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Online violence has been rampant in the past decade, intensifying the victims’ suffering owing to its rapid dissemination to vast audiences. This study aims to focus on online gender-based violence directed against young Bedouin women who have left their male-dominated home territory for academic studies. This study examined how the backlash against these students, intended to stop changes in traditional gender roles, is reflected in offensive TikTok videos.

This research is based on a qualitative-thematic analysis of 77 questionnaires and 30 semistructured in-depth interviews with first-year female Bedouin students aged 18–21 years.

The backlash was widespread, with young Bedouin men using offensive videos as “proof” that women have violated codes of honor and morality. The videos exhibited four types of gender-based violence: claims of immoral behavior, aggressive captions that take the footage out of context, allegations of immodest clothing and digital photo editing that produced fabricated results. Examining participants' reactions to the videos, this study revealed two patterns of response: passive acceptance of the situation and an active approach that included reaching out to powerful Bedouin men for solutions.

This research enriches the literature on online gender-based violence, particularly against women in traditional societies, and suggests practical steps: developing online media literacy in traditional societies, adopting a proactive approach and nurturing social self-competence in women who have been victims of online gender-based violence.

At times, a traditional minority group that opposes a change in the patriarchal structure is violent toward women who wish to adopt modern lifestyles. This study aims to examine online comments regarding a shooting at a café in an Arab-Bedouin city in Israel, where women were employed as servers. The event was framed in Israeli media as an act of backlash by young men, who call themselves “The Modesty Guard.”

In this qualitative study, the authors collected 916 online comments that were published on five main online news sites. A thematic and rhetorical analysis of online comments was conducted.

The findings uncovered five main themes: the expression of support for Bedouin women; ideas for dealing with the Modesty Guard; blaming Bedouin tradition for the shooting; comparison of the violent behavior to a parallel phenomenon among Charedim; and criticism of the lack of treatment by Israeli security forces. The responses reflected a supportive stance toward Arab-Bedouin women, who were open to progress. Conflict discourse, however, expressed alienation and increased social-national schism between the Jewish majority and Arab-Bedouin minority groups in Israel.

This study sheds light on the backlash phenomenon in Negev Bedouin society. Moreover, it exposes the lack of significant supportive actions and a lack of understanding of the deep processes unfolding in this traditional society.

The paper examines two discourses of bereavement that crystallized simultaneously in Israel as the third millennium began. One is “the economic discourse of bereavement,” with which official organizations dealing with bereavement sought to “free themselves” from the state's directives on entitlement to compensation. Army widows argued that compensation should not depend on their refraining from remarriage, while bereaved parents demanded it would not be contingent on a means test. They urge for liberation from “role demands” and for presenting entitlement to compensation as entitlement to personal rehabilitation, without using it to support pro-establishment behavior or unending interactions with establishment supervision. Those claims express the linkage of bereavement to globalization and individuation, and the desire to rebel against the republican equation conditioning entitlement to welfare on “proper” establishment-compliant behavior. A second discourse is the “hierarchy of bereavement discourse” – which was placed on the agenda together with the first one, and by the same organizations. Unlike the economic discourse, this one acted to replicate the monopoly held by families of IDF dead in the Israeli pantheon, with attempts to bring into it a group of families of civilian bereavement (families of terror victims). The discourse relies on purely republican underpinnings, complying with the spirit of the local–national period. Exploring the two discourses, that were promoted simultaneously by the same agents, assists an analysis of the Israeli discourse of bereavement that results in its definition as “glocal.” This transpires from a review of the literature showing that – even in the face of globalization processes – national–local foundations remained stable. The paper first engages with the concept of glocalization, the ethos of republican citizenship, and, as a facet of it, the identification of social policy as an agent of the social hierarchy, as well as changes in citizenship during globalization. The second section reviews the status of bereaved families, and the central discourses they have promoted in Israeli society. The third and major part contains an analysis of both discourses – the economic discourse of bereavement, and the hierarchy of bereavement discourse. Finally, we attempt to analyze and explain how apparently antithetical discourses took shape in tandem, drawing on the term “glocalism” and the impact of citizenship models.