Trauma in Palestinian Israeli English Teacher Art as Linguistic/Semiotic Citizenship: Shaping Spaces of Otherwise during the Israel‐Hamas War

Abstract Amid the ongoing war in Israel that began on October 7, 2023, Palestinian Israeli English teachers are navigating sociopolitical pressures and trauma. In classrooms and public discourse, Palestinian voices are surveilled, silenced, and criminalized, revealing dynamics of oppression (Marmarosh, 2025). The paper brings Elizabeth Povinelli's (2016) concept of the otherwise in conversation with linguistic citizenship —discussed by Stroud & Williams (2017) as “a way of thinking through the potential of language, thinking about a space where language could be used ‘otherwise’” (pp. 184)—with the purpose of examining teachers' arts‐based discourse in a war zone. We utilize thematic and visual analysis to explore voice and agency. In the face of trauma the study reveals teachers grappling with institutionalized silencing and diffracted agency; relational, embodied pedagogies; resistance to ontological erasure; care and interconnection; and the subtle, unpredictable disruptions—words whispered under surveillance, small acts of curriculum defiance—that spread the potential for transformational voices critical of Israeli hegemony and colonial practices. At a theoretical level, findings sketch contours of linguistic/semiotic citizenship as an otherwise that is a dynamic space shaping survivance.