Negotiating between gender,national and professional identities: The work-experience of Israeli-Palestinian women journalists

Abstract

This paper analyzes the work experience of Israeli-Palestinian women journalists who reside and work in Israel for local news organizations or non-Israeli news agencies. It focuses on their experiences related to the intersected axes of their gender, ethnic, and national identities. Through thematic analysis of narrative interviews with 24 Palestinian women journalists, the study reveals that their work experiences vary between exclusion and inclusion among different news organizations. Israeli-Palestinian women journalists face barriers getting jobs at mainstream news agencies because of their accent; and when they apply to local Arab news organizations, they confront recruiting procedures based on a clan system that discriminates against women. However, a few of them report an advantage when trying to enter mainstream news organizations based on their image as an “authentic Arab woman.” Additionally, the study finds that the professional identity of all interviewees is closely connected to their ideological perceptions and political aims.

Introduction

Following the increasing interest media production studies have shown in intersecting dimensions of identity, especially studies related to news production (e.g., Mesmer, 2022; Meyers and Gayle, 2015), this paper focuses on Israeli-Palestinian ¹ women journalists who reside in Israel and work for local news or foreign (non-Israeli) news agencies. The study contends with their intersection of exclusions—that is, exclusion based on gender, ethnicity and nationality. ² Israeli-Palestinian women have a complicated positioning within the Israeli “ethnic democracy,” which discriminates against non-Jewish citizens in terms of their socioeconomic, civil, and political rights (Smooha, 2017). While there are many differences within this group, Israeli-Palestinian women are generally situated in a distinctly vulnerable position because their patriarchal oppression is interwoven with national oppression (Shalhoub-Kervorkian and Daher-Nashif, 2013). When focusing on Israeli-Palestinian women journalists, we should also bear in mind that journalism, including in Israel, is characterized by persistent patterns of gendered exclusion, segmentation, and stratification (Steiner, 2014; Lachover and Lemish, 2018). Qualitative studies show that gender is constructed through daily organizational and professional journalistic practices. Such studies argue that “masculine” norms and values of journalism masquerade as professional routines that journalists are expected to follow (Melin-Higgins, 2004). This is emphasized in the Israeli context, where machoistic norms that legitimize women’s marginality are prioritized in a variety of aspects of social life (Lachover and Lemish, 2018).

The current study strives to contribute to intersectional analyses of institutional sites of cultural production, focusing on news production. An intersectional approach was recently adopted by Amal Jamal and Noa Lavie (2021) in the Israeli context relating to the cultural site of filmmaking. As Jamal and Lavie emphasized, cultural production is of scholarly interest not only because it is a primary means of producing symbolic goods and texts, but also because it is a major field of identity formation and construction of collective consciousness in nation states.

The current study adopts a phenomenological approach acknowledging the multi-dimensional life circumstances of Israeli-Palestinian women journalists. It aims to analyze how the different axes of identity of Israeli-Palestinian women journalists—gender, ethnicity, and nationality—emerge in their journalistic work experience. More specifically, I aim to understand how their professional identity and their intersectional positioned identity affect their work experience: whether they serve as barriers or as challenging and subverting means against hegemonic power relations. In the first section, I will present my intersectional approach to studying women journalists' experiences, then I will present the political and social reality of Israeli-Palestinian women, and finally, I present major trends in current Arab-Palestinian journalism in Israel. The methodology section outlines my approach in narrative interviews with 24 Palestinian women journalists living in Israel. My thematic analysis explores (1) the main barriers they experience in integrating into and practicing journalism based on their intersected gender and national identities, and (2) the apparent advantages they experience based on their marked social positioning. Additionally, I will explore their negotiation between professional and political aspects within their work experience. Finally, in the discussion section, I will consider the dialectic experience of Israeli-Palestinian women within the profession of journalism.

Literature review

An intersectional lens on the experiences of women journalists

While intersectionality has been a rallying call for three decades, it is only in recent years that it has been systematically applied in the study of news production. Based on the work of intersectionality’s feminist founders—Kimberle Crenshaw (1991) and Patricia Hill Collins (2000)—recent studies on newsrooms and journalism pay close attention to the social location of individuals and social inequalities, viewing them as stemming from multiple, intersecting power relations. Such studies probe specific professional experiences, such as working with hostile news sources (Mesmer, 2022). Others offer comprehensive models that consider how various spheres of oppression shape the development of news events and, in turn, the impact these events have on individuals based on their specific positionality (Peterson-Salahuddin, 2021).

