Online news coverage of female perpetrators during the October 2015 wave of violence of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Introduction

Terrorism and other types of violent attacks during conflicts are some of the most newsworthy events of our time and usually receive extensive media coverage. These types of dramatic events provide journalists and editors with material to construct the news and make us, as the audience, consume it (Ayalon et al., 2016; Wolfsfeld, 2011). And yet, not all terror attacks receive the same coverage, even from the same media outlets. Differences in how these events are covered can be attributed to the characteristics of the attacks such as the location, target and weapon used (Weimann and Winn, 1994; Yarchi and Tsfati, 2009).

When it comes to reporting on terrorist attacks, the media often turn to ethnocentric frames to interpret events. Ethnocentricity is the human tendency to view one’s own social group at the center, while regarding those outside one’s social group as the other, to whom negative attributes are often attached (Harb and Bessaiso, 2006; Kinder and Kam, 2010). Ethnocentricity is particularly prevalent in times of war or conflict, during which there is a strong call to define who is good and who is bad. According to Wolfsfeld (2004), the media tends to foster an ethnocentric view of the world. Such an ethnocentric orientation reinforces suspicion, hostility and/or hatred toward the enemy, and inhibits attempts to modify compassionate and/or sympathetic attitudes.

The use of women as perpetrators is growing at an alarming rate. In recent years we have witnessed female involvement in various terror organizations activities, such as the Islamic State, al-Shabaab, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and Palestinian terror activity (Alexander, 2016; Bloom, 2011). This trend of women involvement in terrorism was accompanied by a barrage of misinformation. In their attempt to explain women’s involvement in terrorism, journalistic accounts presented a far too simplistic and one-dimensional account of the phenomenon. The media tends to explain and interpret violent acts committed by female perpetrators, as well as justifying these events’ newsworthiness, unlike violent acts committed by men. However, through the ethnocentric lens, the literature also suggests that, when performing these violent acts, female perpetrators identify themselves as the out group, other or evil, so their stories are covered in a similar way to those of male perpetrators.

Thus, evidence suggests that men and women engaged in terrorist activities receive differential treatment from government institutions and media outlets. Also that, in spite of numerous factors shaping the result of any case, gender has unjustly affected jurisdiction treatment and journalistic coverage of individuals involved in crimes motivated by violent extremism (Alexander and Turkington, 2018). The fact that the 2015–2016 wave of terror in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict was largely characterized by individual acts enabled us to compare differences between men and women who committed terror attacks. To be more specific, since Israeli media turned its spotlight toward individual perpetrators, they separated them as gendered study cases. Therefore, this study aims to broaden our understanding of those differences in Israeli media coverage, focusing on the perpetrator’s gender, while examining Israeli online news coverage of the October 2015 wave of violence in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

From 17 September 2015 to 9 October 2016, there was a violent escalation in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This was reflected in a significant rise in terror attacks carried out by individual Palestinians, mostly in the form of stabbings. October 2015, the time frame analyzed in the current study, saw a record number of attacks by Palestinians (43) and the second largest number of Israeli casualties (8), after November 2015 with nine Israeli casualties. In addition, during that month we had witnessed a relatively large number of female perpetrators (8 out of 43 attacks). According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2016), 47 people were killed and 527 injured as a result of Palestinian violence during this period. According to the Israeli Security Agency (Shabak, 2016), the perpetrators most often fit the profile of a lone terrorist: young, single, and with no organizational affiliation and/or association with previous security operations. A lone terrorist carries out an act of violence by themselves that is intended to support a group, militia, political movement, or ideology. This sort of individual commits the violent act without directly receiving intelligence, or financial and technological support. Although lone actors operate by themselves, they may be influenced and motivated by certain groups’ beliefs and ideologies (McCauley and Moshalenko, 2017).

On this basis, the current study aims to examine how news coverage of female perpetrators during the October 2015 wave of violence was depicted by leading Israeli news websites. In addition, we tested if there are differences between story coverage of female and male perpetrators, or if all perpetrators are simply grouped together and depicted as a single common enemy. In other words, is the ethnocentric frame consistent, or do gender considerations overpower this frame?

