The Ideological Construction of Israeli Children’s Animosity Towards the Palestinian: An Analysis Based on Locke’s Tabula Rasa and Foucauldian Subjectivity
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Abstract
Israeli children’s hostility towards Palestinians is not just an individualistic attitude, but an ideological and systematic one, which calls for further discursive exploration. This paper, therefore, employs Locke’s tabula rasa and Foucauldian subjectivity to explore how the Israeli state engages with the Israeli child’s inexperience. Using a discourse analysis method to build its arguments and analysis, the article reveals how children’s formative
years are an important and politically significant period, especially through social mechanisms like school commemorations, memorial ceremonies, and civics education. This highlights that childhood in conflict zones is not innocent or neutral; rather, it is a critical site in which national memory, belonging, and subjectivity are constantly produced and reproduced.
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