“Despite everything, love”: Commemorative journalism and the rereading of the critical rereading of the Israeli past

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.