Until recently, gender and news production studies tended to explore women as a unified category, ignoring differences and inequalities among them in terms of, for example, race, ethnicity, religion, geography, sexuality, and physical ability. A rich literature exists on African American journalists (e.g., Broussard, 2004; Bundy, 2006), but these studies do not take an intersectional approach. The current study which is part of a wider research project that has an intersectional perspective, shifts the spotlight from hegemonic women journalists to marginalized minority women journalists in Israel: Jewish women of Ethiopian origin (Lachover, 2022) and Russian women who resettled in Israel during the mass wave of immigrations from the Former Soviet Union in the 1990s (Lachover, 2023). The current study focuses on Israeli-Palestinian women journalists, using their own histories and social, cultural, and political contexts.

Israeli-Palestinian women: Patriarchal structures and national boundaries

Since they lived in Palestine prior to the establishment of Israel in 1948, Israeli-Palestinians might be considered an “indigenous minority”—the remaining members of a population group that continues to live in its homeland. This would make them a numerical and political minority group in a political context of continuous conflict, domination, and colonization. Moreover, in recent years, following a shift to the right among Jewish citizens of Israel, as well as changes in laws that make them even more discriminatory, Palestinian living in Israel are in a more fragile position (Jamal, 2020).

Although Palestinian society in Israel is diverse in terms of, for example, religion, socioeconomic status, and place of residence (Smooha, 2017), it is characterized overall by a patriarchal family structure. At the same time, Israel has seen a significant increase in the educational levels of Israeli-Palestinian women, which, in turn, has led to increases in the average age people get married and in divorce rates, and a dramatic decrease in fertility rates (Aburabia-Queder, 2017).

Yet, while opportunities for personal development and experiences for Palestinian women citizens in Israel have increased since the beginning of the 21st century, most of these women are still subject to mechanisms of exclusion and control of both the culture and the country (Sa’ar and Younis, 2021; Shalhoub-Kervorkian and Daher-Nashif, 2013). Marriage rates have remained high, and marrying at a young age is still considered important in the Palestinian marriage market (Sabbah-Karkaby and Stier, 2017). Additionally, educated Israeli-Palestinian women, especially Muslim women, pay an ethnic penalty: they find it difficult to integrate into the labour market and often lack job security and fair wages (Aburabia-Queder, 2017).

Landscape of arab-palestinian journalism in Israel

A study of the phenomenological experience of Israeli-Palestinian women journalists must consider the structure of power of the professional sites within which they act. For many years, Israeli-Palestinians, as a minority group in an ethno-national state, did not control their communication (Jamal and Koukvin, 2020). Additionally, being detached from Arab culture, they were largely dependent on the Israeli media, which was used as a means of controlling national identity and managing the tension between Israeli authorities and Arab civilians. Moreover, the Israeli institutional media strove to emphasize the cultural supremacy of Jewish society compared to the cultural, economic, and social backwardness of Arab societies (Jamal, 2012).

Since the 1980s, influenced by the awakening and strengthening of Palestinian identity together with the aspiration for more cultural autonomy, private newspapers and news magazines in Arabic have become more independent and less products of the Israeli establishment (Kabha and Caspi, 2011). These highly popular news organizations are driven more by profit than by journalistic values. Moreover, they are not committed to the national rights of Israeli-Palestinians (Jamal and Koukvin, 2020). In radio and television, the Israeli Public Service Broadcasting (IPSB) corporation (which succeeded the Israeli Broadcasting Authority [IBA]) includes, by law, Makan al-Akhbar, an Arabic-language news channel, and Makan, an Arabic-language radio station. Along with these public channels, some local radio stations also broadcast in Arabic (Jamal and Koukvin, 2020).

Despite the integration of more Israeli-Palestinian journalists into the Israeli Hebrew news media in the second decade of the millennium, Israeli-Palestinian journalists are still marginalized (Jamal and Koukvin, 2020). Until now, only very few studies have examined the institutional characteristics of the Palestinian media in Israel, and these offer no systematic exploration of the characteristics of women journalists, estimated at 29% of all Palestinian journalists living in Israel (Jamal and Bsoul, 2011). However, these studies, suggest that these women face different challenges than those of their male colleagues (Jamal and Awaisi, 2012; Lanski Peer, 2010).

Methodology

In this paper, I analyze the relationship between individuals’ work experiences and the structural aspects of their professional, political, social, and economic conditions, basing my study on a qualitative work history methodology often used to study working women (Ladkin, 2004). I define journalists as “individuals who contribute journalistic content to news outlets as either employees or freelancers and who earn at least half of their income from their work for news organizations” (Hanitzsch et al., 2019: 9–10).

