Martyrdom and the Myth of Motherhood: U.K. broadcast news media's agential construction of Palestinian female suicide bombers during the Second Intifada (2000-2005).

During the Second Intifada of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, female-perpetrated suicide bombings emerged as a new proponent of political violence during this phase of Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. Prior academic literature demonstrates the gendered nature of these acts—based upon wider debates concerning the male relationship with conflict—as key in predominantly Western print news media analyses of these female bombers' coverage. Examining the widely unexamined medium of broadcast news, this article addresses the extent to which BBC News and ITV News embrace the "Myth of Motherhood" to communicate the Palestinian female body's performative status. Via a postcolonial framework, analyses of applied natural ("Vacant Womb") and unnatural ("Deviant Womb") biological frameworks shall address whether constructions of Palestinian female suicide bombers' allegedly deviant femininity impact upon representations of their political agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]