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This paper focuses on the analysis of the discourse in major Israeli ultra-Orthodox newspapers during the first year of COVID-19. Following Durkheim, we argue that the pandemic not only brought about a health emergency, but also a state of anomie. Analyzing both Hamodia and Yated Neeman—both major news outlets of the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel—we show how in a time of anomie when the sanctity of life (pikuach nefesh) conflicted with the sanctity of the community, the latter prevailed. Thus, this study unveils a different set of moral priorities than the one commonly referred to in Israeli bioethical discussions in the pre-COVID-19 era. We also found that the Durkheimian "totem" or "God" metaphors—a symbol of society itself—are highly relevant in analyzing how leaders of the Haredi community in Israel tried to keep their congregation together. This was expressed in the two heavily censored newspapers we analyzed: they placed communal living above the sanctity of individual life in a way that exposed how the cohesion of the group and the community itself were sanctified. At the same time, what was identified as the real virus was in fact secularism and not COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that editors of newspapers in the US, in their capacity to select and arrange news related to tragic events in Palestine/Israel, tend to follow an underlying political agenda largely conforming with US foreign policy towards Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab or Moslem world more generally. This is part of a popular American geopolitical imaginary, now being reconfigured through the primacy of 'terror' as the enemy number one of the American way of life, and most certainly, by proxy, of the Israeli way of life or the life of any Washington-oriented democracy. Reportage on cases of Palestinian tragedy and agony were represented as part of or the byproduct of protracted conflict within a kind of historical amnesia or bracketing out: Israeli state policy which victimises the Palestinians tends to be rendered invisible in such manipulation of reported reality. In other words, a deft editorial arrangement deflects possible blame on Israel by removing the events from their broader context and time frame. The reports centre on symptoms of the pathology rather than its underlying causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the news coverage of a nationwide Israeli plan, TAMA38. Previous studies have shown that the media support market and state power. I ask whether they can democratize planning communications and improve the representation of ordinary people. Using critical discourse analysis, I compare the media coverage to the planning system's discourses, demonstrating that the media represented more people but were less critical of the plan. I discuss the plan and the coverage as part of actually existing neoliberalism and argue that planners should challenge the media and include the people and matters that it tends to ignore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]