Conceptualizing the Israeli Side in Al-Jazeera's Metaphorical Discourse During Hamas's Operation Al-Aqsa Flood†

Abstract

This study examines how Israel is potrayed in the metaphorical discourse of the Al-Jazeera Arabic (AJA) network, which the Israeli government has deemed a Hamas mouthpiece, from the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7 to November 11, 2023 (The metaphors described in this paper do not reflect the author's views.). The study employs the concept of conceptual metaphor as its theoretical framework, highlighting the source domains that AJA uses to conceptualize various aspects of the Israeli side—the target domains. An analysis of the source domains shows that AJA conceptualizes the Israelis as Nazi war criminals and atheists who deserve to be punished, and whose military forces and military leadership are so weak that they can easily be defeated. It is possible to claim that AJA used this conceptualization to manipulate its audience and justify the war emotionally. Specifically, the network relied on the myth of the few against the many, which is deeply ingrained in Jewish culture, to communicate that Hamas would prevail in the war. AJA's discourse also included references to the Holocaust to imply that the Palestinians have become the victims of its former victims, that is, the Jewish people. The study's corpus consisted of seven hours of AJA news coverage watched daily over 36 days. The data collected was not recorded, which constitutes a limitation; additionally the discourse consisted of prewritten statements rather than spontaneous speech. It is important to note that the discourse we examined is pre-edited and not spontaneous, as will be further explained.