I interviewed 24 Palestinian women journalists who live within the borders of the state of Israel and whom I contacted by means of “snowballing.” The ages of the interviewees, whose anonymity I have preserved, range from the late 20s to the mid-50s. Most of the interviewees were born and raised in localities in the north of Israel: Nazareth and Haifa, as well as the Northern and Southern Triangles. ³ A very few were born and raised in Jerusalem and the Naqab in the south. The interviewees’ journalistic experience ranged from 2 to 37 years. Most of them worked full-time in journalism; however, five worked only part-time and their additional income came from teaching or working in civil society organizations. The interviewees worked in a variety of news media (e.g., newspaper, radio, television, and online news channels) and for a variety of news organizations (e.g., private Arab-language news organizations, public and private mainstream news organizations, Arab channels outside Israel, and international news channels). About two-thirds of the interviewees worked in writing jobs at the time of the interview, and the rest worked as editors or anchors. However, most interviewees had experience in more than one medium and in more than one news outlet. To limit the risk of skewing the sample of interviewees through the use of the snowball method, I used three centrally located veteran Israeli-Palestinian women journalists—who are active on social networks and work in a variety of news organizations—as the initial launch points for the chain of referral.

All interviews were conducted from November to December 2020, during a period of physical distancing in Israel following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, all interviews were held through a cloud-based video-conferencing platform, which all interviewees were very familiar with. Despite disagreement in the literature on the issue of establishing rapport using video-conferencing technology (Archibald et al., 2019), I experienced no difficulty in this regard. Often, conversation at the beginning of the interview about challenges of COVID-19 provided opportunities to build rapport.

I used a narrative interview, viewing the interviewees as active subjects in authoring their experience and allowing them to tell their own stories in detail and in their own words (Gubrium and Holstein, 2002). I used a “defined self-narrative” approach (Spector-Marsel, 2011), which is a type of narrative interview that tends to be more one-dimensional and unambiguous than life-story interviews. However, similar to a life-story approach, defined self-narrative can expose how media production work is woven into the broader tapestry of the interviewees’ personal, social, and economic lives (Davidson and Meyers, 2022). I started the interviews with an open-ended request—“Please tell me your experience of working in journalism.” I followed the principle of “minimum structure and maximum depth” (Lester, 1999, 2) and presented key topics only near the end of the interview if participants did not refer to them. This structure allows variation and flexibility in the flow of interviews so that the conversation unfolds naturally. Most topics were inspired by questions asked in studies on women journalists (e.g., Jenkin and Finneman, 2018), such as the reason they chose journalism, their options for career advancement, the challenges they encountered and how they overcame them, their views of the state of Israeli-Palestinian women journalists in different news organizations, and the meaning they make of their journalistic work in the context of their identity and lives.

All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. First, the transcripts were read repeatedly to illuminate and extract recurring themes based on grounded theory (Corbin and Strauss, 2014). After inductively identifying the themes, I analyzed each interview again, comparing them with the other interviews. In the analysis, I concentrated on experiences related to domains of power, especially gender and nationality. Consequently, I reorganized the themes into four narratives that demonstrate the interviewees’ continuous negotiation between their main identity categories and interwove the narratives into existing theory. I translated the quotations into English, striving to render idioms and expressions into corresponding English phrases that carry the same meaning.

Because I am an Israeli Jewish white woman, building a rapport with Palestinian women journalists could be challenging because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I strove to overcome this by using personal contacts to get into the field. Interviews were held mostly in Hebrew, since almost all interviewees possessed excellent Hebrew. Their facility in this language is an outcome of the demands of public life and the education system in Israel, which require that Palestinians living in Israel be bilingual in Arabic and Hebrew (Amara et al., 2016). While some argue that doing interviews outside of the subject’s native language can strengthen the interview’s symbolic violence, others suggest that it can give the subject a distance that allows deeper reflexivity (Lomsky-Feder and Rapoport, 2004). I strove to minimize power relations by revealing that I hold a bachelor’s degree in Arabic language and apologizing for the fact that my current level of Arabic was not sufficient to conduct the entire interview in it.

Findings

Thematic analysis of the interviews of the Israeli-Palestinian women journalists revealed a complicated picture of their professional experience derived from the intersection of their gender and national identities within their ethno-national and patriarchal environment.

Facing barriers entering the profession

Interviewees often pointed out two main barriers they face integrating into journalism: low wages and unstable job conditions. These are related to the ongoing crisis in Israeli journalism and the precarious nature of the profession (Davidson and Meyers, 2016; Jamal and Awaisi, 2012). The current subsection focuses on the main barriers the interviewees experienced related to their unique social and cultural position as Israeli-Palestinian women journalists.

The interviewees indicated that as Israeli-Palestinians they have several options of where to find work as journalists: mainstream journalism (commercial Israeli news media in Hebrew), Israeli public television and radio news channels (Hebrew and Arabic), commercial Arab news organizations, and foreign news organizations recruiting local journalists. This variety seems to be a result of the women’s bilingualism. Despite this, however, almost all of the interviewees argued that their professional opportunities are restricted, with many of them pointing to their intersected national and gender identities as the cause. As Yara, a veteran journalist, put it, their complex “other” positioning does not fit:

This is the problem. We—the Arabs in Israel—we have our national identity that we are Palestinian and our civic identity. In [news organizations within] Arab countries, they do not accept us because we are Israeli citizens. It is difficult for us to go there and work as high-ranking journalists and presenters. And within Israel, we are considered “Arabs,” and indeed we are [Arabs], and additionally we are also women, so it is even more difficult.

