’, which contains over 300 interactions. The analysis shows that there is both support and criticism of Na'amod, with a major feature being the construction, by Jews, of what it means to be a Jew, including (1) supporting Israel and (2) attending a controversial march against antisemitism; together these actions constitute appropriate ‘Jewish ethics’ so that not doing these places a Jew as deficient because of self-hate and/or stupidity. The analysis therefore shows how Jewish identity is constructed in such a way as to police Jewish people's behaviour and ensure support for Israel.