"Babies as Bombs: a Discursive Study of Israeli Population Policies

Sammanfattning: Demography and security are two categories inextricably linked to each other in Israel. The fear of losing the Jewish majority has implications for the population politics, migration policies and above all, it affects the relationship with Palestine and the Arab minority within Israel’s borders. With the help of discourse analysis and a theoretical tool the aim is to frame intersecting oppressions of gender and race. Demography with its associated practices can be used as a disciplinary tool to stratify its citizens. By studying political policy documents from the 1970s until today, this thesis examines discursive changes and similarities in the material, mainly concerning the Arab Israelis. The material deals mainly with issues of security and demography. The overall picture is that the dominant racialized stereotypes have not changed in any fundamental way; the Arab minority is still perceived as a demographical and economical problem. We have found that women are only mentioned together with reproduction and unemployment. Women are the main target for a colonial modernization discourse, connecting essentialized ideas of “Arab culture” with high birth rates and poverty.