As reflected in this quote, and as I will discuss below, in choosing where to work, a journalist not only considers conditions and professional standards but also engages in personal negotiations involving political and ideological values. Indeed, some interviewees expressed frustration about their work options in the profession because of their identity:

There is no [adequate] Arab local journalism; there is no way into [mainstream] Israeli journalism. International Arab journalism is a distant dream. I’m a Palestinian? An Israeli? Who am I? They would not accept me. The doors are closed. [Yusra]

According to the interviewees, a main barrier to integrating into local journalism is the informal nature of the recruitment process, which is based on a clan system. Kinship-based groups (hamulas—clans) among Palestinian Arabs in Israel follow a patriarchic logic that reproduces men’s authority at the expense of women (Herzog and Yahia-Younis, 2007). The interviewees stated that they are marginalized in local Arab news organizations because of the hamulas regime, especially since job openings are rare and competition is high. They argued that as a result of hamulas, women are enlisted based on how pleasing their appearance is to viewers and whether they conform to decision makers’ preferences. Abeer, a young woman journalist, told me about her difficulties getting into the profession:

Relations are the most important thing, but I don't belong to the right family […]. I found out that the considerations of news organizations in Arab society, because [Arabic news organizations’] piece of the pie is smaller, are far more non-professional. [There is] far more favoritism, many more non-professional considerations, such as sexism and appearance. They also don't like a woman who causes trouble, who is strong, assertive, who has her own agenda.

Similarly, interviewees who wanted to work in mainstream Israeli journalism also saw these news organizations as “closed clubs” that demand the “right” personal contacts and networks, which, as Israeli-Palestinians, they do not share. In this context, a few mentioned that they could not participate in Galei-Tzahal (Galatz)—the national radio network operated by the Israeli Defense Forces. In the Israeli context, Galatz offers the most promising entry into the profession, giving young Jewish Israelis the opportunity to practice journalism during mandatory army service. Israeli-Palestinians, who do not enroll in military service, are excluded from Galatz:

We do not work at Galatz or at Bamachane [a Hebrew-language weekly magazine published by the IDF until 2020]—this is another thing we don’t have. Galatz benefits all these [hegemonic] populations, and we don’t have access to it, and there is no reason we would have access. But if there is a need for journalists, there should be a non-military service that will train journalists. [Maysoon]

The interviewees also noted that, paradoxically, their Arabic-Hebrew bilingualism did not work as an advantage for them. A few admitted that their level of modern written Arabic had deteriorated since they studied in Hebrew or worked for years in mainstream news organizations in Hebrew. Hadeel came up against this barrier when she was looking for a job:

For the last couple of years, I have spoken [mostly] Hebrew and have not lived in the area [of my hometown]. I don’t practice the [Arabic] language and don’t speak the Arabic [literary] language of the media. So, I have a problem . . . the language is a barrier for me.

The interviewees’ proficiency in Hebrew did allow some of them to get jobs in news organizations in Hebrew. However, their accent marked their nationality and was often considered a barrier by those hiring them, who assumed Israeli mainstream audiences would reject them. While the demands of everyday life in Israel require that Arab people be bilingual in Arabic and Hebrew, Arabic is generally considered an inferior language, a situation that reflects the power relations between the Arab minority and the Jewish majority. Arabic has been identified as “the enemy language,” which is also revealing of attitudes toward its speakers (Amara, 2021). Hadeel, who spoke excellent Hebrew, referred to the barrier her accent presented when she worked in mainstream radio, telling me that listeners complained and made racist comments about it. She mimicked listeners’ typical reaction to her broadcasting: “What is happening here? Is this the Hamas and Hizballa?” News executives also made racist comments about her accent: she shared her experience during the selection process for a television presenter at a mainstream news organization in Hebrew:

I was in an interview at […] and the CEO asked me this weird question, despite all the experience I have: “Say, can you turn off your accent?” [He asked that] in the middle of the interview, in front of all the people and editors [who were watching the pilot]. If the CEO speaks like that . . .