Terrorism

The word terror (originally from Latin) means to cause fear. The use of violence as terror is intended to intimidate. To achieve this goal, there is a need for publicity, which is primarily done through media coverage in our current modern age. Therefore, advertising and media play an important role in terrorists’ activity (Galily et al., 2015). Academic, political, security and journalistic sources all have varied definitions of terror (Ganor, 1993). Some definitions relate to the modus operandi of terrorist organizations, while others emphasize terrorist motives, characteristics of terrorism, and methods of terrorist activity. Disagreements regarding the definition of terrorism stem from the interests of the terrorist organizations and countries assisting them, as opposed to the interests of the countries affected by terrorism (Hoffmann, 2006). Much has been written about the concept of terrorism, yet there is no definition upon which scholars agree. Schmid and Jongman (1988) examined more than 100 academic definitions of terrorism in leading journals on the subject. They identified the four components that appeared most frequently: Terror is a type of violent struggle which purposely utilizes or threatens to utilize violence against civilians, in order to create fear and anxiety for the sake of political goals. Respectively, Weinberg et al. (2004) examined more than 70 definitions of terrorism in three leading terrorism journals and found similar results.

News coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

When covering political events, framing theory suggests that the media actively sets patterns of reference that readers or viewers use to interpret the events (e.g. Entmann, 1991; Wolfsfeld, 1997). Framing is a tool that the media and politicians use to make salient points that direct their readers to a desired comprehension (Scheufele and Tewksbury, 2007). In doing so, the media emphasizes certain aspects of the events and determines their main theme or narrative. Decisions regarding which aspects are emphasized contribute to constructing news schemes with a recognizable agenda (Callaghan and Schnell 2001; Gamson, 1992; Paletz, 2002). Framing is particularly relevant when it comes to political conflict or crises, in which the media can structure stories to emphasize a dramatic narrative (Jamieson and Waldman, 2003; Tuchman, 1978) and stimulate support of, or opposition to, a particular side in a political conflict (Entman, 1993). The type of news coverage can lead the public to identify and empathize with one side or group in a conflict. On the other hand, coverage that focuses on the complexity of a conflict leads the audience to feel detached from events, arousing feelings of distance between the audience and the victims (Evans, 2010; Robinson, 2002).

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is deep and longstanding (Morris, 2001). The origins and history of particular events are contested by the different involved parties. Participants often tell the story from their own point of view to legitimize their own actions. This makes journalists’ tasks very difficult. If there is no single account of what happened that everyone accepts, the journalist has to rely on the concept of balanced reporting and attempt to represent a range of views. This is made more complex because there are not simply two sides in the conflict, but divisions of opinion on each side. Therefore, journalists must pick their way through competing opinions and versions of events, and possibly clarify what is established as fact (Philo and Berry, 2011).

Regarding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the formal Israel Press Council’s Rules of Journalistic Ethics (1996) states that the Israeli media should be politically balanced, and that a measure of objectivity should be taken into account when covering the conflict as it is a highly sensitive subject in Israeli culture. However, the coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in times of violent escalations was inherently ethnocentric (Wolfsfeld et al., 2008), often personalizing the Israeli side and demonizing the enemy (Lavie-Dinur et al., 2013; Liebes, 1992). The media relies on ethnocentric framing by taking on the role of a social mobilizer that advocates national and military perspectives, differentiating between an in group and out group (Samuel-Azran et al., 2015): essentially demonizing and depersonalizing the enemy (Wolfsfeld et al., 2008), magnifying supportive information while marginalizing contradictory information, and relying on official sources (Elbaz and Bar-Tal, 2016). The Israeli media generally tends to frame Palestinians as vicious, and blames them for the deterioration of the peace process (Wolfsfeld, 2004). The Israeli public also demands that coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (and other events) be focused on them (Samuel-Azran et al., 2015).

News coverage of female perpetrators’ acts of violence

One of the prominent characteristics of the October 2015 wave of terror was the participation of female perpetrators. While typically violent behavior is a character trait that is more strongly associated with men (Gladue, 1991), acts of female aggression certainly exist (White and Kowalski, 1994). Generally, differences between the portrayal of male and female acts of aggression are seen in a number of domains, such as crime (Barlow, 2015), militancy (Emmanuel, 2002), political crime (Lavie-Dinur et al., 2015) and terrorism (Brown, 2011). It seems that the media takes the view that a female perpetrator must either be bad or mad. Regardless, she is an exception to the norm (Berrington and Honkatukia, 2002). In fact, the media prefers to rationalize women’s aggression by rendering their actions to ‘a form of gender role pathology’, and exaggerating their degree of masculinity (Muncer et al., 2001).

