ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how expressions of compassion and empathy became “outlaw emotions” in Israel during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, arguing that we cannot understand narrative hegemony and contestation without considering the ways in which emotional dimensions of narrative shape power relations. The Israeli state is heavily invested in maintaining, both at home and abroad, high levels of emotional investment in hierarchical identities of self and other which reflect and perpetuate asymmetries of power and that are strongly activated during times of national crisis and war. The extent to which expressions of grief, compassion and empathy towards the Palestinian “other” were delegitimized is examined through a consideration of the state’s efforts at emotional governance. It is argued that emotional identification with Palestinians became a costly endeavour that contested the hegemonic Israeli narrative and resisted the legitimate emotional parameters of socio-political relations. The chapter examines empirical manifestations of feeling rules and structures that shaped the state’s efforts at emotional governance through the public condemnation of Israeli Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel who voiced empathy for Palestinians in Gaza or who opposed the war and Israeli policy.