The hijab: A double-edged sword

Despite all the barriers interviewees faced in their efforts to enter journalism, they also shared a unique advantage based on their marginalized identity. For example, while Abeer complained she did not have the right family connections to get a job in news organizations owned by Arabs, she noted that her “otherness”—that is, her intersected gender and national identities—has been attractive to Israeli mainstream news media: “The media in Hebrew acknowledge me . . . [I represent] a different voice, a woman, they give me more attention. [But within] the media in Arabic, not at all.” A few interviewees remarked on this current interest in mainstream Israeli media organizations for the unique positioning of the “Arab woman,” especially a woman in a hijab. While in Israeli mainstream society, Moslem women wearing a hijab remain stigmatized and often experience inspection, racism, or humiliation (Mizel, 2020), studies on Palestinian society in Israel indicate a powerful return of the hijab by Moslem women, proposing an interplay of meanings in wearing it: political opposition, nationalism, religion and culture, and fashion (Mizel, 2020). The interviewees’ testimonies suggested a complicated struggle relating to wearing a hijab within their specific professional contexts.

For example, Asma, a young television journalist, described her complicated journey with the hijab in different professional settings. At the beginning of her career, when she applied for jobs at local commercial news organizations owned by Arabs, her hijab was a barrier, since it was seen to detract from her feminine appearance. For example, a recruiter for a local news organization owned by Arabs once told her, “Off the record, I apologize, we do not employ women wearing a hijab.” In another interview for a job in a similar organization, the producer told her that her hijab was a problem:

[He said,] “We can’t offer you the presenter job, you know, we need someone pretty, ‘dolled-up’ for presenting the news, you are wearing a head cover.” I denied it for a period, but eventually I understood that it is not easy to wear a hijab. I realized that I was excluded from different places only because I wear a head cover.

But Asma noted that the hijab later became an advantage when she was applying for jobs in mainstream Israeli television news with explicit diversity policies. She felt that the hijab marked her as novel and attractive—as an exotic “Arab woman” —and therefore paved her way to getting a job at IPSB.

However, Naama Lanski Peer (2010) noted a different experience in this context in her study on Israeli-Palestinian journalists working in Israeli mainstream newsrooms: Salwa Alinat, an Arab Muslim woman journalist, told Lanski Peer she was fired by her newsroom immediately after she adopted traditional attire. This contrasting experience might be explained by a change taking place in Israeli mainstream newsrooms. Indeed, Israeli mainstream news organizations, and especially the IPSB, are targeting a diverse workforce, branding themselves as committed to diversity as part of their attempt to enhance public legitimacy (Klein-Shagrir, 2019). As Asma put it, “They were enthusiastic about the Arab woman with the head covering: pretty, smart, assertive. Something they had not seen before. Something new. An academic woman . . . I arrived like an alien.” Asma thus sees her appeal to the mainstream news media as due to her “otherness.” Moreover, she suggested that the exceptional public attention her first broadcast received was due to her unique appearance and status as the “Arab woman journalist”:

This item broke on the web: “An Arab woman at [the channel].” They wrote about me on [specific popular websites]. The department vice manager thanked me, and the manager brought me chocolates in the newsroom the day after [the broadcast]. It was an accomplishment for them. Following that, I was at the pinnacle of my success.

Asma acknowledged that her symbolic appearance paved the way to her desired job, but she also recognized that her managers “manage diversity” strategically (Ahmed, 2007). She soon realized that wearing a hijab could turn against her when it came to symbolize not just an “authentic Arab woman” but a political figure: after she shared a Tweet expressing resistance against Israel’s occupation, her Arab identity became a liability: she was suspended from her regular position and transferred behind the camera. In Asma’s narrative, she linked the news organization’s reaction to her political Tweet to her wearing the hijab: “I never thought that my head covering would stand against my career. I always thought, I’m special, they will accept me with [the hijab. I thought] nothing will stop me.” Notably, a few months after the incident, Asma decided to take off the hijab. According to her, she had been considering doing this before the incident and it was an expression of her agency vis-à-vis the patriarchy and of her rejection of family rules.

Other interviewees also acknowledged and expressed cynicism about the diversity strategy in Israeli mainstream newsrooms but argued that the hijab is not necessarily the main factor. Yusra, a veteran woman journalist, told me,

They do enlist [Israeli-Palestinian] women now. Look . . . There are new [Israeli-Palestinian] women in the news all the time, with a hijab, without a hijab. Diversity—“Wow what a nice society we have.” But what really stands behind this? It is scary.

Some of the interviewees emphasized that mainstream Israeli journalism is looking for “a good Arab”:

They are looking for someone who is . . . I don’t know how to put this . . . someone who has an Arab appearance and is an Arab, but who from the inside, her mentality and thinking—she’s not. They are not really looking for an authentic Arab. [Hiba]

This quote reflects an awareness of the efforts of state authorities to control the Arab-Palestinian minority through what Amal Jamal (2012) defines as “soft” means. The aim is to manufacture “quiet” Arab citizens who are considered “loyal”—detached from their historical memory and separate from the rest of their nation. Lately, “good Arabs” operating in the public sphere also include women who appear in the highly visible fields of media and culture. These women represent Israel as a liberal democracy that respects women’s individual rights, as opposed to the patriarchal Arab society (Karkabi, 2021). The interviewees’ discussion of wearing the hijab in different journalistic spheres thus shows their awareness of the performativity of the role of the Arab woman.

