Echoes of Gaza: Semiotic analysis of Palestinian and Israeli political cartoons during the 2023/24 war on Gaza

This article investigates the impact of political cartoons on the political discourse surrounding the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, with special emphasis on the war on Gaza during 2023–24. The study employs a semiotic analysis of 200 political cartoons on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict published between 7 October and 7 December 2023, in four newspapers: (1) Haaretz , an Israeli newspaper, (2) Israel Hayom , an Israeli newspaper, (3) Al-Haya Al-Gadeeda , the Palestinian National Authority’s official newspaper and (4) Al Quds , a Palestinian independent newspaper. The methodology integrates visual semiotic analysis using Barthes’s approach to uncover denotative and connotative meaning and Medhurst and DeSousa’s two-level classification scheme. The results show that there are significant differences between the four newspapers. The cartoons published in the Palestinian newspapers focused mainly on topics related to Palestinian victimhood and the violence against them. In contrast, the cartoons published in the Israeli newspapers differed, as Haaretz focused on criticizing Israeli leadership, while Israel Hayom focused on showcasing violence against Israelis and portraying them as victims, as well as criticizing international leaders and international interventions. Political cartoons play a role in the visual discourse, conveying political messages and shaping the narrative about social reality. Through symbolic devices, such as metaphors, images and text juxtaposition, and cultural allusions, political cartoons, as demonstrated in this analysis, promote narratives aligned with their political agendas.