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‘Four Mothers’: The Womb in the Public Sphere 129

‘We are mothers of soldiers in combat units who are serving or are going
to serve in Lebanon’, one mother is quoted to have said. ‘The turnabout was
the helicopter disaster. We decided we had to do something. We felt that we
wanted to do something to help our children’ (local northern paper, May 1997).
‘I bore you, no slogan could convince me to sacrifice you’, stated a known female
media professional, in a personal commentary (Moskuna-Lerman, Ma’ariv,
19 January 1998).
Motherhood was often anchored as an irrational, highly emotional voice.
Interviews with activists highlighted a discourse of feelings of love and caring.
In one double-spread article, a few quotes are given prominence: ‘Every day
there is word of another friend who died. What do you do with the feeling that
you are raising a child whose every need you took care of and who now is facing
an existential problem?’; ‘We pray for the safety of the soldiers, we hug them and
love them. The nastiest saying is “You are weakening the soldiers”. How can one
say something like that to a mother?’; ‘In one poster we wrote: “What do we
get out of Lebanon? Only children in coffins”’ (Shneid, Ma’ariv, n.d.). Many of
the articles devoted space to lengthy descriptions of mothers’ emotions, fears,
prayers and sense of helplessness.
Interviews with activists highlighted their mixed feelings over the choice of
this frame.

It’s a double edged sword … all along they characterized us as mothers. …
It’s true, I am guilty of being a mother, but come on, come listen to what
I have to say. Leave that aside! All the time they latched onto the female
thing rather than to the problem at hand. It allowed them to cling to
the motherhood issues and not go in depth into the problem. It afforded
them a way to escape the problem. On the other hand, it was a-political, a
mothers’ cry ... it worked ... it touched people somehow ... in their own
relationships with their mothers, on the private level. (Ben-Dor, interview,
21 July 1998)

It also became clear from the interviews that the journalists actively chose to stick
to the motherly frame. When referred to the official spokesman of the movement,
they refused to interview him: ‘They didn’t want us to send a man – only a
mother, who has a son in Lebanon. That’s what the “ratings” dictated’ (Ben-Dor,
interview, 21 July 1998).
Motherhood was such an overriding meta-perspective attached to the
movement and its message, that it even overrode the possibility of the common
stereotypical treatment of women in the Israeli media in their sexual role.
Nowhere in the reports was there a reference to the activists’ appearance,
beauty or dress code, so typical of women’s portrayals, including those
of women politicians. The surprising absence of the sexual overtone suggests
that the ‘motherhood’ anchor of the ‘Madonna–Whore’ dichotomy was
the overriding frame in the coverage, leaving no breach for alternative
interpretations.