Confronting security challenges: Women journalists as anti-heroes

Previous studies on Israeli-Palestinian journalists indicate that they face security challenges. Israeli security forces frequently threaten Arab journalists, who, consequently, do not trust the police as a news source (Jamal and Awaisi, 2012). Analysis of my study’s interviewees reveals a wider picture of the security challenge confronting Israeli-Palestinian women journalists. Moreover, it shows that it also has a gendered aspect.

Some interviewees, especially political commentators and field reporters who covered security and municipal beats, described being significantly affected by the control policies of Israeli authorities, referring to experiences of personal threats and dangerous incidents. Three interviewees were physically injured at work in incidents involving both Israeli security forces and Israeli-Palestinians who opposed their work. A number of interviewees reported that Israeli authorities refused their request for journalist certification for “security reasons,” including one claim that the woman journalist in question supported terrorist groups. Manal, a young field reporter who was refused the certification, saw this as the main barrier to advancing in her career because it blocked her from working for satellite television channels. Working without formal journalist certification increased her feelings of insecurity in her dealings with security forces:

I think about that all the time: whether if I go there, he [the soldier] would approach me and block me . . . During times of conflict, I’m always tense . . . Am I a legitimate or a non-legitimate [journalist]? The question of legitimation is always in my head. I’m a veteran journalist in the field and they all recognize my face; but during tense times and big events, I am stressed.

Manal, like other women journalists, experienced her interaction with Israeli security authorities as a gendered barrier: “Security forces are a very masculine institution, and a very cruel one, so I don’t feel safe. Sometimes, I am working with a colleague from another channel, and he’s a man and tall, and it is different for him.” Manal’s experiences seem to have shaped her perception of her role and practices in a way that contrasts with the typical ethos of field journalists:

When I’m the first to arrive at an incident, I’m entirely stressed out. Therefore, in sensitive locations, I try to be among other journalists. As a journalist, you are supposed to chase the scoop: you want to be the first one who arrives at the event and to be the only one there. But for me, this is not the case. First thing, I want to be safe. This is the most important thing for me.

This emphasis on interviewees’ constant efforts to avoid risk was often rationalized in the context of their perceived gendered roles: that is, their need to take care of their children’s future or their parents. These experiences echo testimonies of international women war correspondents (Chambers et al., 2004). Moreover, the interviewees explicitly exposed themselves as “anti-heroic”:

My mom, she’s afraid . . . wars, military attacks, whenever there are demonstrations, my mom calls me. I am also a coward. What if something happens to me? What about my kids? Whoever tells you that I want to cover wars is wrong. Everyone knows me. I am very cautious. I’m afraid. There are much braver journalists … not me! I am honest with myself. [Yara]

As mentioned above, in the Palestinian community in Israel, personal insecurity is also experienced in the context of internal political conflicts or ideological disputes. While the interviewees did not show that they had any second thoughts about their choice of profession, performing specific missions, or expressing their views publicly, they did acknowledge the personal price they pay for these decisions. Their testimonies also indicated that personal attacks are related to their gender. For example, Maha, a veteran journalist, suggested that she was attacked because she was a successful woman journalist and noted that the attackers took advantage of her being the mother of a young boy: “To my regret, they didn’t like the fact that I’m famous and that a woman journalist could be successful. Women as well [didn’t like that]. It was a challenge.” She referred to a traumatic and formative experience she had following her coverage of certain conspiracies in local politics, when Palestinians in the local community threatened the life of her son. She immediately stopped covering the story, hid for a period, and later covered less inflammatory issues.

Another gendered strategy threatening Israeli-Palestinian women journalists is based on stereotypical perceptions of women’s sexuality in Israeli-Palestinian society, especially relating to single women. The interviewees pointed out that an efficient means for others to attack them or stop them from challenging conservative societal norms is to spread false rumors about them. Abeer stated,

I’m a woman, so I was easy prey for them. They thought it would be easy to attack me as a woman, and of course I was always worried that it would hurt my family. I didn’t want them to cause my family suffering and pain. They felt I have power . . . This woman, she has influence and she’s forming [public opinion] . . . So I had enemies, and I had a lot of confrontations . . . And often, there was a price. They attacked me and threatened me.