In the case of terrorism, it has been argued that the need for the media to call attention to the fact a terrorist is female, is illustrative of basic human assumptions that equate terrorism with men. If a woman perpetrates the act of terror, it is different and becomes a media spectacle (Jaworski, 2010). As a result, stories of female perpetrators are particularly newsworthy, reported at a proportionally higher extent than their statistical occurrence, and usually lead to sensationalized reporting (Berrington and Honkatukia, 2002; Naylor, 2001).

Nacos’s (2005) comprehensive study of media portrayals of female terrorists highlighted six key frames under which these women are placed:

These frames are specific to the female terrorist, and mainly either garner compassion for her by personalizing her actions, or dismiss the meaningfulness of her actions by depicting them to be greater than her.

Conway and McInerney (2012) analyzed the media coverage of two similar terrorist events – one carried out by a female offender and the other by a male offender. They found that the use of the above frames was significantly more prevalent in coverage of the female terrorist’s event.

Another common reason attributed to the greater amount of media coverage for women’s acts of violence, as compared to that of men, is due to the perceived unnaturalness of women’s involvement in political activity (Gardner, 2007). Reporting on female terrorists is said to inspire ‘a gendered discourse’ that reflects ‘a cultural unease about women participating in political violence’ (Melzer, 2009: 36). Accordingly, media sources tend to avoid naming female offenders as killers, which would contradict the longstanding myth that women are not violent by nature. Instead, the media prefers terms such as nationalist, avenger, martyr, victim, feminist, doting daughter, or grieving widow (Gardner, 2007: 924). Additionally, news articles habitually describe such acts as anomalous and unfathomable, further maintaining pre-existing sentiment regarding women as, gentle and passive.

Journalists try to rationalize female terrorists’ motivations much more often than male terrorists (Friedman, 2008). In corroboration, a content analysis of more than 200 news articles concerning female terrorism found sources of explanation in nearly one-third of all articles (Gardner, 2007). While the motivations of male terrorists are linked to ideological matters, such as nationalism, personal events, such as revenge, are the dominant theme for female terrorists (Brown, 2011; Friedman, 2008; Jacques and Taylor, 2008).

Several studies looking at Israeli media coverage of female terrorists, specifically during the second intifada, reached similar conclusions. Sela-Shayovitz’s (2007) analysis found that female suicide bombers were often described in a sexually stereotyped manner, including a stronger indication of their physical appearance. Furthermore, while they were grouped with their male counterparts as ‘the other’, they were also placed in the victim role with blame put on their society, rather than on themselves. In essence, the media downplayed these women’s degree of agency. In addition, the media included information regarding the terrorists’ personal backgrounds, specifically when reporting on female terrorists, as a means to deal with the puzzling juxtaposition of traditional feminine attributes and the political, violent actions these women undertook.

One such instance is the case of the first Palestinian, female suicide bomber, Wafa Idris, whose infertility resulted in a divorce and her ex-husband later remarrying. Both Israeli and Arab media mentioned this in an attempt to rationalize her actions. However, many of the women who followed in Idris’s path were happily married, well-educated women, which invalidated this argument and emphasized the gendered nature of the media coverage. Naaman (2007: 936) wrote:

While the dozens of male suicide bombers’ identities and life stories are hardly ever delved into, their reasons are assumed to be clear and grounded in both political and religious ideology. In contrast, a woman as a suicide bomber seems so oxymoronic that an individualized psychological explanation for the deviation must be found.

Moreover, to add to the personalization of these women, special emphasis is given to their identity. Articles are more often accompanied by photos of female suicide bombers than of male ones, and videotapes left behind by females are aired much more frequently than those of men (Jaworski, 2010; Naaman, 2007).

Berkowitz (2005) also explored the reporting of suicide bombings during the second intifada in major news websites in Canada, Egypt, Israel, the UK, and the US. They remarked on the use of categorical framing and noted the emergence of the female terrorist as a push toward redefining established media norms of what defines a terrorist. Traditionally, terrorists had been portrayed as tricksters – anti-heroes with little perception of right and wrong. However, the Trickster was not considered to be a suitable image for interpreting the female terrorist, so the portrayal of these women evolved into heroic warriors fighting a just cause. Then Reem Riyashi, a young mother of two, killed herself and four others in a suicide bomb attack in 2004. At that point, the woman warrior frame was abandoned in favor of framing Riyashi’s forgotten duty as a mother. To be more specific, although Riyashi entered Israel intending to kill several people as an act of political violence, she was largely portrayed by Israeli media in a rather personal–maternal fashion: a mother of two who was driven to an act of terror after cheating on her husband.

