Abstract
Repeated attempts by activists and aid volunteers to break Israel's unilaterally recognized borders around Gaza have been most often met with violent resistance from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). In this paper, I argue that “Freedom Flotilla”, the ninth attempt at challenging Israel's blockade of Gaza by sea, has been challenged through a delegitimization campaign leveled on the behalf of powerful Christian Zionists. This campaign of discursive dispossession has taken at least three strategic forms: (1) the performance of the doctrine of terra nullius; (2) a culture jamming counter-media project; and (3) a biblically based racialized division of the world. These Christian Zionist discourses are important to consider in understanding the conflict because they have effects that influence how the conflict is to be framed, as well as material effects, and because they resonate with Israel's increasingly powerful religious settler movement and culturally conservative Americans.
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