Palestinian Rights

This dissertation is about the ways that American Jewish rhetoric of dissent redraws the contours of Jewish identity as a mode of ethical relations that heeds the call for Palestinian freedom. Dissenters enact a reinvention of Jewish identity through criticism of Zionism and illiberal Israeli policies toward Palestinians. Although there is an abundance of scholarship on what is widely referred to as the Israel-Palestine conflict in political science, international relations, history, Middle Eastern and North African studies, Israel studies, communication studies, and feminist, queer, and ethnic studies, there is a somewhat surprising lack of literature in rhetoric. Rhetoricians such as Matthew Abraham, Robert C. Rowland, and David A. Frank have begun to pave a foundation for Palestine and Israel in rhetorical studies. We need further research into the rhetorical nature of contemporary ethnonationalist ideology and the material conditions that undergird the circulation of its narratives.