The current study

The Israeli media coverage of the September 2015 to October 2016 Palestinian wave of violence enabled us to thoroughly examine how female perpetrators were depicted in the Israeli media. In addition, the present study focuses upon gender differences, as reflected in the Israeli media coverage. As mentioned above, the 2015–2016 wave of violence was characterized by perpetrators who, regardless of gender, shared the common features of a lone terrorist, defined here as: unorganized attacks, motivated by personal problems or feelings of discrimination that carry a spontaneous and popular quality, and are largely inspired and incited by social networks. As mentioned above, the fact that the 2015 wave of terror was largely characterized by individual acts enabled us to compare male and female perpetrators of terror attacks and isolate them as gendered study cases.

The purpose of this article is to examine if, in spite of national and political common features, female perpetrators’ stories were covered differently from those of male perpetrators and, if so, in what manner. We examine how Israeli media reacted to, and reported on, female perpetrators. We specifically examined how the Israeli online press covered the stories of Palestinian female perpetrators during the wave of violence of October 2015–2016, and how it differed from stories of male perpetrators. Most studies examining the coverage of female terrorists focused on female suicide bombers (e.g. Berkowitz, 2005; Naaman, 2007; Yarchi, 2014). Therefore, this study aims to further expand our understanding of this phenomenon by looking at other types of attacks carried out by female perpetrators, particularly when these attacks are more frequent then before (eight attacks in one month).

Results

Before presenting differences in the coverage of male and female perpetrators, we will first show how their actions differed, in terms of methods, location, and target. As mentioned previously, 43 attacks took place in October 2015. Of these, 35 were conducted by men and 8 by women. Stabbing was the most frequent method of attack (n = 34; 79%) for both male (n = 27; 77.1%) and female (n = 7; 87.5%) perpetrators. Slightly less than half (n = 21; 48.8%) of the attacks took place in the West Bank, most of which were carried out by female perpetrators (n = 5; 62.5%). In comparison, 16 (45.7%) of attacks in the West Bank were carried out by men. Only 41.9 percent (n = 18) of attacks during October 2015 targeted security forces (n = 18). However, 62.5 percent (n = 5) of attacks were carried out by female perpetrators targeted security forces, compared to 37.1 percent (n = 13) of attacks by male perpetrators.

These differences were also evident in the media coverage of the attacks. While stabbings were the most reported method of attack, it was more prevalent in reports about female perpetrators (n = 40, 71.4%) than in reports about male perpetrators (n = 306; 63.4%). More than half (n = 31; 55.4%) of the news stories reporting about female perpetrators covered attacks that took place in the West-Bank, compared to 24.4 percent (n = 129) of those presenting male perpetrators. In terms of the target of the attack, 85.1 percent (n = 40) of the news stories focusing on female perpetrators covered attacks targeting security forces, compared to 22.7 percent (n = 78) of attacks carried out by men.

The current study focuses on differences in how the online press covers attacks carried out by male and female perpetrators. Our analysis includes 1,832 articles from 3 main Israeli news websites, covering the Palestinian–Israeli conflict’s wave of violence of October 2015. More than one-third of those articles (n = 680) included a direct reference to the perpetrator’s sex. Out of these, 59 (8.7%) ⁷ referred to female perpetrators, while 621 referred to male perpetrators. Our analysis examined various aspects of media coverage: main themes, information presented about the perpetrators, motives, descriptions of perpetrators, and the procedure of gaining control over the perpetrator. Our analysis will begin by examining the most salient themes of coverage while dealing with attacks carried out by male and female perpetrators.

The analysis revealed the following dominant themes in the coverage: the attack itself (15.1%), information about the perpetrator/s (21%), gaining control over the perpetrator/s (4.7%), and a combination of these themes (4.8%). Table 1 presents the article’s main theme as a function of the perpetrator’s sex. The correlation between the perpetrator’s gender and the article’s main theme was significant.

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Table 1.

The article’s main theme as a function of the perpetrator’s sex (%).

