Labor Conflict on the National Stage: Metaphoric Lenses in Israel's Teachers' Strike

Teachers often embed their labor demands within a broader context to claim high moral ground and build community support. We analyze a recent teachers' strike in Israel, looking at how the strike played out in a country where the challenges of globalization collided with a socialist legacy in the face of an existential threat. The analysis reveals how metaphors were used to shift the discourse from that of a labor dispute to an epic struggle that evoked existential, geopolitical, integrative, and comparative meanings. We compare the Israeli example to teachers' strikes in other countries embedded in their respective contexts. (Contains 3 figures and 7 footnotes.)