This finding echoes Mernissi’s (1987) criticism that in Islamic society, practices that restrain women’s sexuality and reinforce their modesty often function to preserve the social structure. Interestingly, the interviewees shared that in recent years the attacks against them smearing their name based on gender expectations have shifted to social media. The women journalists are conscious of the gendered character of this offensive strategy:

They threatened me and had a campaign against me, attacking me personally. They know that as a woman, I am vulnerable. [They know] what hurts me, that I didn’t want my nieces to watch his [sexist] attacks [. . .] I was alone in all that, without any support, so I decided [to quit covering the subject] […] They have penetrated my soul and I was under a lot of pressure, so I had to stop for a while. [Abeer]

Abeer is aware that because she is a single woman in a traditional society, she is more vulnerable: “I have no support, no husband, no boss. Nothing. I was alone in this, and therefore I had to decide [to withdraw].”

These testimonies reflect a conflict between, on the one hand, professional codes of journalism that encourage involvement and self-expression and, on the other hand, gendered codes of patriarchal society that limit women from expressing themselves in public, especially in the context of sensitive issues. In the context of Israeli-Palestinian professional women, Aburabia-Queder (2017) has shown a similar tension between what she defines as “tribal codes” and “professional codes.”

Negotiating between the professional and the political

A meaningful aspect of the interviewees’ work experience was their continuous negotiation between professional standards and political considerations. Political considerations related mainly to the question of which news organization to work for based on its standpoint on the Israel-Palestinian conflict: mainstream news organizations (whether public or private), news organizations owned by Arabs, or television satellite channels (owned by Arabs or others). This constant negotiation reflected the interviewees’ crucial need to be personally involved in their journalistic role.

Most interviewees criticized and mourned the low professional standards of commercial new organizations owned by Arabs, including those who worked within such organizations at the time of the interview. While many of the latter emphasized that working in these places was their only option and expressed the wish to move to a different news organization, some expressed an ideological position, stressing that they saw their work in local journalism as a political act. For example, Yusra declared, “I want to be one of those people who build the Palestinian media institutes in Israel, to be part of this construction, and not to work for foreign channels.”

Many of the interviewees highlighted that some news organizations, such as Israeli mainstream news organizations or some of the foreign television channels, provide better work conditions and often better professional standards. However, they noted that choosing to work for this kind of news organization would have political implications and would not reflect their ideological stance. Interviewees emphasized that they strive to feel political identification with the political position of their news organization, which in fact means the organization’s stand on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The following quote shows how prominent the ideological aspect is for the interviewee:

I want to feel that I can express myself, as a Palestinian, from a political perspective. That I can use terms that I feel reflect me, my vision, also as part of the Palestinian people. That I can feel comfortable speaking about certain subjects without thinking ten times how it will be perceived within my channel or within my society . . . These are things I believe in, and I want to work in a workplace that also believes in them. Using terms like “occupation,” the “occupied territories,” and not . . . let’s say, “Judea and Samira.” These are terms and ideas that are approved on my channel and they resonate my own personal line. [Manal]

These words reflect that the interviewees often defined their ideological negotiation in the context of sensitive political terms they use. In the following example, Ibtisam, who works for a foreign network, described the importance of this aspect for her. She was not completely satisfied with the channel’s terminology and struggled to change it:

[The news organization] is cautious. It doesn’t interfere with Israeli politics. So, [this influences] the way they name all the areas within 67 or 48 borders. For example, I had to report from Karmiel and I wanted to describe it as a settlement and they refused . . . so instead of saying “the city of Karmiel” or “Karmiel settlement,” I said only “Karmiel.” I’m in many situations like this, and I often argue about them. I try to find a way that I will feel good with it.

Ibtisam’s words reflect her constant negotiation between her work practices and her personal politics. While the quote shows her wish to express a more radical view than that of her news organization, a journalist’s search for a news organization that will fit their ideology can also link to a more moderate point of view. Ikram, for example, described how she examined the politics before taking the job: “I asked a lot of questions and I felt that these are things I’m connected with and I won’t have any problem representing them.”

The tension between political views and professional practice is more evident when it comes to working in Israeli mainstream news. Most interviewees perceived that these organizations have high professional standards and saw them as good training ground for journalism. Interviewees with excellent Hebrew realized they have a relative advantage working within them. However, many interviewees opposed working for mainstream Israeli news organizations for political reasons—because of their ideological positioning. Ibtisam explained: “In real time, such as war time and difficult times, the [mainstream] media is recruited, and I will have to say what they want me to say. I can’t see myself in such places.” Almost all of the interviewees rejected the idea of working for Makan, the IPSB in Arabic, because of its politics. Ibtisam considered working for Makan at the beginning of her career and even participated in a professional training course the organization initiated. However, in a practical test, she was asked to read a text stating, “A terrorist group was caught in Nablus”; she refused to read these words and realized she could not take the job.