	The attack (%)	Information about the perpetrator(s) (%)	Gaining control over the perpetrator(s) (%)	A combination of these themes (%)	Other themes (%)	Total (%)
Male	177 (28.5)	156 (25.1)	38 (6.1)	49 (7.9)	201 (32.4)	621 (91.3)
Female	13 (22)	22 (37.3)	5 (8.5)	9 (15.3)	10 (16.9)	59 (8.7)
Total	190 (27.9)	178 (26.2)	43 (6.3)	58 (8.5)	211 (31.1)	680

Note. N = 680 – all news stories that present a perpetrator, χ²(4) = 11.88, Rc = 0.132, p < .05. Percentages are themes presented in the coverage within each sex.

The findings (Table 1) indicate that the most frequent theme for female perpetrators was information about the perpetrator (37.9% of stories covering female perpetrators, compared to 25.1% for men). For male perpetrators, the most frequent topic was the attack itself (28.5%, compared to 22.4% for women), suggesting that the newsworthiness of female perpetrators overpowers the ethnocentric tendency of the media. An excellent example is how Walla chose to tell the story of a female perpetrator (translated from Hebrew):

Shurouq Doiat, the young Palestinian woman, 18 years old, who stabbed Daniel, a 36-year-old man, at the Lions’ Gate in Jerusalem, posted a message a few hours before the event on her Facebook account, where she wrote that her dream was to become a shahid. ‘Where am I going? I’m going to become a shahid,’ she wrote. ‘I want to ask you for a request, I do not want you to cry over me when I become a shahid. My highest desire is to be a shahid in the path of Allah,’ she added. ⁸

However, a report of an attack by a male perpetrator is a different story, as evident in another example from Walla:

A Palestinian stabbed today (Thursday) a 25-year-old yeshiva student at a light-rail station on the Bar-Lev Road in Jerusalem near the National Police headquarters and seriously wounded him. He then tried to stab a security guard, lightly wounded him, and fought with him to snatch his weapon, but was neutralized by Yassam fighters in the area. The 19-year-old perpetrator, who had a blue identity card, ⁹ was taken for questioning. ¹⁰

This pattern of results suggests that online media depict stories of female perpetrators differently from those of male perpetrators, which is similar to findings of other studies (Gardner, 2007; Lavie-Dinur et al., 2013), and goes beyond its ethnocentric framing tendency. Evidence suggests that the media tend to put more emphasis on information about the perpetrator when focusing on female attackers. In order to gain a deeper understanding of these gender differences, we further analyzed how the perpetrator’s sex correlated with different features of the articles, beginning with the coverage of personal information.

One fascinating finding regarding differences in coverage between male and female perpetrators concerns personal information appearing in the news coverage. Personal information was measured using four indicators (similar to other studies in the field, e.g. Gardner, 2007; Friedman, 2008; Lavie-Dinur et al., 2015; Nacos, 2005): general personal information, information about the perpetrator’s family, information about the perpetrator’s mental state and information dealing with physical appearance. The findings are presented in Figure 1.

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Figure 1.

Differences between male and female perpetrators in the personal information covered.

The findings (Figure 1) indicate that the media tends to place more emphasis on female perpetrators with regard to three of the indicators. While covering an attack carried out by female perpetrators, the media put significantly more emphasis on their general personal information [t₍₆₇₇₎ =2.571; p < .05], information about their family [t₍₅₆₉₎ = 2.897; p < .001], and their mental state [t₍₅₇₃₎ = 2.095; p < .05]. In contrast to findings of previous studies (Lavie-Dinur et al., 2013; Nacos, 2005), physical appearance was the only indicator in which significant differences between male and female perpetrators were not found [t₍₅₇₇₎ = 0.763; ns].

To illustrate the media emphasis on the personal information of female perpetrators, we will use the story of the insurgent from Afula, ¹¹ that received much attention from the Israeli media. Walla reported that people who know the family claimed she suffered emotional distress, was a divorced mother of a girl, lived with her parent, and held a BA from the Technicon (Israel Institute of Technology). Haaretz only provided her full name, Isra Zidane Ta’ufik Abbed, and that she was from the town of Nazareth. Ynet depicted her as a biology student, and quoted her friends as saying, ‘she didn’t want to hurt the Jews’, and described her as ‘great and very smart’. As the evidence suggests (and seen in these examples), the media tends to present more personal information when covering female perpetrators, such as information about their family or mental state. These findings correspond with those of previous studies (Gardner, 2007; Lavie-Dinur et al., 2013; Nacos, 2005), with one exception. The media did not put more emphasis on the perpetrator’s physical appearance.

