Arts-Based Learning in Israel Education: A Qualitative Inquiry into Using Political Cartoons to Study Current Events in Israeli Society

ABSTRACT

An arts-based qualitative research study was conducted to study the use of political cartoons in Israel education in a high school class. Data analysis revealed that students’ initial interest in the cartoons coupled with the diversity of representations of Israeli society on display in the cartoons facilitated an Israel education experience that afforded students the opportunity to engage in meaningful text-to-self connections that also deepened their understanding of the complexity of Israeli society.

KEYWORDS:

• Arts-based learning
• Israel education
• Israel
• Political cartoons

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ All student names are pseudonyms.

² See Reingold (2020) and Backenroth and Sinclair (2015).

³ That Bortz’s (2023a, 2023b) opposition to her leaders and being a feminist could be part of a more complex Orthodox identity did not seem to be a consideration for Stella.

⁴ Israeli politician and leader of the Shas party. Deri was in the news in early 2023 because he was appointed Minister of the Economy despite a history of financial crimes. Israel’s High Court ruled him ineligible to serve in the position and the ruling caused friction among the government’s political leaders. Deri was therefore the subject of a number of cartoons that commented on his recidivism and ability to be a minister.

⁵ Of course, what must be acknowledged is that even when students are exploring the political cartoons on their own, it is still mediated by their teacher. In addition to providing them with written summaries of the current event authored by the educator, the selection of cartoons also involved decisions made for the students by their teacher about what they could or should see. Despite these mitigating factors, being able to look at primary sources and try to discern their meaning does bring students closer to authentically engaging with Israel rather than just hearing it explained by their teacher.

⁶ Three English-language books have been published about Israeli political cartoons and all three have different focuses. Ilan Danjoux’s (2012) Political Cartoons and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict examines cartoons produced during the Second Palestinian Intifada to understand how Israeli and Palestinian cartoonists depicted the other in their work. Matt Reingold’s (2022) Reenvisioning Israel Through Political Cartoons: Visual Discourses During the 2018–2021 Electoral Crisis focuses on recent internal conflicts in Israel and uses them to highlight the diversity and disjuncture in contemporary Israeli society. Finally, Colin Shindler’s (2023) Israel: A History in 100 Cartoons pairs one political cartoon from each year of Israel’s existence with a summary of the year’s eventsto provide readers with a chronological overview of Israeli history.