ABSTRACT
Children are the quintessential innocents—perhaps the most abhorrent victims of war, certainly one of the most manipulated. Wars are fought—according to the propaganda—in the name of ensuring childrens’ current security and their future happiness. When children are seen as actively engaged in the war, they may be celebrated as patriots or feared and pitied as victims of brainwashing. Media presentations of children direct our understanding of the situation, shaping how we remember the warring parties, how we assess their values and their actions. Through the Israel–Palestine conflict, varied media have portrayed children as pawns, martyrs, fighters, and innocents. These characterisations have functioned to ennoble, to vilify, to justify, to pity—ultimately to frame the varied participants in the conflict as good or evil. The children—individual victims with contested narratives like Tirzah Porat or Muhammed al-Dura, documentary devices like the children of 5 Broken Cameras and A Death in Gaza, or nameless victims like the children of Hebron in the reports of non-governmental organisations active there—all become media tools in portraying and understanding the war. In the ongoing conflict that is Israel–Palestine, children are occasionally used as symbols of hope. Sometimes, we directly hear the children’s memories; at other times, we hear witnesses or other reporters remember the events surrounding the child victims/participants. Always the memories are structured by context and selection. Building on Entman (1993), Burke (1984/1954), and Alexander (2012) this study considers how children are used in the media to identify and define the underlying problems of conflict, while making moral judgements about the actors, their actions, and the exacerbating conditions.