The perpetrator’s motive was not a salient issue in the coverage of the October 2015 violence. It was only mentioned in 89 articles (out of the 680 that covered a specific perpetrator). While examining the few news stories that presented motives, it was interesting to see significant differences in the motive being attributed to male and female perpetrators. These differences are presented in Table 2.

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Table 2.

The correlation between the perpetrator’s sex and the motive presented in the news coverage.

	Personal (%)	Mental state (%)	Ideological (%)	Total (%)
Male	22 (28.9)	3 (3.9)	51 (67.1)	76 (85.4)
Female	3 (23.1)	4 (30.8)	6 (46.2)	13 (14.6)
Total	25 (28.1)	7 (7.9)	57 (64)	89

Note: N = 89, includes all the articles that present information about the perpetrator, χ²(2) = 11.051, Rc = 0.352, p < .01. Percentages are motives presented in the coverage within each sex.

The findings (Table 2) suggest that, while ideology was the most salient motive for both male and female perpetrators (67.1% and 46.2%, respectively), coverage pointed to mental state as the motive for females in many more cases than for males (30.8% and 3.9%, respectively). While the news occasionally described the riot at the Temple Mount, or the will to become a shahid, as female perpetrators’ motives, detailed religious–political–ideological motives were attributed much more often to male perpetrators, such as the incitement from social networks, Hamas affiliation, or a desire to start a third intifada.

Another interesting difference between male and female perpetrators was the language and specific wordings used in the news coverage, as shown in Figure 2. Although the perpetrators were referred to as terrorists or insurgents (mechablim in Hebrew), in most cases, the evidence showed that there were significant differences in how male and female perpetrators were described [t₍₄₉₇₎ = 2.644; p < .01]. While male perpetrators could be described in less severe terms (using expressions such as young men – 3.4%), ¹² or by using terms that indicated violent acts that may or may not be related to a conflict (such as stabber and murderer – 4.9%), female perpetrators were mostly described using more severe and conflict-related terms, such as terrorist or insurgent (96.2% in articles describing female perpetrators, compared to 89.9% of those covering male perpetrators).

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Figure 2.

The manner by which the perpetrators were referred to in the coverage (the word used to describe them), as a function of their sex.

Finally, during the October 2015 wave of violence of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the media gave special attention to the procedure of gaining control over the attacker (addressed by Israeli politicians and the Israeli Army’s chief of staff). ¹³ This issue appeared in 53 percent of news stories in which a perpetrator was presented. Coverage of female perpetrators tended to present this topic more often – 75.9 percent of stories presenting a female perpetrator dealt with the procedure of gaining control over the attacker, compared to only 50.8 percent of stories presenting a male perpetrator. ¹⁴ In most cases, this procedure was not criticized in the coverage (only 13.2% of news stories were critical), and no differences were found in the amount of criticism between coverage of male or female perpetrators [t₍₅₂₂₎ = 1.117, ns].

An example of how the issue of gaining control was presented by the media can be found while closely examining the story of the insurgent from Afula. Walla described how ‘border policemen, security guards and soldiers encircle her, and have no choice but to shoot her.’ Haaretz described how ‘she was standing at the bus station in Afula with a knife in her hand, surrounded by armed security personnel. A police officer approached her and then there were some shots.’ Ynet reported that the woman ‘pulled out a knife to the soldier who was there, and began to shout. There was a border policeman, a soldier and a security guard who identified the suspect with the knife in her hand. They shot single shots to the lower part of her body.’ This attention given to the procedure of gaining control over female attackers could be related to the need of the Israeli media to focus more on the perpetrator as a salient issue when covering female perpetrators. The issue of gaining control provides journalists and editors with more information to report, especially when dealing with female attackers, and helps the audience better understand the situation.

Discussion

In light of former findings regarding how acts of terror carried out by females are presented in the media, this article aimed to examine online news coverage of female perpetrators during the October 2015 wave of violence of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict to determine if gender roles shifted the traditional, ethnocentric, conflict reporting style of Israeli media outlets. Earlier findings mainly suggest that there are gender differences when covering a story of a female perpetrator in the media (Berkowitz, 2005; Berrington and Honkatukia, 2002; Muncer et al., 2001; Sela-Shayovitz, 2007). Not only are these stories unusual compared to male violence but they are also paradoxical to the soft, gentle, passive, motherly nature of women (e.g. Gardner, 2007). Therefore, such stories are newsworthy and must be explained and framed by the media (Jaworski, 2010; Melzer, 2009; Naylor, 2001).