Avoidance of working in the mainstream news, and especially the public news agency, also has a practical aspect. The women are afraid that working within those organizations will mark their political ideology and block their option to work in other news organizations in the future. The few interviewees who worked for Makan at the time of the interview emphasized both the high security and the high professional standards compared with local Arab organizations. They justified working for the institutional news organization by noting that the channel had changed and now presented more diverse voices instead of a narrow institutional ideology. Other emphasized that they focused on social issues in their work, striving to promote the Palestinian people and avoiding covering stories on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The tension between political and professional issues in the work experiences of the interviewees echoes phenomenological studies of women journalists in other countries (e.g., Sweden: Melin-Higgins, 1996; Britain: Melin-Higgins, 2004). These studies found that women journalists tend to see their job as a mission rather than just a job and they also tend to emphasize their personal involvement as the best approach (Melin-Higgins, 2004). The Israeli-Palestinian women journalists perceive their journalistic role as a mission, and their personal involvement is often conflated with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Discussion

The media are seen as powerful actors in shaping public opinion and culture. Following from this, participation in news production has become a key concern for women and social minorities who are seeking equal rights, civic belonging, and fuller social involvement (Byerly and Padovani, 2017). The current study is part of a wider research project that pays close attention to the social location and intersectionality of multiple aspects of social identity in the study of Israeli journalism. I focus here on Israeli-Palestinian women journalists and consider the unique challenges journalism poses for their intersectional identities based on gender and nationality.

My analysis of the interviews with the Israeli-Palestinian women journalists shows the dialectic nature of their work experience, which varies between exclusion and inclusion within the profession. Their experiences of exclusion and inclusion varies among different news organizations, mainly between mainstream and local Arab news media. The women shift between coping with the barriers they confront in their efforts to enter the profession and withdrawing. Their stories reveal how Israeli-Palestinian women journalists, mired in structural inferiority, have difficulty entering the profession because of their intersectional positioned identity. They very often face barriers entering Arab journalism because of recruiting procedures based on a clan system that discriminates against women. In addition, they are excluded from mainstream Israel journalism because of their Arabic accent.

Within the current climate of diversity and sensitivity in the Israeli news industry, some of the interviewees have enjoyed the advantage of being framed as an “authentic Arab woman” when joining mainstream organizations. While wearing the hijab is a barrier in the context of Arab journalism, it can be an advantage in the mainstream. However, they have also found that when working for these organizations, they need to be careful that this culturally exotic national identity does not spill over into politics. This limitation reaffirms their subordinated and fragile position as women who are Israeli-Palestinian and part of an “indigenous minority” (Jamal, 2020).

Many Israeli-Palestinian women journalists also grapple with personal security challenges that embody their intersected identities—gendered and national. Their struggle with the new frontline of online violence, a particularly dangerous trend for women journalists around the world (PosettiAbuulez et al., 2020), is also an intersected experience since the offenders specifically exploit their vulnerability as women within a traditional society.

An analysis of the work experiences of the Israeli-Palestinian women journalists I interviewed also suggests that their professional identity is closely connected to their ideological perceptions and political aims relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It appears that Israeli-Palestinian women journalists see their profession mainly as a site for personal ideological expression, aiming for social change while having a variety of political stances and goals. This finding echoes the centrality of the advocacy role in the experience of Jewish women of Ethiopian origin and Israeli-Russian immigrant women working in mainstream Israeli journalism, who tend to focus on social change through their journalistic work (Lachover, 2022, 2023).

Further comparison of the Israeli-Palestinian case study with the two other minority groups within this project indicates more similarities. All of the minority groups experienced structural inferiority that hindered or excluded them based on their distinguished identity. However, the women also pointed out how the intersectionality of their gender and racial or ethnic identity paved their way into the mainstream newsrooms. At the same time, the positionality of Israeli-Palestinian women journalists who are outside of the Zionist project (Lamont et al., 2016) yielded a different experience. While all the Israeli-Ethiopian and Israeli-Russian women journalists I interviewed strove to integrate within Israeli mainstream journalism, only some of the Israeli-Palestinians shared this kind of ambition and the others entirely rejected it. Moreover, the Israeli-Palestinians’ reasons for wanting to integrate into Israeli mainstream journalism were mainly professional and occupational, while for the other two groups, working in mainstream journalism provides an efficient tool to express their social criticism.

Sociological studies on minority women and work that use an intersectional approach focus on specific social minorities (based mostly on ethnicity and nationality) or on minorities with common work status (e.g., career women, low-skilled women). This study is innovative in its suggestion of the need to include the social context of specific professions and the distinct challenges and advantages for specific minorities. The experiences of women in journalism, which, like filmmaking, is inherently related to meaning-making and identity (Jamal and Lavie, 2021), show that they struggle with constant tension between their gender, national, and professional identities. Moreover, since journalism practice often requires a presence and voice in the public sphere, it creates both challenges and opportunities for social minority women journalists based on their multiple and intersected marginalized identities.