Spring 2024 – Poetic Session

Using rhetorical analysis as a research method, I apply Berger & Luckman’s (1967) theory of social constructionism and McCombs & Shaw’s (1972) theoretical construct of agenda-setting to statements from Yitzhak Herzog, Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, Ghassan Alian, and Erza Yachin about the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict1. In this project, I illustrate how Palestinians have been dehumanized and are equated to Hamas by some members of the Israeli government and military. I note how, through these statements, Palestinians are compared to animals and beasts, and they are portrayed as compliant to Hamas’s actions against Israeli citizens. I also discuss how similar rhetoric has been used to dehumanize other marginalized groups of people in an excuse to justify various countries’ governments’ actions that indiscriminately oppress groups of people. This dehumanization is meant to make citizens and onlookers compliant to the attacks and human rights violations against those who may be of different races, ethnicities, or religions. I reflect on why it is important to recognize these agenda-setting tactics that have led to discrimination in the past and may currently lead to human rights violations in the present.