First and foremost, our findings suggest that there are real differences between acts of terror carried out by men and women during the October 2015 wave of violence. While male perpetrators mostly acted within the Green Line and against civilians, female perpetrators mostly carried out their attacks in the West Bank. The most frequent attack form for both men and women was stabbing. Nevertheless, these differences did not only exist within the real stories and facts, but also in how they were covered and framed by the media. Examining the terror attacks stories covered in three leading Israeli news websites indicated differences in the salient themes on which news stories focused, including personal information about the perpetrator, the motive for their actions, the expressions used to describe the perpetrator, and the procedure of gaining control over the attacker (a salient topic during the studied wave of violence).

Articles regarding female perpetrators included more information about the attackers themselves than was given for male perpetrators. This information referred to the perpetrators’ personal, familial and mental states. Moreover, information was given regarding their motives, which were mostly ideological, but also more mental and personal than for men. These findings correspond to the framing modes described by Nacos (2005) and Conway and McInerney (2012), regarding how the media portrays female terrorists. More specifically, two main framing modes are salient for our findings: The family connection frame, emphasizing familial status; and the bored, naive, out-of-touch-with-reality frame, in which a terrorist is seen as deluded. The latter provides support for established media constructs of female killers’ actions as a display of irrational behavior, as opposed to male violence, which is deemed to be more normal (Naylor, 2001). Our findings go along with earlier studies (e.g. Naaman, 2007; Sela-Shayovitz, 2007) that suggest the media coverage of female perpetrators includes information regarding their personal background, as a means to deal with the paradox between traditional feminine characteristics and their violent behavior. Female perpetrators are also placed in the victim role, while emphasis is given to the society from which they come to explain their actions.

Unlike other prior literature (e.g. Emmanuel, 2002; Nacos, 2005; Sela-Shayovitz, 2007), we failed to find an emphasis on female perpetrators’ physical appearances. There was minimal information regarding either male or female perpetrators’ features or clothing. A possible explanation may come from the dominance of the ethnic bias frame, exemplified by the Israeli media’s adoption of the victims’ mode of reporting (Wolfsfeld et al., 2008), in which the enemy is interpreted as a depersonalized and evil other. An emphasis on appearance contradicts this narrative.

Interestingly, we found that both men and women were mainly referred to as terrorists or insurgents. However, there were other, less severe terms used for men, such as young man, stabber, or murderer. The terms insurgent or terrorist were almost exclusively used to describe women (Berrington and Honkatukia, 2002; Lavie-Dinur et al., 2015).

These findings are somewhat contradictory to Gardner (2007), who found that the media tended to moderate the salience of female violence by avoiding associations to overly harsh terminology. Nonetheless, these findings are two sides of the same coin. Both attempt to rationalize stories of female aggression, either by downplaying it or by detaching the individuals from the gender group. What is clear is that, from a lexical perspective, female perpetrators are represented differently in the media than their male counterparts (e.g. Sternadori, 2007).

As the current analysis shows, gender presents a significant additional component that influences media interpretations of events, despite prolonged themes of ethnocentric coverage in media reports of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Such findings are in line with existing literature that considers the interplay between ethnicity and gender (Brennan and Vandenberg, 2009; Lavie-Dinur et al., 2015). We see gender playing a significant role in media readings of motivations driving the attack, the need for explanation through increased inclusion of personal background for female perpetrators, and the specific wording applied to male and female acts of violence. Nonetheless, ethnic bias remains prevalent. For example, both male and female perpetrators were predominantly driven by ideological intentions, more so than was predicted in previous literature (Brown, 2011; Friedman, 2008; Jacques and Taylor, 2008).

The October 2015 wave of terror was indicative of a new type of terrorism fueled by the decisions of lone actors. The significant presence of women within this group could perhaps be illustrative of a new wave of feminism and the evolution of the gender role, specifically within traditional societies such as the Palestinian community. This study extends our understanding regarding media coverage of female terrorists beyond the phenomenon of female suicide bombers, while analyzing the importance of gender roles from a media perspective. However, further studies should consider such a development of the conflict from more varied social and political angles, as well as from a military perspective, which must contemplate appropriate responses to such isolated acts.